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/ Iraq / Security / War in Iraq /

How to Defeat a Bombist

06.09.2005 12:34 Alexander Bokovski

The acronym "IED" is quite familiar to all US servicemen in Iraq. The "Improvised Explosive Device", or, to put it simply, a home-made bomb, has been recognized as a "major killer" of US troops in that country.

It is the backyard-made explosive devices planted at roadsides or mounted on cars driven by suicide bombers that have been responsible for the deaths of an overwhelming majority of the nearly 2,000 US servicemen officially killed in Iraq during the past two years.

In this context, no wonder that research aimed at neutralizing the growing IED threat is a top priority for the Pentagon. The urgency of this task is so great that, according to a number of high-ranking US generals, this line of research would have the same significance as the famous "Manhattan Project" of the forties to create an atomic bomb.

Resources of all US Armed Services have been mustered to develop new methods and procedures for countering the bombing threat. Even the research department of the US Navy received $15 mln for that purpose in the 2005 Financial Year. US experts believe that the most promising line of fighting Iraqi "bombists" is the technologies allowing to remotely neutralize the IED or cause their induced detonation at a safe distance, or, ideally, even at the place of their manufacture or storage, for instance at terrorists' homes and secret bases.

To solve this task, intensive research is underway for the purpose of creating special robots – pilotless flying machines and self-propelled overland devices, as well as electronic systems capable of remotely jamming or disabling radio-signals sent by terrorists to activate their "infernal machines".

According to some data, a series of new devices to fight IED are being secretly tested under combat conditions in Iraq. Information has leaked to the press that special pilotless planes and two radio-electronic systems – JIN (general IED neutralizer) and NIRF (radio-frequency IED neutralizer) – are being tested in Iraq. Pentagon officials are very reluctant to comment on these reports, saying that any publication on the matter would damnify the "operative security" of the coalition forces in Iraq and might alert the terrorists.

Apart from the robots and radio-electronic systems, US military researchers are also working on other ways and means to defeat terrorists and gunmen who use IED. Judging by the information leaked to the press, these include sniper ambushes at the places where terrorists are likely to plant bombs, use of specially trained dogs, special scanners, radiolocation systems and hyper-spectral sensors to detect explosives or find persons carrying them, including people in crowded city streets, etc.

Research is being conducted also in more exotic fields, such as in-depth study of the psychology of suicide bombers, development of new dactyloscopic procedures to identify people who manufacture IED, analysis of human breath to detect possible traces of explosives, and also the study of possible use of some insects capable of detecting explosives.

Since terrorists and gunmen widely use commercial electronics – mobile phones, remote control panels and the like to set off their IED – Pentagon specialists are keeping in earnest track of the advertisements of new products of the leading world manufacturers of electronic equipment to assess their potential use by terrorists.

US experts believe that a speedy development of effective counter-IED means is of vital importance not only for the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are sure that sooner or later they would have to face this threat at home in the USA.

Special services have already repeatedly come across information of international terrorists making plans for a large-scale bombing war on US territory. In that case the current research in the field of countering the IED threat in Iraq may come in very handy in the USA itself.

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