Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), Article 3
Compiled by David Barth on September 14, 2008 from an article by Rick Atkinson, Washington Post Staff Writer and
Staff researcher Madonna Lebling.
Article 1: IEDs, The Electromagnetic Spectrum, and
MOASS
Article 2: Jammers
Article 3: Types of IEDs & Vehicles
Article 4: First Objective: Defeat the Device
Article 5: Second Objective: Train the Force
Article 6: Third Objective: Attack the Network
Article 7: The Story of Lt. Col. Gadson
Types of IEDs & Vehicles
Yet insurgent bombers found other options. Simple pressure plates - two metal strips that completed an electrical
firing circuit when pressed together by a tire or an unsuspecting boot -- appeared in great numbers. More than
one-quarter of bomb triggers were soon classified as "VO": victim-operated.
Explosively Formed Penetrators (FFPs)
These included growing numbers of explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), which often used passive infrared triggers
tripped by a passing victim. EFPs became as flamboyant as they were deadly; a bomb with 54 warheads configured in nine
"arrays" was discovered before detonation on May 17, 2006. Despite increasingly sharp warnings from the Bush
administration to Iran, which was accused of supplying the bombs and other war materiel, EFPs continued to take a
horrific toll in Shiite-controlled sectors of Iraq.
Six cavalry troopers would be killed in a blast on March 15 of 2007, and from April 1 through July 31, 2007 roughly
300 EFP attacks occurred. EFPs still account for only about 3 percent of all roadside bombs in Iraq, but the 250
Americans killed by the devices since 2004 amount to 17 percent of all bomb deaths, according to military
sources.
Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRSP) Vehicles
Underbelly or "deep buried" IEDs continued to take an even greater toll -- more than half of all coalition forces
killed early in early 2007, for example, although only 15 percent of all bombs were classified as deep buried. The
Pentagon agreed to buy at least 7,800 sturdy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles with V-shaped hulls for
approximately $1 million each. Prudent soldiers on patrol now searched every road culvert; some units began welding
shut manhole covers.
An incident on June 28 2007 in the East Rashid neighborhood of Baghdad illuminated a disquieting trend: A single
underbelly IED, so violent that investigators initially believed the blast came from several car bombs, killed five
soldiers and wounded seven.
Bombmakers increasingly used homemade explosives brewed from fertilizer-based urea nitrate in kiddie swimming pools or
huge aluminum cauldrons, then spread on flat rooftops to dry and packed in rice bags. On July 17, bombers detonated
1,500 pounds of homemade explosives in a culvert north of Baghdad. The blast heaved a 26-ton armored vehicle 60 feet
through the air, killing two Navy crewmen, according to investigative documents.
Other bombmakers in late 2006 began using acetone to leach the explosives from artillery and mortar shells; much
lighter and more portable, the stuff could then be molded into car wheel wells or hidden almost anywhere.
Multiple suicide truck bombs were orchestrated to penetrate sturdy perimeter defenses, like the twin blasts in late
April of this year that killed nine soldiers from the 82nd Airborne in a schoolhouse command post north of
Baghdad.
Another nasty variation first appeared in October 2006 with the first use of chlorine gas in an IED. Sixteen more
chlorine attacks would occur, but insurgents found, as World War I soldiers had, that "it is very difficult to
create a lethal concentration of chlorine gas," an Army colonel in Baghdad reported. "The gas cloud rapidly
dissipates."
Article 4: First Objective: Defeat the Device