Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), Article 5
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
Second Objective: Train the Force
Training the force, Meigs's second imperative, has saved innumerable lives over the years. Soldiers who once spotted
few roadside bombs in Iraq now detect more than half before detonation.
The "Mark 1 Human Eyeball," as troops sardonically call it, is more adept at finding IEDs than any machine. Studies
to determine which soldiers made the best bomb spotters found that "it's those who hunted and fished and were much
closer to their environment," an Army scientist reported. Because approximately half of all casualties occurred in
the first three months of a soldier's deployment, according to a senior intelligence official, units headed overseas
began receiving extensive counter-IED instruction at the Army's National Training Center in California and
elsewhere.
Small Kill Teams (SKTs)
In Iraq, SKTs -- "small kill teams" -- of five to eight soldiers learned to ambush bomb emplacers, often hiding
for hours or days near IED "hot spots." Under a $258 million contract, Wexford Group International of Vienna, Va.,
and the Asymmetric Warfare Group, a new Army unit formed last year at Fort Meade, Md., dispatched field teams to the
theater to help sharpen tactics and techniques. Troops were advised to "get off the X" -- the blast seat in an IED
attack -- and to "build a box," with surveillance cameras, for example, in which to spot and trap insurgent
bombers.
The new unit, 250 strong, adopted an eccentric motto: "Normal is a cycle on a washing machine." Field commanders
were urged to be unorthodox, by leaving an eavesdropping bug after searching a suspected insurgent hideout, or by
shutting down microwave towers to neutralize cellphone triggers before entering a dangerous sector.
"Our mission is to challenge the culture of the whole Army," said Col. Robert Shaw, the group commander. "The
institution is not designed to react as fast as our enemy reacts."
Observation, Detection, Identification, and Neutralization (ODIN)
Last winter, another new Army unit, Task Force ODIN -- the acronym derives from "observation, detection,
identification and neutralization" -- began hunting IED emplacers with the following:
- Unmanned aerial vehicles
- Attack helicopters
- Spotters in C-12 airplanes
Operating from Tikrit in northern Iraq, the task force eventually averaged "40 to 50 engagements per month," according
to a senior Army official. A sequence of operations in northern Iraq -- code-named:
- Snake Hunter
- Snake Killer
- Black Widow
increased the number of suspected emplacers killed from a
weekly average of 22 last fall to 71 per week this spring, an Army lieutenant colonel said.
"The enemy's killing us with a thousand cuts, and we're trying to kill him with a thousand cuts, too," the lieutenant
colonel added. "Can you kill your way to victory?"
Article 6: Third Objective: Attack the Network