By Ann Roosevelt
For the enemy involved in IEDs, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) is out to raise the risks of that effort every day, according to the director.
“You’re an enemy in one of those networks, in one of those theaters, where we’re fighting, tomorrow’s got to be more risky than today,” Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, JIEDDO director said at a Feb. 13 briefing. “We’re after taking down the network and we’re after the people. I just want to make this very hard on the enemy.”
The IED problem is very complex, something Metz compares to the six-sided Rubik’s Cube. Each node is a network and there are different networks in theater and several theaters.
“In addition to trying to get the colors right on six sides, you’ve got to have the wisdom to look down inside there and tackle problems,” he said. JIEDDO divides its tasks into attacking the network, defeating the device and training the force.
The organization has requested $496 million in the FY ’09 budget, somewhat less than in FY ’08 due to the turnover by that time of jammers JIEDDO has worked on. “I think we’ve got the right amount of money to use in ’08,” Metz said.
The enemy relies on IEDs as an asymmetric way to influence Americans, Iraqis, Afghans and spur recruitment in the Jihadi network, Metz said.
“There’s been an ever increasing capacity that he’s put on the battlefield,” he added.
Metz wants to reduce the loss of life and limb to U.S. and coalition forces. “That’s the metric that I want to go down.”
While the enemy has increased its IED effort on the battlefield, “he didn’t make a difference,” Metz said, due to the increasing capability of leaders, soldiers and Marines that are more capable in defending against IEDs.
Metz showed charts detailing IEDs graphically by year and month, showing peaks and valleys, but there were no figures discussing the numbers of IEDs found and cleared, or number of casualties, or ineffective IEDs.
A decline in IED attacks can be attributed to a number of factors including Iraqis deciding they’d rather work with coalition forces than the thugs fighting an unpopular insurgency, well trained, disciplined soldiers, the surge, and getting soldiers the equipment to defeat IEDs and protect themselves.
Robotics are one of JIEDDO’s key initiatives. These efforts include the iRobot [IRBT] Xbot and the MARCbot developed by Exponent Inc. [EXPO].
A wide variety of jammers continue to improve, develop and fine tune the triggering of the enemy triggering devices that may be using the electromagnetic spectrum.
“But with success, we push the enemy away from there and back to very fundamental things–command wire is an example, where he initiatives via the wire, the device,” he said.
“We’ve got projects like Desert Owl and Copperhead, real aggressive scientific efforts to use radar or other sensors to be able to see that command wire,” he said. Then to be able to know the command wire wasn’t there yesterday probably means it’s associated with an IED, and then detect it.
That’s a case where the enemy is moving back to a more fundamental technique.
At the other end of the scale, where the enemy used infrared heat signatures of coalition vehicles to trigger an IED, JIEDDO’s Rhino fools the IED so the vehicle is not attacked, and the triggering is “off somewhat,” he said.
There are intelligence efforts and ISR synchronization efforts that include national intelligence assets and sophisticated analysis, much of which is classified.
Another program is about to be handed off to the Army: the Law Enforcement Professionals program. The IED is much like a criminal event, so why not have police, FBI or vice squad retirees of 25 or 30 years helping a brigade or battalion, he said.
There is also an intensive training effort.
“We’re working with the gaming industry, the entertainment industry, the amusement park industry, to come up with ways we can replicate the IED event so accurately to train soldiers,” Metz said.
One metric Metz does not like is this one: “The enemy now has got to put out over seven IEDs to get one casualty. That number in Iraq at one time he could put out five IEDs to create the one casualty.”
Metz thinks about the people, not the numbers.
He is working to get JIEDDO ahead of the curve.
“What I want to do is to be thinking about what he’s [enemy] going to pull off the commercial shelf in six months to a year that’s coming down the commercial route, how might he use it. How to red team it try to figure out how he might use what civilian industry is going to offer him in six months and go ahead and figure some of the counters for it. That’s how you beat this guy.”