IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 22

That incident, which took place on
7 November 2007, exhibits many of the
hallmarks of the missions in Iraq and
Afghanistan-a small patrol; a local man
of dubious background; Navy specialists
working with soldiers on dry land; and
costly technologies pressed into service
against cheap and crude weapons.
And, most of all, death by IED.
"Sergeant T" became one of the 24 coalition soldiers killed by IEDs that month
in Iraq. As of the end of June, IEDs
have killed untold thousands of Iraqis
and Afghanis, as well as 1795 coalition
military people in Iraq and another 231
in Afghanistan, according to the Web
site iCasualties.org. Those figures are
nearly half of all combat fatalities in
Iraq and roughly 30 percent of those in
Afghanistan, according to the site.
IED fatalities in Iraq were down
sharply in May and June, to 14 and 11,
according to iCasualties. But they were
up in Afghanistan, to 12 in May and 22
in June. Overall, in the first half of this
year, IEDs, including suicide bombs,
killed 115 coalition people in Iraq and
72 in Afghanistan. Those figures mean
that in the f irst half of 2008, IEDs
caused 54 percent of all coalition deaths
(including nonhostile ones) in Iraq and
59 percent in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military has responded with
the most intensive program of technology development in at least a decade. It
has spent US $12.4 billion over the past
28

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * SEptEmbEr 2008

three years on counter-IED equipment, behind more armor and praying that
technology R&D, training, and other there's a technical solution to all this."
measures through the Joint Improvised
Three U.S. military officers offered
Explosive Device Defeat Organization more specific criticisms in a recent
and its predecessors.
paper for the Joint Forces Staff College,
JIEDDO says that its mission is to sup- in Norfolk, Va. JIEDDO, they wrote, "is
port efforts to defeat IEDs as "weapons still built around a technical-solution
of strategic inf luence." This wording approach focused on research and develacknowledges that insurgent fighters use opment, testing, and fielding the elusive
IEDs with no hope of defeating a military 'silver bullet' to defeat IEDs."
force in the traditional sense. The point
T here a re lots more publ ishe d
is to cause death and destruction result- criticisms in that vein. Nevertheless,
ing in news imagery that affects the politi- it's basically impossible to find anycal will of the country that dispatched one inside or outside of JIEDDO who
the force. This distinction is significant believes in a "silver bullet" technology
because it implicitly suggests that IEDs that will solve the IED problem. On
and the casualties they cause cannot be the other hand, it's not too hard to find
eliminated. It points to a response based people who think that technologies-
on minimizing their effectiveness, for including ones that predict or detect
example with armor and by other means, IEDs as well as others that neutralize
to marginalize their strategic impact.
them or at least lessen their effects-will
J I E DD O emphasi z e s a hol ist ic be part of a complicated and variable set
approach, incorporating such nontechni- of responses that reduce the lethality of
cal aspects as training troops in counter- IEDs and also increase their costs to the
IED tactics and technology and using extent that they become ineffective.
law enforcement techniques, forensics,
The challenge is more complex than
and intelligence to smash the networks most people realize. "There have been no
that build and deploy IEDs. But this year, easy problems when it comes to measure$2.57 billion of JIEDDO's $4.38 billion countermeasure, whether you're talking
budget is devoted to developing counter- about submarine warfare-antisubmarine
IED technologies, feeding a perception warfare, tank-antitank, or antiaircraftthat the agency is chasing a cure-all.
counterantiaircraft," says Daniel Gouré,
In an interview, a civilian at a mili- vice president of the Lexington Institute,
tary academic institution who studies an Arlington, Va., think tank. "They're
counter-IED tactics characterized the always immensely complicated challenges
U.S. approach as "hide and pray: hiding in which technology just plays a piece.
www.spectrum.ieee.org

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EDITOR'S NOTE: To minimize the possibility that information in this article could endanger coalition personnel in Iraq or Afghanistan, a
draft of this article was reviewed by current and former officials of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a U.S. Department of Defense agency. In
response to those reviews, IEEE Spectrum voluntarily removed three passages and the names of two active-duty U.S. military personnel.

http://www.iCasualties.org http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2008