Monday, October 01, 2007
IEDs and Iraq a losing game
Most of you probably don't read the Washington Post. It is not normally worth reading but today there was an excellent three-page article on the history of IED use in Iraq from 2003 until today. This time period is marked with moves and countermoves but the bottom line is still the same a handful (26 cells) of guys are causing two thirds of all the casualties in Iraq. This is not counting the greater number of Iraqi casualties. You can read the whole article at the following URL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Be patient is not easy to navigate this article. You should find a number of videos talking about IED's. The one that impressed me the most was narrated by a sergeant who is in a JERV a 26 ton truck built to withstand IED's. He was describing how 100 pound bomb went off directly underneath his truck creating a 7 foot deep crater that was 14 feet wide. It blew the truck 4 feet into the air at its slammed back down more or less intact in with nobody inside injured.
I've included here a few of the quotes that provide the statistics of how we are doing it is not good.
more than 81,000 IED attacks have occurred in Iraq, including 25,000 so far this year, according to U.S. military sources.
IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of Sept. 22 had killed or wounded 21,200 Americans,
Yet bombs continued to detonate, and soldiers kept dying. The 100 or so daily IED "events" -- bombs that blow up, as well as those discovered before they detonate -- have doubled since the 50 per day typical in January 2006. The 3,229 IEDs recorded in March of this year put the monthly total in Iraq above 3,000 for the first time, a threshold also exceeded in May and June.
Two particularly deadly IEDs now account for about 70 percent of U.S. bombing deaths in Iraq: the explosively formed penetrator, an armor-killing device first seen in May 2004, and linked by the U.S. government to Iran, and the "deep buried," or underbelly, bomb that first became prominent in August 2005.
Our government has not been sitting still, they are developing vehicles with improved armor that can withstand in roadside bombs. The cougar at 12 tons is the lightest of the class and the Buffalo at 24 tons is obviously more substantial. The two URLs below give you more detailed information on this new class of vehicles including the cougar in the Buffalo. I could not find any reference to the JERV on the net. It must be too new. What is sad is that these vehicles will not get there in quantity before this war is over. Our guys are in the continued to die due to relatively small bombs.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20070930.aspx
http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-3-07/feature_mrap.htm
Note. Since their deployment to Iraq in 2003 the Cougar and Buffalo vehicles employed with explosive ordnance disposal teams and engineers units have taken about 1,000 IED hits without a loss of life, said Wayne Phillips, a company vice president in charge of Marine Corps programs.
Liberty or Death
Most of you probably don't read the Washington Post. It is not normally worth reading but today there was an excellent three-page article on the history of IED use in Iraq from 2003 until today. This time period is marked with moves and countermoves but the bottom line is still the same a handful (26 cells) of guys are causing two thirds of all the casualties in Iraq. This is not counting the greater number of Iraqi casualties. You can read the whole article at the following URL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Be patient is not easy to navigate this article. You should find a number of videos talking about IED's. The one that impressed me the most was narrated by a sergeant who is in a JERV a 26 ton truck built to withstand IED's. He was describing how 100 pound bomb went off directly underneath his truck creating a 7 foot deep crater that was 14 feet wide. It blew the truck 4 feet into the air at its slammed back down more or less intact in with nobody inside injured.
I've included here a few of the quotes that provide the statistics of how we are doing it is not good.
more than 81,000 IED attacks have occurred in Iraq, including 25,000 so far this year, according to U.S. military sources.
IEDs have caused nearly two-thirds of the 3,100 American combat deaths in Iraq, and an even higher proportion of battle wounds. This year alone, through mid-July, they have also resulted in an estimated 11,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and more than 600 deaths among Iraqi security forces. To the extent that the United States is not winning militarily in Iraq, the roadside bomb, which as of Sept. 22 had killed or wounded 21,200 Americans,
Yet bombs continued to detonate, and soldiers kept dying. The 100 or so daily IED "events" -- bombs that blow up, as well as those discovered before they detonate -- have doubled since the 50 per day typical in January 2006. The 3,229 IEDs recorded in March of this year put the monthly total in Iraq above 3,000 for the first time, a threshold also exceeded in May and June.
Two particularly deadly IEDs now account for about 70 percent of U.S. bombing deaths in Iraq: the explosively formed penetrator, an armor-killing device first seen in May 2004, and linked by the U.S. government to Iran, and the "deep buried," or underbelly, bomb that first became prominent in August 2005.
Our government has not been sitting still, they are developing vehicles with improved armor that can withstand in roadside bombs. The cougar at 12 tons is the lightest of the class and the Buffalo at 24 tons is obviously more substantial. The two URLs below give you more detailed information on this new class of vehicles including the cougar in the Buffalo. I could not find any reference to the JERV on the net. It must be too new. What is sad is that these vehicles will not get there in quantity before this war is over. Our guys are in the continued to die due to relatively small bombs.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/articles/20070930.aspx
http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-3-07/feature_mrap.htm
Note. Since their deployment to Iraq in 2003 the Cougar and Buffalo vehicles employed with explosive ordnance disposal teams and engineers units have taken about 1,000 IED hits without a loss of life, said Wayne Phillips, a company vice president in charge of Marine Corps programs.
Liberty or Death
