MORE ON WARLOCK’S TRICKS

It’s not much. But I’ve got a leee­tle more infor­ma­tion on the military’s hush-​​hush defense against impro­vised explo­sive devices, or IEDs.
The Warlock radio fre­quency jam­mers are made by the New York and Simi Valley firm EDO. And they’re based on an ear­lier EDO prod­uct called the Shortstop Electronic Protection System, which is designed to pro­tect troops against proximity-​​fused weapons, like mor­tar rounds and artillery shells. According to EDO, Shortstop grabs the elec­tronic sig­nal that one of these weapons makes, “mod­i­fies the sig­nal and sends it back to the weapon mak­ing the fuze think it is close to the ground. The fuze then pre­ma­turely det­o­nates the war­head ren­der­ing the weapon essen­tially harm­less.“
The Warlock doesn’t do any­thing quite so dra­matic. Instead, “it basi­cally works by inter­cept­ing the sig­nal sent from a remote loca­tion to the IED instruct­ing it to det­o­nate,” an Army offi­cial told Inside Defense (which has a wrap-​​up of all its recent IED sto­ries here.) “The sig­nal ‘can­not make con­tact, there­fore when it cant make con­tact it doesnt det­o­nate,’ much like a cel­lu­lar phone call that does not con­nect, he added. “The cell phone never gets through, but [enemy forces] think it go through.“
The jam­mers come in two fla­vors, each inter­rupt­ing dif­fer­ent fre­quency bands. Warlock Green con­nects off of the 24V DC power sup­ply of any mil­i­tary vehi­cle, an Army doc­u­ment notes. Warlock Red is “designed to con­nect off the cig­a­rette lighter and/​or 12V DC power sup­ply.“
THERE’S MORE: “The Army is test­ing a new method of inter­cept­ing impro­vised explo­sive devices that relies on an up-​​armored humvee and two types of vehi­cles designed in South Africa to with­stand blasts from land mines,” Inside Defense also notes.
$2.9 mil­lion will pay for two “Hunter/​Killer” teams, each with an up-​​armored humvee, an enhanced RG31 Medium Mine Protection vehi­cle, and a bulldozer-​​like Buffalo Explosive Ordnance Disposal vehi­cle, the mag­a­zine says.
U.S. forces — includ­ing the 82nd Airborne’s Task Force Pathfinder — have been using the vehi­cles since the begin­ning of the year. According to an Army pub­lic affairs story, sol­diers like the RG31 because it’s built to with­stand a bomb (more on how that’s done here) and because it’s roomy. “Like rid­ing in an armored Cadillac,” one sol­dier quips.

November 22nd, 2004 | Bomb Squad | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.