One of the few reliable methods the U.S. military has for stopping improvised bombs are radio frequency jammers, which stop the bombs from being remotely triggered.
I’ve mentioned the jammers — specifically, the Warlock family of jammers — a whole bunch of times on the site. But there are others, too. Raytheon, for example, just got another $15.5 million for its IED Countermeasure Equipment (“ICE”) systems. If I’m doing the math right — always a questionable proposition — that means another 1200–1300 jammers for the troops.
Back in April, Copley News Service notes, Lt. Gen. James Mattis told Congress that “the Marines are sending 1,066 of the new devices to Iraq and plan to buy another 2,500. The Army is purchasing 3,000.” In August, the Joint IED Defeat Task Force shifted “$48 million to buy 6,246 [ICE] kits,” according to Inside the Army.
“The device is about the size of a large gym bag,” the El Paso Times noted in August.
It is a rectangular metal box with switches, fans and connectors on its face and sides. It takes about 15 minutes to install in a vehicle and it runs off the vehicle’s power system.… The ICE device can be programmed from a laptop in the field, and it was designed with space inside the chassis for new equipment. The electronics are modular and easily replaced in the field. The simple design also makes it relatively cheap to manufacture.
Really cheap. “At $12,000 each, [ICE] is one-third the price of the Warlock device,” Copley notes. Which is one reason so many are being sent into the field.
But while the jammers are useful tools, they can’t guarantee soldiers and marines’ safety. Far from it.
In a little more than a month, at least three marine bomb squad members have been killed by IEDs — a huge loss for a community that’s only a few hundred people big. It’s safe to assume that all three had some sort of jammer. But the bombs that killed them, I’m told, were triggered by motion-detectors. No radio frequency jammer in the world could have stopped them from going off.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
And how long until the insurgents have bombs which detect a jammer’s signal strength and blow up just when it starts attenuating slightly?
Nicholas.
These bombs are by no means sophisticated. They are using low tech to defeat our systems not high tech. The bombs that use “infra-red” sensors are basically the same sensors used on grocery store doors and garage doors the world over. To produce a counter jammer of that level of sophistication would be next to impossible in large quantities. The human debris that are producing these bombs don’t NEED to counter our technology with higher technology…precisely the opposite.
Good Morning Folks,
Just a lttle twist on this Jammer Story, an article that appears in this mornings San Diego Union Tribune connect(s) the firm(s) making these devices to the recently desgraced Congressman Cunningham. This is the basis for the House Intelligence Committee getting involved in an insestigation as to the who, what and why of those who paid off Cunningham.
Since this is going to court there was little information given in the story but is does add a little interest to the question of why these devices have been compromised almost before they got to the troops.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
>The human debris that are producing these bombs don’t NEED to counter our technology with higher
>technology…precisely the opposite.
I have to disagree half way with that. While there is still use for traditional cables to activate an IED when jammers are in use to counter RF activated IEDs, the time and risk increases for the limited range. Just imagine how expensive and time costing it would be for setting up a cable connected to an IED from several hundred meters away to avoid being spotted and to escape? There are advantage but at the same time disadvantage going for the low tech.
>And how long until the insurgents have bombs which detect a jammer’s signal strength and blow
>up just when it starts attenuating slightly?
Thanks for feeding terrorists with ideas, risking people’s lives, idiot.
“>And how long until the insurgents have bombs which detect a jammer’s signal strength and blow
>up just when it starts attenuating slightly?
Thanks for feeding terrorists with ideas, risking people’s lives, idiot.”
Yeah…don’t debate it because terrorists could use that idea. /That/ makes sense.
As to the idea of “IR” jammers, it wouldn’t be necessarily a jammer.
A wideband IR transmitter could preemptively trigger such a device, or soldiers could wear IR absorbing camo paint.
Or we could just nuke Iran, which is where all of these devices are coming from.
My friend has a valentine v1 radar detector, you know, the one with the indicator arrows. Well, the thing regularly gives false positives whenever you drive by a store with a lot of automatic doors, i.e. walmart. If the IR sensors that the terrorists/insurgents are using are that similar to the ones used in domestic stores, surely DARPA or some research wing of the pentagon or contractor has looked into this?
thanks to who ever wrote this for informing the enemy of our latest technology. DOD just had a class on not posting information to the net that might help terrorists. please think about what you post and how it may help the enemy before you post it.
many thanks for your help in this
j
Duct tape, duct tape the local mullah to the front of the patrol vehicle, that should diminish the IED activity.
Why construct such senseless things like “Love robots” when it is possible to change humans into robots themselves by operate conditioning and brainstorming at it has been done in the past by some spy organisations with what the russians called “Telephone” ?
The conveniant may be to hinder this, but one never knows, wether the robot will turn against his inventor, when to “off” button is missing in the construction in case of emergency.
In the history of robots there not only one case a robot killed his inventor who failed this emergency facility.
The story of Heel 2000 in the movie “2001″ is not a fiction, i do believe, since mankind seems to be endangered to be ruled by machines made by his own invention creating “cyber-worlds” like “SIM-Life” an others …
Even the internet is not free of this, since i had the experience, that some enterprises were capable to copy and falsify any WEB-side, just to make one believe you are in the real one.
For instance my wife, from whom i was devorced, i can admire as a cyberwoman in official sites of german government and our child to seems to have become a “Data corpse, whose real existance is still not proved.
Think also to the real “Diana Spencer” story : What will prove, that is was not a dummy killed in that car or a double that was elected in a multimaedia beauty-competition to save the life of the real one.
Windsor are cable of that, thinking anyone in England to be a simple subject and not a free human beeing.
Thus as the story of doubles in history is not new, it has become more finer in its apearance :
Bin Laden for instance may be a press invention as there had been about fifty Hitlers during WW II or fife Schrders, making their appearance in more then one place simultanesly !
Even the person of George W.Bush may be a double, or a speaking dummy, when making its statements
on presidents briefings.
Scince medicine evoqued a pope as cybernatic man-machine one never nows if, what ever You meet in the neighbourhood is a real human beeing or a conditioned Zombie.
So better take care of what Yoiu believe from media presentation an cybernatic virtual reality …
The Aliens are amongst us !
stop posting this shit….you are only hurting your fellow soldiers when you talk about stuff that should be (and probably is) classified. We all know what works and doesn’t work…why share that info with the enemy?!!?!?!?!?!?