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Home » Bomb Squad » Iraq, Behind the Bombs

Iraq, Behind the Bombs

We read all the time about the American mil­i­tary effort to stop hand­made bombs in Iraq. But we don’t know much about the insur­gents who build and plant them. Greg Grant, who just got back from Iraq, has one of the most detailed looks yet into the IED sup­ply chain. Here’s a snip­pet. But be sure to read the whole story, in this month’s Defense Technology International.
IED-factory-peek.JPG

According to U.S. mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, more than 100 cells oper­ate in Iraq. Most limit attacks to road­ways and neigh­bor­hoods near where the cell mem­bers live. Cells adver­tise their tech­ni­cal skills on the Internet, post­ing stream­ing video of IED attacks to jihadist web sites. The most highly skilled IED cells oper­ate as a pack­age and hire them­selves out to the larger insur­gent net­works on a con­tract basis, chang­ing affil­i­a­tions for more money.
While ide­ol­ogy moti­vates many guer­rilla fight­ers in Iraq, some offi­cers believe the finan­cial moti­va­tion behind insur­gent attacks has been under­es­ti­mated. You get a dis­af­fected guy who is mak­ing $100 a month and you tell him go place this IED and Ill give you $300, and if you blow some­thing up well give you a $700 bonus, and thats a pretty dra­matic reward, says Army Lt. Col. Shawn Weed, a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer in Baghdad
Payday is the begin­ning of the month, says Army Lt. Col. Ross Brown, who com­mands a cav­alry squadron in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3ACR) oper­at­ing south of Baghdad. We can track it on a cal­en­dar; hes buy­ing IEDs on this date, then hes build­ing them, now hes putting them out on the roads, then theyre blow­ing up and then hes out of money and muni­tions and he starts over…
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was sat­u­rated with weapons plants and muni­tions depots. U.S. intel­li­gence indi­cates that after the regime fell, for­mer offi­cials moved large quan­ti­ties of muni­tions into pre-​​selected caches, many south of Baghdad, from which insur­gents draw explo­sives for IEDs. Army Capt. Ben Crombe, an intel­li­gence offi­cer in 3ACR, says there is a sin­gle sup­plier for many of these cells.
The sup­pli­ers pro­vide explo­sive mate­r­ial to loca­tions across the cap­i­tal. Components are assem­bled at well-​​concealed bomb fac­to­ries and moved from areas likely to be searched by American patrols to hold­ing areas until the device is emplaced. Because of the fre­quency of U.S. raids on sus­pected insur­gent hide­outs, IEDs are kept in what the mil­i­tary calls rolling weapons caches cars with false bot­toms or trunks loaded with explo­sives that blend in with the thou­sands of vehi­cles on Iraqs crowded city streets.
Individual cells have a spe­cific sig­na­ture and fol­low a pat­tern, Funk says, such as the time of day they carry out IED attacks and where they place bombs, while dif­fer­ent cells have access to dif­fer­ent types and sizes of muni­tions. Most of the bombs are unique in con­struc­tion because the bomb maker is forced to use mate­ri­als at hand. 

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February 14th, 2006 | Bomb Squad | 185322 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/02/14/iraq-behind-the-bombs/Iraq%2C+Behind+the+Bombs2006-02-14+12%3A08%3A57murdoc You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. James says:
    February 14, 2006 at 12:14 pm

    I am fas­ci­nated by this mil­i­tary struc­ture. A decen­tral­ized army that trades weapons, exper­tise, and per­son­nel from unit to unit using cur­rency as an exchange medium. Computer games using this model have been around for a long time, where gen­er­als are allowed to “buy” weapons to upgrade their forces, but this is the most com­plete real­iza­tion of the model I think I’ve yet heard of in the real world since the Late Middle Ages.

    Reply
  2. bespoke says:
    February 14, 2006 at 2:23 pm

    It’s fright­en­ing the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the devices being used — pres­sure plates, infrared trig­gers, and even rudi­men­try explo­sively formed pro­jec­tile attacks (which is the same con­cept behind the lat­est air deliv­ered anti-​​tank weaponry we have)!
    This is not kids and farm­ers plant­ing sticks of dyna­mite in the dirt next to the road — this is a well trained, well edu­cated guerilla army using sophis­ti­cated weaponry. What a mess.

    Reply
  3. Byron Skinner says:
    February 14, 2006 at 3:07 pm

    Good Afternoon Folks,
    A good Post on IED’s. Although I’m sure that the gen­eral pub­lic knows only part of the story about the IED’s in Afghanistan and Iraq, as it shold be, but it appears that there is a pat­ten in the IED’s. This pat­tern is so strong of meth­ods and mate­ri­als used to this point that it appears that in real­ity there is a rather small num­ber of bomb mak­ers.
    As I recall when I was in Vietnam we could tell which area they were in by the types of booby traps and mines we encoun­tered. This doesn’t appear to be the case in Afghanistaqn and Iraq.
    ALLONS,
    Byron Skinner

    Reply
  4. MD says:
    February 14, 2006 at 6:00 pm

    Not kids? Hey I’ve seen kids build­ing toy robots that use the same gear (pres­sure plates, infrared trig­gers etc)… This is basic elec­tron­ics stuff, you can read about in any library or get a mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tion, cou­ple that with peo­ple who are will­ing to go abroad and actu­ally learn some­thing (yep those for­eign stu­dents learn­ing here in North America while the North American kids are becom­ing lawyers and bar stars of the school drink­ing team), those kids go home and teach peo­ple how to get the job done, and that job is deal­ing death.
    Basic shaped charges are not hard to make, any­one with access to a shooters/​demolitions hand­book can come up with some­thing resem­bling a shaped charge, an acquain­tance with his own explo­sives com­pany once described to me how to make rudi­men­tary shaped charges.
    MD

    Reply
  5. JD says:
    February 17, 2006 at 2:41 pm

    Notice how the bush team failed to secure these weapons when the iraqi army fell. We were more con­cerned about secur­ing the oil min­istry than the weapons depots. And not these weapons are killing inocent civil­ians and our guys.

    Reply
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    A PATRIOT FOR EVER!
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