Fighting The War Against Improvised Explosive Devices

Today's UK Times Online posted a story about the war our soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting against the improvised explosive device (IED), the Taliban's weapon on choice. 

The article points out:

"In Afghanistan now, in the battle for Marjah, the coalition has 15,000 soldiers ranged against an estimated 400 Taliban fighters. It sounds like no contest. Yet progress is slow and bloody because the Taliban have ringed the town with IEDs in what soldiers call the "belt of death"."

The IED has been around for a while.  It was used by Guy Fawkes to try to blow up the British Parliament.  Lawrence of Arabia used them, the Viet Cong used them, and the IRA used them.  The term IED was coined by the British Army to describe the bombs the IRA was making.

Aberdeen proving ground in Maryland is developing a robot that will enable American soldiers to disarm roadside IED's without putting themselves in danger.  The robots cost $150,000 each.  One soldier working with the robots, Sergeant John Stricklett, lost three robots on his last deployment to Iraq.  He comments in the article that if he had been walking down the street to disarm the IED's involved, he would have been lost.

Another suggestion on how to find and disarm the IED's has been to use honeybees.  The article points out:

"A defence research laboratory in Los Alamos has found they (honeybees) can be trained within 20 minutes to recognise a particular chemical. It proposes putting bees in a detecting machine with a monitor that registers a signal when the bees stick out their tongues. But the logistics of carrying bees inside army vehicles moving around Afghanistan have proved unworkable." 

The real answer to finding and disarming IED's is having alert soldiers who pay attention to details in their surroundings.  I remember reading in an article from an embedded reporter that he had learned not to go on patrol with any group of soldiers driving a vehicle with a dirty windshield--if the windshield was dirty, it was easy not to spot the tripwires that often triggered the IED's.