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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian Sullivan who wrote (7521)	9/10/2003 6:27:35 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793707

"DarrenKaplen.net" Blog One Possible Reason Why U.S. Deaths are Declining in Iraq--"We be Jammin'" On Tuesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and one was wounded when a homemade bomb exploded near a military vehicle on a supply route northeast of Baghdad, reports CNN . That soldier's death marked the end of an eight day period when no U.S. soldiers died in Iraq from any cause. The respite from death is welcome news of course and the fact that no deaths occurred didn't necessarily mean that attacks on U.S. forces had actually decreased since attacks are rarely even reported unless a death results. Nevertheless, the lull in deaths in Iraq is curious because the rate of U.S. deaths following the end of major combat operations had seemed to be increasing up to that point. One reason for the faster pace for U.S. fatalities has been the increasing prevalence of what the Pentagon calls "improvised explosive devices" or "IEDs." IEDs are the bombs that Iraqi insurgents place on or beside roads and detonate near unarmored Coalition vehicles. IEDs have claimed the more U.S. lives than any other single weapon since their introduction into the Iraqi theater in around mid-July, accounting for approximately 17 of 37 U.S. soldiers killed by hostile action. IEDs have a long history of employment by Islamic guerilla forces, seeing their first widespread use by Hezbollah against the Israelis in Lebanon during the 1990s. Islamic militants have also utilized IEDs against Indian forces in Kashmir. IEDs intended to destroy unarmored vehicles are fairly easy to make from the actual explosive standpoint--a paint can filled with high-explosive can serve as an IED--the tricky part is the detonator. Because military forces attempt to keep their transportation timetables a secret, an automatic timer is a bad choice for an IED. Likewise, a pressure plate device, such as on an anti-tank mine, is an unsatisfactory detonator because military vehicles usually share the road with more numerous civilian vehicles and a premature detonation of the IED wastes a valuable weapon. Thus, in practice, insurgents have tended to use remote control detonators for IEDs. Remote control makes the IED a true "stand-off" weapon which unlike say, an AK-47, keeps the insurgent a safe distance from defensive fire, so remote control is definitely the way to go when attacking a defended convoy. But where to get the radio transmitter? The answer may surprise you. The common cellular phone is the transmitter of choice for detonating IEDs. Cellular phones are inconspicuous and ubiquitous in the Middle East and are usually more reliable than the land-line telephone system. Given the increased use of IEDs, what accounts for the decline in Coalition deaths? I'm going to take a wild guess based on nothing more than my own intuition and a single sentence in an article from the Wall Street Journal. The Coalition has begun to equip its military convoys with cellular jammers. Cellular jammers are widely available and can be portable. The Pentagon is known to have been working on large-scale cellular jammers back in August, but I've thought for some time that the threat from IEDs in Iraq could be defeated by the Pentagon simply issuing portable cellular jammers to its convoy passengers. An article from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) strongly suggests that's exactly what the Pentagon has done. Procurement accounts for a relatively small share, just $1.9 billion, including the purchase of 595 heavy mobile Army vehicles, kevlar body armor and electronic jammers to block terrorists from using cellular phones to trigger bombs near troops. If IEDs can no longer be detonated by remote control, the Iraqi insurgents are going to have an even harder time inflicting casualties on U.S. troops. (I note that the most recent reported IED death does not give any indication that the targeted vehicle involved was traveling in a convoy). We'll know that jammers have come into widespread use when we begin to see increased uses of other methods of attack such as suicide bombings and truck bombings of stationary targets (which I think we've already seen). What we will not see more of is increased attacks on U.S. convoys using small arms such as rifles and RPGs, those attacks proved to be suicidal for the attackers and have now been largely abandoned by the insurgents unless they happen upon isolated vehicles as targets of opportunity. Remember you heard it here first; cellular jammers are the newest U.S. weapon in Iraq. darrenkaplan.net