Article on IED tactics in Iraq

[WMD]

Since Iraq is the new field testing lab for IEDs right now, I thought it's a good idea to stay up to date. This article helps:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1632805,00.html
Anyone else with news on the developement over there?

[nbk2000]

I saw a mention about how a unit in Iraq is experimenting with using laminated glass as armor against EFP's, after noticing how the EFP's failed to penetrate (usually) the armored glass viewports in the HUMVEE doors that the EFP's usually penetrated with no problems.

[nbk2000]

To demonstrate his prowess, he produces a black briefcase-size device with Japanese markings and flicks a switch on its side. He claims that the device is similar to those used by U.S. troops to block cellular signals around IEDs and disable bombs wired to detonate with a cell-phone call. Abdallah says he was given the device by a Saudi militant who asked him to find a way around jamming signals. He invites the four people in the room to try to use their cell phones; none of us can get a signal. "I've jammed you all," he says, tapping the black device. But his own phone, a cheap Nokia, shows a full-strength signal. "I made a few small changes inside," he says, holding up the phone and grinning triumphantly. "It took me just one day to figure it out."

Now that's interesting, if true.

Having a cellphone that can't be jammed by typical jammers would proved useful in contexts other than IED's.

[FUTI]

It is more likely that diferences in standards which manufacturers holds upon is the key. Remember that few years ago USA pressed realy hard that issue with regards to encryption of phonecalls on mobile phones made by European manufacturer (the same one NBK posted). In EU people are more concerned about their privacy so that is the reason why did they made phones little harder to be hacked with (it is still posible but...). It appears that members of dis-organised C-rime figured this out and exploited it to make EU and USA LEO a big headache. Maybe a things are different now after 9/11, Madrid, London and yet to see bombing shit so those jammers(and tapers;)) will work in 99% cases. The guy said he used cheap (read old generation one) phone to counter jamming.

[megalomania]

Just because he said it was a cheap phone does not mean it is generation one. Cheap nowadays means it only, god forbid, makes and receives telephone calls without the ability to surf the net, take pictures, and play video games.

What I would like to see is the Iraqi's publishing exactly how they build those advanced EFP's I keep hearing the military gripe about. I am waiting for the first roadside bombs to start popping up in the US. I wonder what form the fallout of that kind of terror would bring?

[nbk2000]

It could be a cheapy like mine, but modified by increasing the power above the regulatory limits, or altering the control channels, or who knows.

I could see the first US use of an EFP, if not by jihadi's, being by robbers against armored courier trucks.

[simply RED]

If the jammer is designed to irradiate in the whole frequency range the cell phones are using, no change could make a phone usable. No cell phones will work just because the signal from the tower will not be received properly.

"""the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training, once dreamed of studying for a Ph.D. there"""

Saif Abdallah is proving in practice that he was good enough for MIT... muhahahahaha

[megalomania]

A dimes worth of offense beats a dollars worth of defense, or so the military saying goes. I wonder if the enemy will be good enough to reveal their secret, or will they keep the secret so the US will not soon develop cell jammer v2.0?

[nbk2000]

First time the modified phones are used in a dud IED, all its base belongs to us! ;)

[AcMav]

I Figured you guys might want some info on RF Jamming, heres a little guide on how to build your own / about them.
http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/index.html

However the owner of the website also mentions in her FAQ about this same problem that Abdallah is trying to overcome and she presents a much more practical and less intensive solution.
"...While cell phone jammers are useful against some IEDs, many current designs are trigged by signal-loss..."
Why bother needing to beat the jamming, these jamming devices only have a limited range, thus putting a relatively large chance on the device injuring or killing a soldier trying to disarm it.

[simply RED]

Quite a nice idea is to put receiver connected to the detonator of the device in (for example) 10% of the devices. The receiver is adjusted that the device will go off when the soldier (or wehicle) holding the jammer is 3,4 (or less) meters away. The device contains preformed scrapnels, multiple EFP, thermobaric warhead etc...

Lasers are also ultra - useful. Cheap diodes, pointers etc are sold everywhere. Cheap receivers photoresistors, diodes, transistors could be found even in the 3rd world. Example for signal loss: Low power laser is adjusted on the receiver , when sth passes the ray is broken and boom. Another example is when the laser is pointed up, when sth passes, low percentage of the energy is reflected down to the receiver. Of course the ray is modulated with some frequency, signal etc that the sun is not going to set off the device.

Another thing to spot : both Abdallah and Ladyada live from selling garage made gadgets :)

[teshilo]

Light(laser) -modulated remote detonators used in Yugoslavia Jamming these ?No.Minuses you can places on line with yours target...
Idea use END of transmition are nice... Equipment for this ????

[LibertyOrDeath]

Anyone else with news on the development over there?I saw a news show about an IED-resistant vehicle that the US is trying to deploy more of. It's a big, heavy mother with a V-shaped underside that's intended to deflect a blast from beneath.

What I would like to see is the Iraqi's publishing exactly how they build those advanced EFP's I keep hearing the military gripe about.
Here's an interesting video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LudNqf56AFo

Unless that video was somehow faked, it seems to demonstrate that an IED capable of penetrating a tank and killing the crew inside with hypervelocity molten metal is very easy to make once you have the proper explosive in hand. Something like that in the video, though presumably larger, should work just fine.

Incidentally, the IED used in the demo looks very similar to one in the Improvised Munitions Blackbook.

All of this leaves me with a strong suspicion that those EFPs being used in Iraq aren't really very advanced at all. They're probably being made by insurgents in basements and garages. The electronics probably vary a lot in sophistication, from simple garage door openers to stuff like that guy in the article is making.

My suspicion is that the devices are being characterized by the US government as super-high-tech in order to bolster the claim that the EFPs are being supplied by Iran, which the Israel-first neocons in the government really want the US to attack. They're looking for excuses, just like they did before the Iraq invasion.

If by "advanced" they're referring to the radio detonation method, then I can understand; but I've yet to hear any mention of that in the press. I only hear about supposedly greater destructive power.

[megalomania]

I got the impression that the Iraqi devices were rather simple homebuilt affairs that have become sophisticated and refined in comparison to what a gorilla fighter would normally be expected to use. These devices should be constructible in garages and underground workshops, that's why I am waiting for the details to leak out to the general public.

The insurgents have had a lot of practice and time to refine their weapons making them more effective and easier to produce.

I seem to remember a thread some years back, before 911, where we furiously debated the scenario of a militia or gorilla group being able to destroy a tank with improvised weaponry. As I recall the general consensus was that it could not be done, the all powerful fedgov would squash freedom fighters trying to protect their homes in smalltown USA and keep their families from the reeducation camps and murdermills.

When the FBI and DEA deathsquads roll through our streets to secure the position of the president after he declares himself King of America, the militia groups will need a weapon that can destroy the usurper king and his executioners. The day of the rope could see plenty of causalities on both sides then.

Mobs of angry citizens bearing illegal homemade firearms and weapons not turned in after being criminalize and seized will have to battle their way into the White House, political palace of the usurper king. Secret Service Secret Police, the SS, will sacrifice their lives to protect the tyrant king, but for every citizen they murder ten citizens will hurdle the corpse and take their place.

Before the armored door to the Oval Office is battered down the president who made himself a king will take his own life rather than be torn apart. The dead king's corpse will still be torn apart, and the Royal American flag will be torn down from the mast to be replaced by its rightful occupant, the Stars and Bars.

The 50 stars of the flag will be more important in the days ahead, for never again will there be a central federal government with the power to control and destroy the lives of its citizens.

[LibertyOrDeath]

Indeed mega, there's no question that Americans have the weaponry available (both commercial and improvised) to mount a successful asymmetric/guerrilla war against tyranny. The only question is whether enough Americans would have the balls. If even one percent did, then that just might be enough.

Even if tanks were immune to the effects of homemade IEDs -- and it sure seems like they aren't -- dismounted troops will never be so immune, and it's not possible to rule from the inside of a tank. Insurgents can blend into the local population, and in order to enforce the law, boots need to hit the ground. That's where IEDs, sniper rifles, and AR-15s/AKs/FALs/shotguns come in.

I think thermal imaging is a much greater threat to potential guerrillas than any armored vehicles. But there are countermeasures to that as well, and it's currently so expensive that even many pigs can't afford it. Anyway, that's another thread.

Getting back to IEDs, there's no doubt that detection technology is being pursued, although Iraq shows that it's obviously not very effective yet (at least not cost-effective). If it gets to the point where IEDs can be found by electronic "sniffers" of some sort, then maybe "seeding the ground" by clandestinely dispersing small amounts of explosive all over the roads would be effective? The sheer number of false alarms could prevent effective use of the "sniffer," and it would be much easier to secretly disperse tiny amounts of explosive than to plant entire bombs.

[megalomania]

If a single cell phone can be used as a detonator, and with cell phones so cheap and disposable nowadays, salting the earth as it were with dozens of cell phones to create false positives would keep the disposal techs constantly busy. This is rather like the false warhead technology that tries to trick anti-ballistic missile technology. Only one of the 100 inbounds is real, but which one? While the disposal techs are defusing dud after dud, the chances the real weapon will take out a target is greatly increased.

If a minefield had only one or two real mines out of thousands of fake mines, would you cross? Or would the road, pass, route, etc be closed while the danger is cleared?

[TreverSlyFox]

From the reports I've seen the only part of an EFP that seems to pose a problem is the Copper Cone. All the reports show them being imported from Iran as a preformed copper disk/cone about 3"-4" in diameter with an angle of about 15 degrees. They appear to be simply punched from 1/4"-3/8" thick copper plate and then stamped into a shallow cone shape.

The cross section of the assembled EFP IED was a piece of 3"-4" ID pipe with one end capped off with a hole in the cap for the detonator. The pipe was then filled with what looked like about 1-2 Lbs of plastic explosive, either C4/Semtex or a castable explosive maybe from a 155mm artillery shell. Then the cone shaped platter was set on top of the explosive point up.

These were either buried upright in the road in the middle of the 'lane" or set at an angle along the side of the road and roughly aimed where the side of a vehicle would be. The ones they showed were all Command detonated by wire off in the distance, but this was some 6-8 months ago when the report was done.

The stamping of the cone could easily be done with a 12-20 ton shop press but you would need to know the exact degrees the cone needed to be for the best effect and then get a stamping die made. I imagine you need and explosive with a high VOD in the 7,000-8,000 range and not something like ANNM or ANFO in the 4,000-5,000 VOD range.

I also would imagine even an ANNM EFP would do a big time job on a police squad car with no armor at all. But then again a quick and crude "well pipe" cannon loaded with ball bearings would do an effective job against a squad car and be less hassle to set up.

[simply RED]

Another idea is to arm one of 100 devices with "sensor switches" (sensor contacts), going off when sb touches it. Sensor switch can be made with 3-4 transistors, operation amplifier etc...

[Jacks Complete]

All IEDs should have two detonators, and two independant triggers.

Fit a timed anti tamper (tilt switch) to it, buried inside the bulk of the explosive, on a small battery. Then add your actual trigger system as per usual. Then, upon deployment, the 3 hour timer (for example) is started, and the command detonation system set up.

This will reduce issues where the bomb is defused after the system is jammed, since the timer won't be jammed. If they collect the IED and take it for analysis, it will possibly explode in or near a target of value, and, even if not, it will help reduce the value of the remains (due to added extra crispy bits to work out the system) and hopefully prevent the entire device being taken apart for info.

As regards the copper disk, I think it could easily be cast in a clay mould, or made up from a stack of thinner disks that could be formed on a heavy vice. Both these ways would likely be less good, but both should be effective nonetheless.

If there is no armour, then adding the disc is expensive and pointless. Just add large ball bearings and the like, which is freely available, over a wad of some sort.

[simply RED]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a82_1207605176

An example we should follow !

[iHME]

Abdallah should be a member here. I'd love to read more about his creations. And the idea of a switch or timer inside the bomb itself has crossed my mind several times before. How would you disarm a solid block of tnt with a microcontroller with a temperature sensor and a small copper wire mesh circling the block? Even better if a accelerometer is added.

[Joxer]

http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/ied-awareness-guide.pdf

This file shows actual pics and tactics used in placing IEDs.
Designated TC 9-21-01 US IED Awareness Guide Iraq and Afghan TOE (2004)

You can find this and more here: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:Analysis_requested

[Guerilla]

And the idea of a switch or timer inside the bomb itself has crossed my mind several times before. How would you disarm a solid block of tnt with a microcontroller with a temperature sensor and a small copper wire mesh circling the block? Even better if a accelerometer is added. It could be made to deflagrate by means of shaped charges designed for the purpose, never 100% reliable but a pretty common procedure for such cases. Provided such an anti-handling device would be detected in the first place, of course. It would make one bitchy booby trap nonetheless, most safe-rendering techniques would be out of question right away. Often there would be no need for such fancy secondary initiators though.

[teshilo]

http://www.slate.com/id/2175723/pagenum/all/
Also nice article...
What is "How to Disable U.S. 'Joint IED Neutralizer.'" and "Military Use of Electronics Prepared by Your Brother in Allah." manuals...In the net nothing...

[Jacks Complete]

One method I have seen is to use an RC car and simply ram the suspect package. Rubbish bags are generally light, IEDs are generally heavy. If anything goes bang on impact, then you've perhaps lost a toy car.

The most impressive IEDs were the shaped charge grenades, discussed by NBK elsewhere on site.