Winning in Iraq?
wbarwell
IEDs: The Lazy Man's Insurgency
By Gary Brecher ( war_...@exile.ru )
It's time to take another look at Iraq, because there's been a big
change in insurgent tactics in 2005. That's inevitable. War makes
people on both sides think faster. Peacetime armies never learn
anything; wartime armies learn new tricks faster than a hungry
raccoon.
The big change is that the insurgents have decided to rely on IEDs
rather than ambushes with shoulder-fired weapons to kill the two or
three GIs per day they figure they need to wear down the US public's
will to stay in the fight. And it's working, way too well.
The stats are clear: IED victims make up a bigger chunk of our
casualties every month. Over the last six months, IEDs have caused 63%
of US combat deaths. Last month (October 2005) was typical: out of 96
US troops killed, IEDs were responsible for 57.
Compare that with April 2004, a terrible month when we lost 140
troops. Back then the insurgents relied on RPGs and small arms. Only
19 of our 140 KIA that month-barely more than a tenth-were killed by
IEDs.
The insurgents have decided to do it the easy way. As long as they can
use IEDs, their low-tech standoff weapon, why should they risk close
combat?
The real question is why they can get away with it. And here-well, I
hate to keep saying this, but somebody needs to. The reason they can
do it is because we still have NO INTEL on them. It's the biggest
failure of the war, and nobody talks about it. CI warfare is about
people, not hardware. We're all hardware and no intelligence, like a
Tim Allen show. Makes me sick.
That makes the decision to go with IEDs a no-brainer for the
insurgents. In the standard ambush, the kind we were facing a year
ago, the insurgents detonated an IED under a convoy, then opened up on
the stalled survivors with RPG and small arms fire. It probably made
them feel good, sort of their version of shock and awe, but the rifle
fire was ineffective and by concentrating their forces, the insurgents
made themselves vulnerable to our air power.
The problem in any guerrilla battle is the getaway. Anybody can pull a
trigger; the trick is getting your men home safe, while enemy choppers
zoom through the sky and every street is full of troops and armor
looking for men of military age. That's the tough part.
An IED ambush has none of those risks. Only one man needs to be on the
spot-the triggerman. He detonates the IED from a car parked down a
side street and drives away before the occupiers can even start their
search. No risk. No casualties. Very demoralizing for the occupiers,
especially since they know damn well that everybody in the
neighborhood was in on the attack but they can't level the locals'
shacks like they're dying to.
What makes this wave of IEDs worse is that the devices are getting
more effective. Frankly I've been shocked at how good the Iraqis are
with these things right from the start. I mean, after that shameful
performance in GW I, did you expect these bastards to be so sneaky,
patient, and smart? I knew this war was a bad idea, but even I never
realized what we'd be up against.
The scariest tech development of all is that the insurgents have
learned how to make shaped-charged IEDs. To understand why shaped
charges are such a powerful weapon, we have to go into the incredibly
cool world of explosive physics. I love this stuff. I mean, what
red-blooded American boy didn't experiment with explosives? The only
reason I ever opened my Chem book was to see if it mentioned TNT or
dynamite in the index. (It didn't-goddamn hippie teachers.) And
naturally I used the local wildlife, like toads and bees, in my
experiments with the killing power of firecrackers.
What I learned was the most important point about the subject: blast
alone doesn't do a good job of killing the target. A bee would wobble
off unhurt after one of my 4th of July daisycutters went off right
next to it.
Now before you hotheads whose hobby is making pipe bombs in the garage
write me angry letters (or send me long round packages with no return
address), I know a blast can kill, if it's a big enough blast. We had
a really nasty example of that in August this year, when a huge IED
killed 14 Marines near Haditha. From what I've read, investigation
showed there was nothing special about the IED. It was just three
anti-tank mines stacked in a pile-the IHOP of IEDs, I guess you could
call it.
That ambush showed real clearly how important intelligence is in
guerrilla warfare. The same unit that suffered the IED attack had just
had six of its snipers killed in a small-arms ambush. Now you tell me
how anybody can ambush six snipers unless they've completely
penetrated the unit. The insurgents knew where the unit's snipers
would assemble, and they knew where the vehicle would be passing. We
don't know a thing about the enemy, but it's clear that he knows way
too much about us.
The other problem is that the 14 Marines were riding in one of those
ridiculous landing crafts the Corps uses as APCs-in Haditha, hundreds
of clicks from the sea! It's called the AAV-7A1, and it looks like a
giant armored dinghy. Since it was designed to ferry troops ashore, it
sacrifices armor and speed and damn near everything else to an
amphibious capability that has no use anymore. But that's the Corps
for you. Real brave, but not always real smart.
Maybe if those guys had been in a real APC some would have survived. I
can't say. If the blast is big enough, it can kill even an MBT. The
Pals took out two Israeli Merkavas, the best-armored tanks in the
world, with simple blast IEDs.
But most of the time, guerrillas don't have the delivery systems to
depend on blast power. If they're trying to kill soft targets-i.e.
people-they pack the bomb with homemade shrapnel: roofing nails, ball
bearings, anything that'll shred flesh. A suicide vest tipped with
nails is basically a 360-degree 12 gauge.
To kill GIs that way, you need to catch them off-guard, somewhere they
feel safe. That's what happened when a Jihadi killed more than a dozen
of our guys in a mess hall in Mosul while they were having
lunch--minus their body armor.
In the field, US troops are a hard kill, especially because they move
in armored convoys protected by choppers. And that's the real beauty
of IED attacks for a guerrilla: they absolutely nullify US air power.
There are literally no targets for the attack choppers. The pilots
know damn well that one of those Iraqi cars driving away from the
scene is carrying the guy who set off the IED, but there's no way to
tell which one.
In a strange way, we're looking at a 3D war. We control the air, but
the Iraqis literally control the underground, thanks to these buried
IEDs. We fly, they dig.
The insurgents' first IEDs were simple. Not that there's anything
wrong with simple. The weapons that have been hurting us are all
simple, like the RPG. Simplicity is the guerrilla's friend.
Those early IEDs were usually just shells buried by the road, wired up
to a detonator. Lots of amateurs were tinkering in their garages, or
whatever Iraqis have instead of garages, playing with stuff that goes
boom. And naturally lots of those guys went boom themselves.
Like I said, war teaches people fast, but some of the lessons have to
be learned by the next of kin, not the handyman whose bright idea for
a new type of bomb turned him into an abstract painting all over his
wall.
Sometimes an insurgency has to learn its lessons several times. Take
the case of pressure-triggered IEDs. These are basically standard
anti-vehicle mines, with something like a bathroom scale as trigger.
People and cars can pass over them unharmed, but if a really heavy
(meaning armored) vehicle rolls over that scale, the bomb goes off.
(Trucks are a problem. Some trucks weigh as much as an APC.) The best
part is that you don't even need a triggerman to set it off. You can
all be off at the hookah parlor polishing up your alibis when it goes
off.
The insurgents in Baqouba used pressure bombs in 2003, but they
usually failed to go off. Their bombmakers didn't have the technique
yet.
Thanks to info-sharing, the internet gives an insurgency, they're back
at it, with better wiring diagrams. A week ago (Oct. 24 '05), a
pressure bomb shredded a Humvee in Baqouba, tearing four GIs legs to
pieces.
The first IEDs were mostly mortar rounds that failed against our
armor. So the insurgents went to big 155mm rounds. That's a big, big
shell and when you trigger it at the right moment, it's going to kill
almost anything but an M1.
The M1 is a great tank, so it's kind of scary to read the stats on how
many of them the insurgents have managed to knock out. As usual, the
invasion was the easy part and the occupation was when things got
lethal. We only lost 18 M1s in the conventional fighting, but the
guerrillas have since managed to disable 80. Now most of those are
track damage, but that's enough to put a tank out of action.
The good news is that the M1 has lived up to its rep for crew
protection. The Army's Armor Center says only five crew have died in
IED attacks on M1s. (Ten other M1 crew have been killed, mostly by
sniper fire, riding in open hatches.)
So if you're an insurgent bomb-maker, your goal is to find a way to
kill M1s. Not just knock a tread off, but destroy it and kill the
crew. And that's where the shaped-charge IED comes in. Shaped charges
were developed for tank killing, used in MBT anti-armor rounds and
antitank weapons. Their warheads are basically thick cups of soft
metal. Metals with low melting points, usually copper. The
bomb-maker's job is to make sure as much of the force of the blast is
channeled to the copper cone as possible. So sometimes he'll put
several 155mm shells beneath the copper, or pack a whole lot of TNT
under it.
When the IED detonates, this copper cup turns into a shaft of
superheated metal that can zip right through any armor, even an M1's.
That's what they tell me, and I have to believe it.
It's the kind of weird science that used to frustrate me in Physics,
the sort of info you just have to take on faith. I can't help
wondering if they're kidding us civvies about it all. I don't get why
a soft metal like copper can penetrate Chobham armor, which can defeat
almost any warhead around.
Apparently the copper isn't even actually molten. It ejects as a
solid; it just "behaves like molten metal." I'm sure the insurgent
Home Improvement tinkerers don't understand the science involved any
more than I do. They just hear that it works and try it out.
The US countermeasures have been pretty lame so far. Convoys travel
with jammers that make it harder to detonate the IED by cell phone or
garage door opener-Nokia and Genie sales are going to drop in the
Sunni Triangle. But like I said, low-tech is the guerrilla's friend.
These days they've gone back to wires, and I hear some are even using
string. You can't jam a string.
Beyond that, Bush policy is to blame Iran, or Syria, or Satan or
whoever.
Iran? Maybe. Syria? No way. Syria's scared to death, ready to do
anything to make Uncle Sam happy. And if it is Iran, what can we do
about it? There are still a few neocons so totally out of their little
gourds they want us to invade Iran. I have to wonder if they're agents
of Dr Evil, programmed to destroy America. Because invading Iran would
do it, it'd end us once and for all.
This blame stuff is a sign of frustration. Nobody knows how to stop
IEDs, even with all the Popular Mechanics geeks sending in their
garage-tech brainstorms. That's because-damn, how many times do I have
to repeat it?-guerrilla war has no technical solution. Or even
military solution. The only effective CI techniques are torture,
reprisal and, ultimately, genocide.
My guess is that genocide will come back one day. That was how the
Ancients dealt with rebellious towns: wiped 'em out. One of these days
some first-world country is going to get impatient and a problem child
like the Sunni Triangle will be a big, radioactive ghost town.
If we don't do it, the Kurds may end up doing it the old-fashioned way
they learned from the Turks: one bullet, one village at a time. It's
been done before--seen any Armenians up there lately? Probably not,
but most of "Kurdistan" used to be "Armenia." A few of the Armenians
made it to Fresno, but the rest are buried up there.
We're talking about Mesopotamia here, the place where war was
invented. Hundreds of peoples have been wiped out forever in those
parts. All these Holocaust lobbyists get furious if anybody says Jews
aren't the only tribe to get genocided, but that's just politics-"Our
genocide is better than your genocide!"
The fact is, genocide is, historically, the most common result when
one tribe runs into another. And something tells me the next big
wipeout will happen right there in Central Iraq.
--
The official spokesman of the Foxes said
today that investigation into what happened
to the henhouse may be needed.
Cheerful Charlie
Roedy Green
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>The big change is that the insurgents have decided to rely on IEDs
>rather than ambushes with shoulder-fired weapons to kill the two or
>three GIs per day they figure they need to wear down the US public's
>will to stay in the fight. And it's working, way too well.
IED = improvised explosive device = home made bomb.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.
Roedy Green
wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>The big change is that the insurgents have decided to rely on IEDs
>rather than ambushes with shoulder-fired weapons to kill the two or
>three GIs per day they figure they need to wear down the US public's
>will to stay in the fight. And it's working, way too well.
The real winning of the war would require getting oil flowing out the
pipelines. A few dead soldiers don't matter when you are talking a $20
trillion oil heist.
The problems for the USA there is similar to the ones wbarwell
mentioned in his essay.. All it takes is a 1 low-tech stick of
dynamite to put a billion dollar pipeline out of commission for a week
or so. It costs a bundle to repair, and of course there are no oil
sales while it is down.
The economics of this game clearly favour the Iraqi resistance.
So long as there are enough people willing to risk their lives to blow
up pipelines, they can make the war a losing proposition economically
for the USA. The USA will spend far more on the war than they will get
back in cheap/free oil.
Given that Americans won't even admit to themselves WHY they are
blowing Iraqis to pieces, they have no emotional reason to continue
the fight. The Iraqis do.
So it seems to me the war will end with a withdrawal, perhaps with
fanfare claiming victory and letting the Iraqis have their oil.
The Iraqis will have a big power struggle, then other countries, such
an Russia, Germany and France will move in quickly, get the oil
flowing, and the USA will be at the end of the line, suitably punished
for her greed trying to hog it all for herself. Iraq will again become
a prosperous country, the way it was before the CIA helped Saddam into
power.
It is a reasonably happy ending, at least compared with the sick
perverted stuff the American are pulling off now.
Malibu Skipper
> On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:42:30 -0600, wbarwell <wbar...@mylinuxisp.com>
> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>
>
>>performance in GW I, did you expect these bastards to be so sneaky,
>>patient, and smart? I knew this war was a bad idea, but even I never
>>realized what we'd be up against.
>
>
> brown they have to be stupid.
>
There's plenty of American arrogance to go around; but I think what this
particular guy is saying is that Iraqi troops in the 1991 Gulf War
proved to be disorganized, poorly trained and equipped, and not terribly
eager to fight. He thinks this is in contrast to the struggle the
insurgents are putting up now. Hard to see anything particularly racist
in that.
gjoh...@eudoramail.com
[...]
> They're so "eager to fight" they're relying on IEDs instead of direct
> confrontations with US and Iraqi security forces, yes. In point of
> fact a bomb is a weapon of weakness: they can't stand and fight so
> they take pot shots from moving vehicles, plant bombs in dead dogs,
> and do everything they can to stay out of range of our weapons. This
> is not a winning formula, especially when most of their victims are
> the very civilians they want to convince to join them.
Yes and no. Yes, the IED is a weapon of weakness. Their weakness is
that they can't stand up to our firepower. This is not a surprise.
No, it IS a winning formula. Just like in Vietnam, they don't have
to beat us militarily to achieve their political objectives. The
Hezbollah used the same strategy against the Isrealis in southern
Lebanon and eventually they got what they wanted. The revolt in Algeria
used terror tactics against the French and eventually drove them out.
This formula has been used again and again all over the world,
especially in the muslim world, and it has consistently driven out
western invaders. And since the rebellion has gotten better with these
IEDs, there has been fewer civilian casualties from them (don't confuse
this with the intentional civil war bombings that are also going on).
wbarwell
Weakness? Blink, blink?
So are we not weak and incapable of standing up to
the insurgents even though we cheat using tanks, helicopters
armored vehicles and artillery and air support rather
than shooting it our man to man, M-16 to AK-47?
What is all this "weak" crap anyway?
If this wasn't so sad, it would be funny.
"Us strong!! We usum tanks and B-52s! Them weak
and unmanly. Usum IEDs and RPGs. Grunt! Not manly!"
I guess then, the epitomy of manly would be beating
a insurgent with an AK-47 to death with a rock.
Ernst Blofeld
OrionCA wrote:
> The point is that the Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda supporters are
> badly outnumbered by the Shiite and Kurdish majority. The
> reconstituted Iraqi army, once a disappointing joke, is almost ready
> to take on the insurgency by itself. Where we once had 1 company of
> Marines for every company of Iraqis, in most battalions we have only a
> small support staff to coordinate air strikes and collect intel. The
> Iraqi police used to fight each other to climb out the back windows
> first as the insurgents banged on the front doors: Now police are
> fighting back and it's suicide for the insurgents to attack the
> stations. They are REDUCED TO street bombs and snipers and these are
> largely ineffective against anything but civilians now, which reduces
> their support base further.
Yes. The IED campaign simply shifts the battlefield to a different
arena, namely policing and intelligence. The IED gangs and the
money men behind them (most of the IEDs are bought and
paid for) are vulnerable to being dimed out and raided once the
police establish themselves in an area. Which is why the terrorists
are targeting the police right now.
The original article was goofily simplistic. A lot of the IEDs
(upwards of 90%) are found before detonation. There are many
electronic countermeasures, and air surveilance also figures
heavily. I could go on.
Ernst Blofeld
Ernst Blofeld wrote:
> Yes. The IED campaign simply shifts the battlefield to a different
> arena, namely policing and intelligence.
See for example,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302600.html
====
Between April and June, 14 car bombs went off along the airport road,
called Route Irish by the military. There were 48 roadside bombs,
officially known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and 80
small-arms attacks. Sixteen people were killed.
In the past two months, there have been no car bombs and nine IEDs. One
Iraqi soldier has been killed.
====
This was in the middle of a major IED campaign by the terrorists.