'If you don't go after the network, you're never going to stop these guys. Never.'
By Rick Atkinson
Washington Post
BAGHDAD -- In the early spring of 2006, perhaps the most important document in Baghdad was known as the MOASS -- the Mother of All Spreadsheets-- a vast compilation of radio frequencies that insurgents used to trigger roadside bombs.
In some areas of Iraq, 70 percent of all improvised explosive devices were radio-controlled, and they caused more than half of all American combat deaths. An overworked Army intelligence officer tracked the frequencies, and an equally overworked Navy electrical engineer matched them against 14 varieties of electronic jammer used by coalition forces.
As new frequencies popped up, the updated MOASS was analyzed by the National Security Agency, by Navy electronic warfare specialists in Maryland and by Army specialists in New Jersey, which led to recommended adjustments in the jammer settings. Those modified "loadsets" were then e-mailed to U.S. military forces throughout Iraq so that the jammers could be reprogrammed. The cumbersome process took weeks, by which time new frequencies had been logged into the spreadsheet, requiring further analysis and further reprogramming even as hundreds of new jammers arrived in Iraq each month. "It was a mess," a senior defense official recalled.
By the end of 2006, the Department of Defense had spent more than $1 billion during the year just on jammers. Fielding them "proved the largest technological challenge for DOD in the war, on a scale last experienced in World War II," according to Col. William G. Adamson, a former staff officer for the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), the Pentagon office coordinating the campaign.
The U.S. strategy was defined in six words: "Put them back on the wire." By neutralizing radio-controlled bombs, the jammers would force insurgent bombmakers to use more rudimentary triggers, such as command wire. Those triggers would be simpler to detect, in theory, and would bring the triggermen closer to their bombs, where U.S. troops could capture or kill them.
That strategy has succeeded. In the subsequent 18 months, radio-controlled bombs would shrink to 10 percent of all IEDs in Iraq. Today, bombs triggered by simple command wire have increased to 40 percent of the total.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
BAGHDAD -- In the early spring of 2006, perhaps the most important document in Baghdad was known as the MOASS -- the Mother of All Spreadsheets-- a vast compilation of radio frequencies that insurgents used to trigger roadside bombs.
In some areas of Iraq, 70 percent of all improvised explosive devices were radio-controlled, and they caused more than half of all American combat deaths. An overworked Army intelligence officer tracked the frequencies, and an equally overworked Navy electrical engineer matched them against 14 varieties of electronic jammer used by coalition forces.
As new frequencies popped up, the updated MOASS was analyzed by the National Security Agency, by Navy electronic warfare specialists in Maryland and by Army specialists in New Jersey, which led to recommended adjustments in the jammer settings. Those modified "loadsets" were then e-mailed to U.S. military forces throughout Iraq so that the jammers could be reprogrammed. The cumbersome process took weeks, by which time new frequencies had been logged into the spreadsheet, requiring further analysis and further reprogramming even as hundreds of new jammers arrived in Iraq each month. "It was a mess," a senior defense official recalled.
By the end of 2006, the Department of Defense had spent more than $1 billion during the year just on jammers. Fielding them "proved the largest technological challenge for DOD in the war, on a scale last experienced in World War II," according to Col. William G. Adamson, a former staff officer for the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), the Pentagon office coordinating the campaign.
The U.S. strategy was defined in six words: "Put them back on the wire." By neutralizing radio-controlled bombs, the jammers would force insurgent bombmakers to use more rudimentary triggers, such as command wire. Those triggers would be simpler to detect, in theory, and would bring the triggermen closer to their bombs, where U.S. troops could capture or kill them.
That strategy has succeeded. In the subsequent 18 months, radio-controlled bombs would shrink to 10 percent of all IEDs in Iraq. Today, bombs triggered by simple command wire have increased to 40 percent of the total.
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home