'There was a two-year learning curve . . . and a lot of people died in those two years'
By Rick Atkinson
Washington Post
As Gen. John P. Abizaid began his second year at U.S. Central Command in July 2004, the simple solutions he had hoped would defeat improvised explosive devices in Iraq seemed further away than ever. More than 100 American soldiers had been killed by bombs in the first half of the year, and IED attacks were spiraling toward an average of 15 per day.
Eager for creative ideas, Abizaid told Centcom subordinates in August that he would accept what became known as "the 51 percent solution": If a new counter-IED gadget or technique had a better than even chance of success, it would be welcome in the theater. "Listen, if you have something that's greater than 50 percent, then get it forward," he also told Brig. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, director of the Pentagon's Joint IED Task Force. "I've got the greatest testing ground in the world in Iraq."
That testing ground was soon put to use in IED Blitz, an elaborate experiment concocted in late summer by the Pentagon's joint staff.
Spotting bombs had proved fiendishly difficult. Some soldiers fastened rally lights on their Humvees for better visibility at dusk, or mounted leaf blowers on truck bumpers to clear the debris often used to camouflage IEDs. Aerostats -- small blimps with closed-circuit cameras tethered 300 to 1,000 feet up -- watched the landscape for insurgent activity. But soldiers staring at television monitors often found their concentration waning after just 30 minutes.
IED Blitz would focus as many forms of surveillance as possible in a "persistent stare" at a bomb-infested 20-kilometer stretch of Route Tampa, just south of Balad on the road to Baghdad. The blitz would enlist satellites, U-2 spy planes, 14 Mako unmanned aerial vehicles, a pair of larger I-Gnat drones, and the Horned Owl, a Beechcraft turboprop airplane equipped with ground-penetrating radar used to assess whether road shoulders had been disturbed by digging.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
As Gen. John P. Abizaid began his second year at U.S. Central Command in July 2004, the simple solutions he had hoped would defeat improvised explosive devices in Iraq seemed further away than ever. More than 100 American soldiers had been killed by bombs in the first half of the year, and IED attacks were spiraling toward an average of 15 per day.
Eager for creative ideas, Abizaid told Centcom subordinates in August that he would accept what became known as "the 51 percent solution": If a new counter-IED gadget or technique had a better than even chance of success, it would be welcome in the theater. "Listen, if you have something that's greater than 50 percent, then get it forward," he also told Brig. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, director of the Pentagon's Joint IED Task Force. "I've got the greatest testing ground in the world in Iraq."
That testing ground was soon put to use in IED Blitz, an elaborate experiment concocted in late summer by the Pentagon's joint staff.
Spotting bombs had proved fiendishly difficult. Some soldiers fastened rally lights on their Humvees for better visibility at dusk, or mounted leaf blowers on truck bumpers to clear the debris often used to camouflage IEDs. Aerostats -- small blimps with closed-circuit cameras tethered 300 to 1,000 feet up -- watched the landscape for insurgent activity. But soldiers staring at television monitors often found their concentration waning after just 30 minutes.
IED Blitz would focus as many forms of surveillance as possible in a "persistent stare" at a bomb-infested 20-kilometer stretch of Route Tampa, just south of Balad on the road to Baghdad. The blitz would enlist satellites, U-2 spy planes, 14 Mako unmanned aerial vehicles, a pair of larger I-Gnat drones, and the Horned Owl, a Beechcraft turboprop airplane equipped with ground-penetrating radar used to assess whether road shoulders had been disturbed by digging.
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home