Caroline
Kennedy-Pipe
Professor
of War Studies
Loughborough
University
UK
c.m.kennedy-pipe@lboro.ac.uk
It seems a long time ago now: so much has happened in global politics, but in the late 1990s, politicians and scholars were optimistic that war had changed its shape. The RMA and the resounding technical victory over Kosovo demonstrated that it was possible to achieve military and political objectives without placing a considerable number of boots on the ground. Of note was the fact that NATO suffered not a single combat fatality in that campaign. Serbian forces were pummeled into submission from the skies above. The illusion (or delusion) of so-called Cost-Free War, Virtual War or War at a distance (there was an abundance of such labels) did not endure. The US invasion of Iraq and the long war in Afghanistan ended in abject failure: technological superiority proved no guarantee of victory. Amongst the dissection of those wars, the sobering stories of political hubris, military incompetence, and indefatigable enemies, one constant thread was the fact that IEDs had dented Western morale and resolve. IEDs were, in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the follow-on war in Syria the weapon of choice for the groups opposing Western intervention. We in the UK had become all too familiar with these devices during the Irish ‘Troubles’ as terrorists wrecked mayhem on soldiers and civilians alike, but the IEDs of the Middle East were a novel and insidious threat to those tasked with countering insurgents as well as reshaping state and society.
IEDs are explosive devices fashioned (that is improvised) out of a variety of materials to disrupt, main and kill. In 2003 in Iraq, IEDs were initially unsophisticated, made from old ordnance such as artillery shells, mines, and metal parts. These were detonated by short range electronic devices, by cordless phones, by wireless doorbells, and a raft of ingenious mechanisms. These were fashioned as roadside bombs, animal borne IEDs, vehicle borne IEDs and in an even more sinister development human IEDs, with devices strapped on to suicide bombers. The detonation of the human borne IED at check points or in crowded places raised a raft of questions about the motivations, the ideology, the training of those utilizing IEDs as well as how to defend against these rudimentary weapons. Jason Shell, one of the most experienced commentators on IEDs concluded that sixty% of all American fatalities in Iraq and half of deaths in Afghanistan (over 3.500) were the result of such devices: 30,000 US personnel had been wounded, suffering single or multiple amputations. While improvements in medicine, battlefield care and evacuation to highly equipped medical facilities did improve, IEDs had profound and understandable effects on morale. The US sought solutions. In 2006, the DOD established JIEDDO (Joint IED Defeat Organization) The mission was to defeat the IED. In addition to technical countermeasures such as enhanced protection and electronic counter measures (ECM) considerable time was spent comprehending the society in which bombs were invented, manufactured, distributed, and then used: in a pithy phrase to ‘understand the bombmaker and not the bomb.’
But as Western appetite faded for both wars, the knowledge and training to counter IEDs while not disappearing weakened. The Ukraine conflict has though refocused attention on the IED. We see in Ukraine the adaption of tactics associated with insurgents: ambushes, deception, small unit tactics and IEDs. Since the stalling of the counter-offensive against Russia, IEDs litter the landscape. What started with manoeuvre warfare but has become a competition of military slog with the human costs which inevitably accompany attrition, siege, and the creation of vast swathes of minefields. Thirty percent of Ukrainian territory is littered with landmines. Even if, when, the war ends, mines will remain in their deadly form. There is no cartography of the IEDs, buried as they are alongside roads, tracks, in forests, fields, and in buildings. The dangers lie hidden. This has not happened by accident. The Russians have deployed classic IED tactics such as packing old tanks with explosives and then setting them off to detonate, but proxy IEDs such as this are not new: they have formed part of every conflict.
Yet now the IED is not just ‘ad hoc’ or improvised, these weapons are part of a combined arms strategy. (Technology has played a huge part in transforming the utility of the IED through for example 3D printing). While it is correct that there are still the amateurs who improvise weapons such as anti-personnel bombs, or the proliferation of hobbyist drones loaded with ammunition, the IED is a vital part of the state arsenal both on land and at sea.