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3-star: Better technology needed to fight IEDs

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The head of the Defense Department’s main effort to combat roadside bombs is challenging the defense industry to improve the technology designed to detect them.

Army Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, who was named director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization six weeks ago, said that of the 50 percent of IEDs U.S. forces detect, 80 percent of those are detected by soldiers using their senses; just 20 percent are found using technology.

“The problem for me as the director of JIEDDO is that I have enormous resources invested in the technical end of this and not a whole lot to show for it. And if that upsets anyone I apologize, but I’ve been around too many of these things when they go off,” said Oates, speaking Wednesday at the Association of the United States Army Winter Symposium.

The symposium brought together hundreds of defense contractors, soldiers and Army leaders to discuss strategy and review a football field-sized room loaded with vehicles, aircraft, hardware and other devices marketed to the military.

“I know we can do better and we owe it to our soldiers to find a way to improve our detection capability against the threat that they face, and they don’t have years and years to see that assistance,” he added.

Oates calculated that of the IEDs that are not found, 35 percent of those are ineffective, due to armor, “defeat mechanisms” and “poor execution by the enemy.”

“We have got to find a way to get past 50 percent in detecting these explosives,” Oates said. “We have been stuck on this number for way too long for a country that’s as rich in ability as ours. And I think that we’ve picked all the low hanging fruit and we have to take a fresh look at this.”

Oates called for renewed efforts to disrupt the supply chain to bombing networks, as well as new technology to detect, tag and track IEDs.

In Afghanistan, IEDs are comparatively simple, employing command wire in many cases tied to rudimentary explosives like ammonium nitrate.

Meanwhile, the military’s rate of finding and clearing IEDs is “pretty good and getting better,” Oates said, attributing the trend to improved training and technology.

However, in Afghanistan, he noted that there has been a “significant increase,” both in the volume of IEDs used against coalition forces and in the number of effective attacks.

IEDs, though used tactically, “have a tremendous strategic impact on our will to continue this fight,” Oates said.

“This is a winning proposition for the enemy and that’s why he uses them. One of them against us will mean wounded or a fatality or destroyed equipment.”

Oates called on the assembled Army personnel and defense industry representatives, in their efforts to find solutions, to match the risk faced by soldiers who regularly encounter IEDs.

“We all should remember that those soldiers and sergeants are taking extreme risk in the prosecution of their mission,” he said. “The least we can do is take risk with our rank, our position, our money, our privileges.”