Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [348]
My response also told a simple truth about warfare: As a conflict evolves, both sides adapt to the reality of the battlefield. The emergence of improvised explosive devices as the Iraq conflict wore on necessitated a shift to more armored vehicles that the Army had not acquired. It also necessitated a change by the commanders on the ground in their tactics, techniques, and procedures to make the troops less vulnerable. It took time to put up-armored vehicles in the field, and the Army, which has the responsibility to organize, train, and equip the troops, had not been arranged in an optimal way to accomplish that.
Commanders had been grappling with the problem of lethal improvised explosive devices since 2003, when they first began appearing. The favored IED was the roadside bomb. Made with garage door openers, egg timers, toy car radio controls, or washing machine parts, the bombs were inexpensive to assemble and crude in design. They were, however, remarkably effective in killing American and coalition troops.5 Among the most vulnerable to the roadside bombs were the thousands of humvees—lightly armored trucks—that were often used by our forces to move around in Iraq.
Once ground commanders experienced the first attacks by IEDs in the summer of 2003, they began to adjust. But so did the enemy. Our troops began using jammers to block the signal of remote-controlled bombs—until the enemy shifted to using wires, pressure plates, and heat sensors to activate the bombs. Once our troops became adept at deciphering the telltale signs of IEDs buried under roads, the enemy put explosives in piles of trash, the carcasses of animals, and, most savagely, in the corpses of murdered Iraqis. Our commanders changed their operating tactics as well, and began stopping three hundred yards before suspected roadside bombs. This led the enemy to plant second bombs at places where the convoys were likely to stop. Next, commanders began to position snipers on frequently bombed routes to kill those who planted IEDs, with the result that the enemy began planting IEDs elsewhere. The bombs themselves became increasingly sophisticated.6 Houses were rigged to explode when Iraqi or coalition troops entered to search them. In Fallujah and other cities, factories churned out massive car bombs that could take out a city block.
By 2004, IED attacks had risen to nearly one hundred per week, becoming the most deadly weapon our troops faced.7 General Abizaid and I regularly discussed the severity of the problem with General Casey. Abizaid urged that we mount a Manhattan Project–style effort to find a solution to IEDs, and in June 2004 we created the Joint IED Defeat Task Force with a budget of $1. 3 billion and a mandate to find ways to counter the threat.8 I urged that anything and everything be tried. I was told that the task force we assembled had even tried using honeybees to detect IEDs with their keen sense of smell. Hair dryers were mounted on the fronts of vehicles to trigger the bombs’ heat sensors.9
Coalition troops were increasingly coming under attack from explosively formed penetrators. EFPs use a copper disc that becomes a semimolten slug capable of piercing even the strongest armor. The first EFPs in Iraq were in Shia areas not far from the Iranian border. The chemical composition of their explosive charges had telltale signs of Iranian weapons manufacturers.10
We weren’t moving fast enough. In December 2004, I again expressed my continued frustration in a note to Myers and Pace. “I am very uncomfortable with the pace at which this is going. We know that vehicles are vulnerable and we know they are less vulnerable with armor. We have known it for some time.”11 And then, “My suggestion is this: until the Services can organize, [train] and