On the offensive
The battle against IEDs
By Montgomery Meigs -
Posted : April 16, 2007

The editorial in Marine Corps Times’ April 9 issue, “Bomb team isn’t producing,” did not give an accurate summary of what the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has accomplished in support of U.S. troops in harm’s way.

The enemy we face leverages the $3 trillion international investment in information technology made commercially every year. He can depend on the marketplace to continue to annually produce new varieties of communications devices that he can adapt to arm and initiate explosive attacks.

Improvised explosive devices represent the enemy’s fires system, his artillery. He delivers his explosives through the networks that, for centuries in Afghanistan and Iraq, have formed the sinews of commerce and survival for tribes and factions, network structures that defy identification. He sets off IEDs with cell phones, command wire, pressure plates and walkie talkies. This combination can attack our troops’ patrols more accurately than the enemies’ artillery in past wars. There’s no question that these tactics pose very real challenges. They will be with us for a long time.

But to say JIEDDO and the troops in the field to whom we provide new capabilities and techniques have not made progress does a disservice to soldiers and Marines in harm’s way and to hardworking service members and civilians in our organization, many of them veterans of combat.

Ask the troops about the training they now receive in the maneuver exercises at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., and the Army’s Combat Training Centers, where the IED threat is now portrayed violently and realistically. JIEDDO provided the funds and a good deal of the concepts.

Ask troops downrange who have had former Special Forces personnel from our Training Advisory Teams go on patrol to help them improve their combat skills under fire whether JIEDDO’s trainers made a difference.

In the past year, JIEDDO has funded almost 14,000 jammers for Marine and Army units; the total buy will reach more than 30,000 by year’s end. This gear saves lives every day. We funded 8,100 Frag Kit V armor sets for Army and Marine M1114s and M1151s.

We fielded robots for explosive ordnance disposal teams, Cougar vehicles for route clearance teams, and Guardian, a man-portable jammer for dismounted operations. JIEDDO worked with the Army to accelerate from delivery in fiscal 2008 and 2009 the Warrior-A unmanned aerial vehicles and Constant Hawk and Highlighter aircraft now operating in support of II Marine Expeditionary Force, 1st Cavalry Division, and the 25th Infantry Division in Iraq, an unprecedented intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability.

Additionally, by focusing the efforts of elements of the national intelligence community, JIEDDO organizes products that go to units daily to support their efforts to destroy the networks that do the senseless bloody work of attacking civilians and coalition troops. We’ve seen hits on the pages of our intelligence Web site rocket to more than 200,000 in just a couple of weeks.

JIEDDO also funds the Counter Intelligence Targeting Teams that work in division headquarters downrange as well as the Weapons Intelligence Teams and Counter IED Exploitation Cells in both Iraq and Afghanistan that provide technical intelligence to unit commanders.

These capabilities are having an impact. We have the feedback from units to prove it.

There is no question that casualties are unacceptable. We do heed the criticism offered by Marine Corps Times that IEDs continue to account for more than half of our casualties. But capabilities provided by JIEDDO to disciplined, well-trained, magnificent units downrange doing the real work at the point of the spear have forced the enemy to pay a higher price to maintain a constant effect.

Granted, casualty numbers have remained relatively constant, but to stay even, the enemy must generate more than four times as many attacks now as in 2003. To stay even, he must expose himself more and take higher risks to do his ugly work.

No one in JIEDDO is satisfied with that result. We are working harder to get to the troops the capabilities they need to wrest even more of the initiative from the enemy by taking down the IED networks.

The Marine Corps Times editorial criticized the expansion of our staffing. Our permanent staffing has grown, but not exponentially.

Our predecessor organization, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force, had a permanent staff of 135 service members, federal civilians and contractors. Our permanent authorization is now 358.

We have raised the rank and grade of many supervisory positions and will continue to rely heavily on additional contractors to provide capabilities not available through the Defense Department. Many of those contractors are with units in the field, not in Washington.

We will also continue to refine the organization as the campaign creates new requirements. But to manage an effort that leverages the national technical base to provide better weapons, training, intelligence fusion and defensive capability to units in harm’s way as quickly as possible and to run training programs worldwide, JIEDDO now has on hand fewer personnel than an Army airborne battalion.

Marine Corps Times did not ask us for our side of the story before it went to print. We stand ready to provide anything that can be released into the public domain and to respond to queries.

The writer is the director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. He is a retired Army general.

Ellie