General sees IED drop by year's end - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

General sees IED drop by year's end

WASHINGTON — The tide of roadside bomb attacks against U.S. and allied troops will be turned by December, according to the Pentagon's top general charged with combating them.

Lt. Gen. Michael Oates told USA Today that by year's end the counterinsurgency strategy will be fully implemented, troops will have better equipment to counter improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and more bomb-planting insurgents will have been killed. That should stem the use of IEDs, the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops and the insurgents' preferred weapon, he said.

"If those three elements come into play, and I do think they will, my estimate is that we should see a turn down in the IEDs' effectiveness and number sometime six months from now," said Oates, chief of the Joint IED Defeat Organization.

New equipment includes thousands of all-terrain Mine Resistant Ambush Protected trucks designed specifically for Afghanistan. The number of units assigned to clearing bombs from roads also has doubled in the last six months to 75, Oates said. In coming months, the number of blimps with sophisticated cameras to keep watch over roads will increase from 13 to 64, he said.

Oates based his prediction, he said, in part due to his experience as a commander in Iraq when the use of IEDs peaked in 2007 but declined quickly as the insurgency was subdued.

"It's going to be more than that," Oates said. "The confluence of those three factors is going to have a significant effect on the enemy. It will improve our ability to operate."

Some military analysts agreed with Oates' prediction but said it wouldn't signal an end to the war, nor the use of roadside bombs.

James Carafano, a military expert at the Heritage Foundation, called the threat of IEDs "overblown." It's good to reduce their effectiveness, he said, but insurgents will switch to other forms of attack.

Defeating the insurgency is the key to limiting IEDs, said John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security. The counterinsurgency strategy being implemented by Gen. David Petraeus involves protecting Afghan civilians.

"But IEDs, like bullets, are now an enduring feature of modern warfare that all future commanders and force planners will have to deal with forevermore," Nagl said.