The IED’s: from caltrops to pressure cookers
‘Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected’ is what Sun Tzu wrote in his evergreen thesis of military strategy, 500 years before the birth of Christ. And yet, even 2,500 years later, his axiom holds true for every battleground and every no man’s land around the globe. Every guerilla conflict which has ever raged has been subject to a set of laws inscribed in stone. From ‘the troubles’ to Vietnam, from Afghanistan to Iraq these ‘regulations’, have governed the actions of all belligerents. And one of the major constituents of these guidelines has been the reliance of the contenders on something known as ‘area denial strategies’, just a fancy term for the likes of booby traps and other concealed tools of slaughter.
Booby traps have for eons graced battlefields with their absent presence. During the medieval age, a device known as the ‘Caltrop’ used to be dispersed around a likely battlefield. It was no more than a glorified pair of nails, with four of them sticking out in opposite directions in such a way that one of the spikes always pointed skywards, laying in wait for the ill-fated infantryman or horse who would have a foot or hoof shredded away after stepping on the wicked gadget.
Centuries later, the same caltrops were fielded in Vietnam, where they claimed many a GI. But in today’s age of sadism, this is one of the more merciful pieces of equipment to come across.
Enter the IED’s. Devices so potent, they have altered the course of innumerable conflicts. The IEDs, short for Improvised Explosive Devices can be fashioned from theoretically anything added to a volatile chemical, as the name suggests. Petrol, natural gas, cordite, potassium nitrate are all well-known and not so well-used components of a standard IED. The interesting thing about these accouterments of guerilla warfare is that all these ingredients are freely and at least in Pakistan, legally available at almost any well-stocked supermarket. This devilish contraption is based on basically three elements, the explosive, the shrapnel and the detonator, as are most explosive devices. The single fact which sets it apart from the usual munitions of war is that you don’t need an ordinance factory to manufacture this deadly device.
The Taliban, both the Afghan and Pakistani variety, take pride in fashioning their IED’s from pressure cookers. Yes, you read it right, the pressure cooker lying innocently in your kitchen has a darker, more sinister side where guerilla outfits employ it not to boil chicken, but to blow away APCs, MRAPs and in some cases, even MBTs. The pressure cooker fills in the ‘shrapnel’ requirement for the IED. Following the detonation, the shrapnel, in plain English, the debris, flies around, embedding itself into anything unfortunate enough to be in its kill zone.
Explosive devices kill and maim by two fundamental ways, the debris and the shockwave. The debris is the shrapnel, the nuts, bolts, ball bearings which terrorist organizations so generously use in their IED’s. But an IED need not require shrapnel to kill as there is still the shockwave. This term essentially translates into a high-pressure front caused by the explosion, which crushes, in a human’s case, the body’s cavities, read the skull and the ribs. The shrapnel merely increases the range or the kill zone of the device, by using projectiles to decimate the unlucky targets.
The effectiveness of these devices can be gauged from the fact that in Iraq, one insurgent group, the Mahdi army had polished its lethal trades to such an extent that they on several occasions knocked out M1A2 Abrams MBT’s. Now an Abrams is by no means the easiest target for an IED. It is clad from engine to the muzzle of its barrel in almost impenetrable depleted uranium armour. The thickness of the armour is classified but the level of protection can be judged from the fact that prior to the Mahdi army’s actions, no M1A2 had ever been penetrated by a kinetic or explosive projectile.
The insurgents reply to the US military’s $8 million behemoth was an oil barrel filled to the brim with cordite and topped off with a shaped charge. A shaped charge is simply a cone, which in this case was an inch thick steel cone acting as the lid of the barrel. When the explosive behind the cone detonates, the cone reverses, morphing into a spear which is extremely effective at short ranges. In a nutshell it’s an up scaled RPG-7 round. So as the hulking 60-tonne Abrams confidently rolled past an alley, the typical oil barrel pointed at the tank, laying on its side would go off, the spear would penetrate the depleted uranium protection and $8 million would go up in smoke, with everyone inside mostly dead or seriously wounded.
Incident such as these speak volumes of the IED’s efficiency. When a $100 contraption disables a millions-worth MBT, only then does one understand what the talk is all about.
The final screw for the IED is the detonator. Without this doohickey, the entire device can be slept on with reasonable comfort. There are primarily three methods of detonation. One is the manual version whereby the miscreant lies in wait for the target and on confirming contact, sets off the fuse. The second and common mean is the pressure plate which ignites the fuse when a vehicle or anything bearing enough mass to trigger it, presses down on the device. In short, it follows the same mechanism as a mine.
The third procedure is by radio, although it is not really popular in terrorist circles, probably due the lack of cell phones. Diagrammatically, the cell phone is rigged to the explosives and a call from the handler of the device triggers the explosive. The wires powering the phone’s LCD are usually employed for the purpose. Talk about calling the reaper.
According to a report by the Pentagon, the IED’s have become the single largest killers of US soldiers in Afghanistan. They danger is so several that it has warranted for the introduction of a million dollar vehicle, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle.
At home and ever since Operation Rahe Nijat, these thingamajigs have announced their presence on every dusty road where the law dares to tread. Hundreds of our soldiers have been martyred by these menacing machines and yet the government is no closer to handling this malady than by employing manual means such as minesweepers which have cost us dearly. The strategists will have to sleep on it if we are to do away with these deadly devices.
That is the point of area denial strategies, the harder you struggle, the deeper you go. A general in Vietnam, faced by these deathtraps on a daily basis said, ‘If you’re fighting in the brush and can’t see the enemy, burn the entire lot’.