(did you see the LEDs blink?) http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/the-most-lethal-weapon-americans-faced-in-iraq/?WT.mc_id=AD-D-E-OTB-WRLD-1009&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_c=__CAMP_UID__&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1381809600000&bicmet=1385787600000&_r=1& October 18, 2013, 10:35 am Comment The Most Lethal Weapon Americans Faced in Iraq By JOHN ISMAY In the first part of this series, At War explored the various conventional weapons used by insurgents in Iraq, as evidenced by reports, called “storyboards,” written by United States forces detailing the contents of captured weapons caches. Often times these weapons had been considered obsolete before 2003. But they were well known to Western intelligence services and militaries. Today, we look at weapons that the American military could not have reasonably foreseen entering the fray, but that caused large numbers of casualties. These are the improvised weapons that were made by hand, or in small shops, and that, with one exception, were not made in industrial factories. Improvised Explosive Devices At the time these storyboards were written, improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, caused approximately 80 percent of all coalition casualties. « Page 1 of 27 » A network of insurgents financed, designed and manufactured these weapons. Skilled bomb makers worked in clandestine shops, and leaders of I.E.D. networks sent “bomb emplacers” to bury or hide their improvised bombs along routes American patrols were expected to take. Standard bomb-making equipment showed up again and again in the caches, including: multimeters for checking the electrical continuity in circuits; personal mobile radios for transmitting firing signals; switches to close circuits; electric blasting caps; detonating cord for when multiple charges were used. Earlier firing systems often employed a variety of radio-controlled features. Keyless entry fobs for automobiles, garage door openers, toy car controllers — these all provided parts for initiating bombs, at least until coalition electronic countermeasures made them almost completely ineffective. Other common articles took their place. Insurgents stripped timers from washing machines, or bought them by the hundreds from commercial sources. Motion sensors meant to open grocery store doors or to turn on security floodlights also found their way into bomb-maker supply bins. These devices could trip a switch and initiate an explosion when a soldier crossed their path. The first bomb emplacers, many of them uneducated youth, sometimes blew themselves up while connecting the basic components of their weapons: power source, switch and explosive charge. They were supposed to connect these parts with an open circuit, since connecting a closed circuit would send current to an electric blasting cap. If that happened, it usually meant instant death for the emplacer. To make bomb emplacement less catastrophically failure-prone, bomb makers searched for devices that could mechanically break the electric circuit. The washing machine timer was one that worked. All the emplacer had to do was wind it up before connecting the circuit and he would have a set amount of time to escape before the bomb was armed. The use of these timers showed an adaptive enemy who learned from his mistakes. Explosively Formed Penetrators and Iranian C4 The single most lethal weapon American forces faced in Iraq was the explosively formed penetrator, or E.F.P. Unlike other I.E.D. charges, E.F.P. warheads required some skilled milling as well as heavy presses to produce. Certain copper alloys were used as well, and analysis of their construction was used to pinpoint the manufacturers. What makes E.F.P.’s so deadly is that they form “slugs” at detonation that maintain their shape over distances of over 100 yards or more, traveling at speeds of nearly a mile per second. This allowed insurgent forces to hide these weapons far from the road, better camouflaging them and making them far more deadly. In some I.E.D. factories, American forces found E.F.P.’s camouflaged to look like trash or rocks. Much has been made of E.F.P.’s generally being “new Iranian weapons,” but that conflates two unrelated facts. First, E.F.P.’s technology was invented in the late 1930s by the oil industry to punch holes through the metal pipe in wells and into the rock outside. These are called oil well perforators or perforator guns. Any country engaged in oil field development has access to E.F.P.’s. Iran lists their domestically produced perforators for sale online. Second, militaries applied this technology to anti-armor weapons as early as World War II. (The United States military currently employs several weapons incorporating E.F.P. warheads, to include the M2 SLAM, the TOW-2B, and the M303 SOF Demolition Kit.) But they became known as Iranian weapons because American intelligence agencies reported that Iran passed E.F.P. technology to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which in turn passed E.F.P. kits to proxy groups fighting in Iraq. In the case of the Iraqi insurgent weapons, E.F.P.s arrived in kit form, and were hand-packed with plastic explosives by bomb makers in Iraq just before use. For their explosive charges, insurgents often turned to an Iranian copy of an American staple: C4, packaged nearly identically to the original 1.25-lb M112 blocks. (Of note, the American M112 blocks changed their markings slightly in 1996 once chemical tracers, called taggants, were added in accordance with federal law; Iranian M112 block markings mimic the pre-1996 markings.) According to an official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, manufacturing C4 is not difficult for any nation capable of making industrial chemicals. Homemade Explosives Not long after the invasion, insurgents began mixing their own batches of explosives and using them against their American adversaries. At first, these mixtures were referred to simply as U.B.E. – unknown bulk explosive. Later, the term HME, for “homemade explosive,” came into wide use. As an agrarian society, Iraq had a nonstop demand for nitrated fertilizers — urea and ammonium nitrate being the most common. Ground urea, mixed with nitric acid, drained and dried, is a powerful explosive. Some caches held bags of hexamethylenetetranitramine, which when mixed with nitric acids produces a powerful explosive known as RDX. Still others combined ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel oil to create the same explosive Timothy McVeigh used to level the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Fertilizer plants, such as this one at Baiji, produced 500,000 tons of fertilizer per year. When homemade explosives first came into wide use in Iraq, American military officers initially thought it was a sign that the insurgents were running out of conventional or “military-grade,” munitions. That assumption had no basis in fact. What it did signal was that the enemy had realized that bulk explosives were more valuable and, in certain situations, more lethal. Experience showed that a large enough charge could destroy any armor, or at least wreak enough damage to cause casualties inside the targeted vehicle. In Afghanistan, homemade explosives became such a problem for NATO forces that President Hamid Karzai’s government banned ammonium nitrate in 2010. End State Although the last United States Army mission to destroy excess ordnance ended in November 2011, violence in Iraq has continued well past the withdrawal of the last American combat forces. According to the United Nations, nearly 1,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September alone, amid levels of violence last seen in 2008. Between 2003 and 2010, the State Department spent more than $200 million on destroying unexploded munitions in the country. Groups like Mines Advisory Group continue their work in Iraq as well. In July 2012, the State Department’s own Web site gives an idea of the challenges that lie ahead: In spite of progress, at least 719 square miles of land is still contaminated by as many as 20 million land mines and millions of pieces of unexploded ordnance. More than 1,600 municipalities are affected, as are huge swathes of farmland, meaning clearing those explosives will be an economic necessity. And as American forces discovered early in the insurgency — and which Iraqis know all too well — every weapon and every explosive that is not disposed of will eventually be put to destructive use by some faction. John Ismay is a former U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer who served in Iraq in 2007, and is now a member of Columbia Journalism School’s class of 2014. Follow him on Twitter (@johnismay) and on his blog johnismay.com.