.Marines to get weapon to combat roadside bombs
Camp Pendleton Marines in Iraq are about to get a new remote-controlled vehicle built to detect and detonate roadside bombs that have been responsible for about half of all U.S. combat deaths and injuries since the March 2003 invasion.
Troops drive the vehicle from a safe distance to within range of a bomb and then discharge electrical signals to detonate what the military refers to as IEDs, or "improvised explosive devices."
The Pentagon has ordered at least a dozen of the vehicles, known as the Joint Improved Explosive Device Neutralizer. It is sending one prototype to Afghanistan this week and is working with the Marine Corps to get one or more of the units into Iraq within a matter of days, according to a Pentagon memo obtained by the North County Times this week.
That action follows a report that debate within the Pentagon was delaying the vehicle's deployment because of questions about its overall effectiveness ---- a debate that U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday is unwarranted.
"The Marines are doing the right thing in getting even a prototype into the field," Hunter said. "This is one of those cases where some see it as an 80 percent solution and want to wait for a 100 percent solution.
"This is a relatively slow system, but it has value and it's the first of its kind, and I would rather we get to Iraq than wait for the 100 percent solution."
The latest technology to combat roadside bombs comes as the 25,000-strong I Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Pendleton, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and Twentynine Palms is in the process of taking over security and combat responsibility for all of western Iraq.
In tests at the Yuma Proving Grounds last fall, a prototype of the neutralizer destroyed the majority of bombs it was intended to detect, according to published reports.
The vehicle, about the size of a jeep with long, needlelike extension to send out radio signals to trigger bomb detonators, is plated with protective armor and can withstand small-arms attacks. It is being developed by Ionatron Inc., a defense contractor from Tucson, Ariz.
The memo obtained by the newspaper came from the offices of a Pentagon group dedicated to finding and avoiding roadside bombs. It addressed the status of the vehicle, which came under scrutiny following a report in the Los Angeles Times that asserted the Defense Department was dragging its feet in getting it into war zones despite support for it among top brass.
The memo, dated Tuesday, from the Joint IED Defeat Organization and intended for "official use only," says that one of the rigs is being sent to Afghanistan this week for a 90-day assessment of its capabilities.
It also confirmed that the I Marine Expeditionary Force is working to get one or more of the vehicles into the dangerous Anbar province.
An IED task force spokeswoman in Washington said Thursday that the neutralizer is one of "thousands" of technical devices being used to combat roadside bombs. She refused to say how many neutralizers are being deployed for use by Marines.
"This is part of our overall approach to defeating the IED threat," said the spokeswoman, who agreed to talk only on the condition her name not be used.
Various public affairs officers for Marine Corps units familiar with the vehicle also were reluctant to go into detail about it. An Ionatron company spokesman in Washington said he was under orders to refer any questions to the Pentagon.
At the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va., spokesman John Manley would only say that the Corps had been "asked to take a look at it, and that's what we are doing."
The IED task force, made up of representatives of all the service branches and private manufacturers of anti-IED devices, was elevated from temporary to permanent status last month.
Its establishment as a permanent working group came at about the same time that Rep. Hunter returned from a visit to Iraq and called for new initiatives to launch a "campaign to take back the roads."
The IED task force memo lays out some of the debate swirling around the neutralizer.
The memo said that on Dec. 21, a request was received from commanders in Iraq to withhold sending the vehicle because of "concerns with system maturity."
The memo says the commanders concluded that the vehicle is not compatible with current road-clearing techniques and "does not offer an advantage over current equipment and tactics."
In response, the task force ordered that several of the prototypes be sent to the Army's Fort Irwin near Barstow, home of a developing roadside bomb training and device assessment center.
That testing is now under way and is slated to be complete by March 3, according to the memo.
The task force is concentrating on a three-pronged approach to combating roadside bombs, the task force spokeswoman said. The first is defeating the bombs with equipment such as the neutralizer vehicle. The second entails identifying the bomb-makers and capturing them before they can build and place a bomb, while the third is to train U.S. and Iraqi forces in the latest in roadside bomb detection and prevention.
The task force, working with a $3 billion budget this year, is establishing IED centers for each branch of the service, such as the Army center at Fort Irwin.
The Marines are developing one at Twentynine Palms and the Air Force center will be at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, the spokeswoman said, adding that that branch of the service expects its center to be operational by the summer.
Intensified efforts to develop new methods to detect and explode roadside bombs have gained increasing attention in Congress and the Pentagon in recent weeks.
Through January of this year, IEDs were responsible for nearly 900 of the nearly 2,300 U.S. combat deaths and more than 5,000 injuries.
One of those deaths came last month, when 1997 Oceanside High School graduate Sgt. David L. Herrera, 26, died when the Humvee he was driving while on patrol in Baghdad was torn apart by a roadside bomb.
Herrera was on second tour of duty in Iraq as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a 3-year-old daughter.
NCTimes
Troops drive the vehicle from a safe distance to within range of a bomb and then discharge electrical signals to detonate what the military refers to as IEDs, or "improvised explosive devices."
The Pentagon has ordered at least a dozen of the vehicles, known as the Joint Improved Explosive Device Neutralizer. It is sending one prototype to Afghanistan this week and is working with the Marine Corps to get one or more of the units into Iraq within a matter of days, according to a Pentagon memo obtained by the North County Times this week.
That action follows a report that debate within the Pentagon was delaying the vehicle's deployment because of questions about its overall effectiveness ---- a debate that U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday is unwarranted.
"The Marines are doing the right thing in getting even a prototype into the field," Hunter said. "This is one of those cases where some see it as an 80 percent solution and want to wait for a 100 percent solution.
"This is a relatively slow system, but it has value and it's the first of its kind, and I would rather we get to Iraq than wait for the 100 percent solution."
The latest technology to combat roadside bombs comes as the 25,000-strong I Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Pendleton, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and Twentynine Palms is in the process of taking over security and combat responsibility for all of western Iraq.
In tests at the Yuma Proving Grounds last fall, a prototype of the neutralizer destroyed the majority of bombs it was intended to detect, according to published reports.
The vehicle, about the size of a jeep with long, needlelike extension to send out radio signals to trigger bomb detonators, is plated with protective armor and can withstand small-arms attacks. It is being developed by Ionatron Inc., a defense contractor from Tucson, Ariz.
The memo obtained by the newspaper came from the offices of a Pentagon group dedicated to finding and avoiding roadside bombs. It addressed the status of the vehicle, which came under scrutiny following a report in the Los Angeles Times that asserted the Defense Department was dragging its feet in getting it into war zones despite support for it among top brass.
The memo, dated Tuesday, from the Joint IED Defeat Organization and intended for "official use only," says that one of the rigs is being sent to Afghanistan this week for a 90-day assessment of its capabilities.
It also confirmed that the I Marine Expeditionary Force is working to get one or more of the vehicles into the dangerous Anbar province.
An IED task force spokeswoman in Washington said Thursday that the neutralizer is one of "thousands" of technical devices being used to combat roadside bombs. She refused to say how many neutralizers are being deployed for use by Marines.
"This is part of our overall approach to defeating the IED threat," said the spokeswoman, who agreed to talk only on the condition her name not be used.
Various public affairs officers for Marine Corps units familiar with the vehicle also were reluctant to go into detail about it. An Ionatron company spokesman in Washington said he was under orders to refer any questions to the Pentagon.
At the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va., spokesman John Manley would only say that the Corps had been "asked to take a look at it, and that's what we are doing."
The IED task force, made up of representatives of all the service branches and private manufacturers of anti-IED devices, was elevated from temporary to permanent status last month.
Its establishment as a permanent working group came at about the same time that Rep. Hunter returned from a visit to Iraq and called for new initiatives to launch a "campaign to take back the roads."
The IED task force memo lays out some of the debate swirling around the neutralizer.
The memo said that on Dec. 21, a request was received from commanders in Iraq to withhold sending the vehicle because of "concerns with system maturity."
The memo says the commanders concluded that the vehicle is not compatible with current road-clearing techniques and "does not offer an advantage over current equipment and tactics."
In response, the task force ordered that several of the prototypes be sent to the Army's Fort Irwin near Barstow, home of a developing roadside bomb training and device assessment center.
That testing is now under way and is slated to be complete by March 3, according to the memo.
The task force is concentrating on a three-pronged approach to combating roadside bombs, the task force spokeswoman said. The first is defeating the bombs with equipment such as the neutralizer vehicle. The second entails identifying the bomb-makers and capturing them before they can build and place a bomb, while the third is to train U.S. and Iraqi forces in the latest in roadside bomb detection and prevention.
The task force, working with a $3 billion budget this year, is establishing IED centers for each branch of the service, such as the Army center at Fort Irwin.
The Marines are developing one at Twentynine Palms and the Air Force center will be at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, the spokeswoman said, adding that that branch of the service expects its center to be operational by the summer.
Intensified efforts to develop new methods to detect and explode roadside bombs have gained increasing attention in Congress and the Pentagon in recent weeks.
Through January of this year, IEDs were responsible for nearly 900 of the nearly 2,300 U.S. combat deaths and more than 5,000 injuries.
One of those deaths came last month, when 1997 Oceanside High School graduate Sgt. David L. Herrera, 26, died when the Humvee he was driving while on patrol in Baghdad was torn apart by a roadside bomb.
Herrera was on second tour of duty in Iraq as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a 3-year-old daughter.
NCTimes
posted by madtom at 1:08 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home