Bomb-Stopping Tech Sold to Iraq: Big Deal? (Updated)

It wasn't that long ago that reporters were thrown out of Iraq and soldiers were reprimanded, just for mentioning the least bit about America's secretive bomb-stopping, radio-frequency jammers. Now, the military is selling the sensitive technology to the Iraqi Army -- and analysts are worried that means the gear will ultimately wind up in the hands of insurgents.

So the question is: How big of a problem is that, really?

"The U.S. has taken the unprecedented -- and some would say questionable -- step of selling some of its most sophisticated counter-IED [improvised explosive device] technology to the Iraqi government, equipping specialized police," Christian Lowe reports for Military.com. "Officials from Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq announced April 20 that its foreign military sales office had sold the Iraqis 411 Lockheed Martin-built 'Symphony' counter-IED systems. A few of the Symphony systems are already up and running on Iraqi government vehicles, the command said, with the rest due to be installed by the end of the summer."

Some might see handing over America's most sophisticated and top secret counter-IED technology to Iraqi ministries, whose loyalty to Baghdad is less than certain, as extremely risky. Electronic jammers like the Symphony have saved American lives in a war where the roadside bomb is the number-one killer, and the possibility that an Iraqi official could hand over the technology to an insurgent or unfriendly government is all too real.

"You have to assume that about the third one that we ship over there is going to go straight out the back door," said John Pike, director of the Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-area defense research group.

True enough, one former senior official with the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization tells DANGER ROOM. But the Symphony is hardly the U.S.' most sophisticated bomb-stopper. "If the jammer they're selling is Symphony, it's not a big issue," he says. Over the course of the war, American forces have amassed a hodge-podge of different systems to block bombs' triggering signals. The Chameleon jammer, now in wide use, is considered to be the most effective.

Pike tells Military.com that a "Symphony winding up in the hands of the insurgents would have limited utility."

"Whatever waveform it is using to jam ... will by definition be disclosed to the enemy when you turn it on," Pike said, adding that measures to prevent tampering or unauthorized use seem to work.

Plus, the IED fight has shifted in Iraq. Radio-controlled bombs -- once the leading killer of American troops -- have largely faded away. Instead, insurgents and jhadists now use “command wire” IEDs to attack U.S. targets. Pairs of insulated copper threads, some not much thicker than a hair, are buried under the Iraqi dust, and strung out for as long as a kilometer. At the end, an insurgent triggerman waits – sometimes in a buried bunker. It’s a more crude approach to killing, of course. But, barring a lucky find of wires, “there’s no way for us to defeat it,” says one bomb technician.

"Nevertheless," Judah Grunstein notes over at World Politics Review, the sale "illustrate[s] a major structural weakness in our regional strategy, which is based to a pretty large degree at this point on militarily propping up regimes that for various reasons (whether conflicting interests or internal instability or both) we don't really trust. It brings to mind the case of Pakistan, where nuclear warhead safeguard technology was not shared for fear of it winding up in the wrong hands. The old formula, My enemy's enemy is my friend, makes for a pretty lonely feeling when you're inextricably caught up in a conflict where your enemy's only real enemy is you."

UPDATE: OK, this is getting to be a smaller and smaller deal by the minute. The whole idea behind the Symphony system "from the outset" was to provide a jammer that could be shared with friendly partners, a knowledgeable insider tells me. There no official military program "technology nor software" in it. So if it fell into enemy hands, it wouldn't jeopardize American jammer systems. "Loss of any hardware should always be avoided at all costs (even a rifle)," the source adds, "but extensive measures have been made such that the loss of a SYMPHONY system will not put US Forces at risk."

And another thing: "There remains a plethora of vendors" offering jammers, all around the world. So its not like the bad guys couldn't get their hands of jammer tech before.
Wired: Danger Room