High tech IED searches

Strategy Page:

The intelligence techniques that were so successful in Iraq, are still being adapted to the different conditions in Afghanistan. The two big differences are the larger spaces you have to operate in with Afghanistan (where most of the combat is out in the country, not urban), and the hillier terrain (which makes it more difficult for UAVs and video cameras in general to spot people, who now have more hiding places.)

But some things have improved, like the technology that provides Internet like access to live video feeds from aircraft and UAVs. The U.S. Air Force and SOCOM (Special Operations Command) have been particularly keen on this, and has shared the technology with the other services, and friendly nations.

There has also been progress with the U.S. Army image analysis system. This is basically just another pattern analysis system. However, it's been a very successful system when it comes to finding newly planted IEDs, and enemy activity in general. As the techniques are adapted to Afghanistan conditions, the enemy will suffer higher casualties, and NATO forces less.

Pattern analysis is one of the fundamental tools Operations Research (OR) practitioners have been using since World War II (when the newly developed field of OR got its first big workout). Pattern analysis is widely used by the financial community, by engineers, law enforcement, marketing specialists, and now, the military. The basic application uses a special video camera system to observe a locality and find useful patterns of behavior. Some of the cameras are mounted on light (C-12s, mainly) aircraft, others are mounted on ground structures. Special software compares photos from different times. When changes are noted, they are checked more closely, which has resulted in the early detection of thousands of roadside bombs and terrorist ambushes. This has largely eliminated roadside bomb attacks on supply convoys, which travel the same routes all the time.

No matter what the enemy does in covered areas, the cameras will notice. In Iraq, this effort led to the death of over 3,000 terrorists caught in the act of setting up roadside bombs, or lying in wait to set them off and attack their victims with gunfire. Hundreds more terrorists were captured, and many thousands of roadside bombs were avoided or destroyed before they could go off.

All this geeekery works, and the troops like tools of this sort mainly because the systems retain photos of areas they have patrolled, and allows them to retrieve photos of a particular place on a particular day. Often, the troops returning from, or going out on a patrol, can use the pattern analysis skills we all have, to spot something suspicious, or potentially so.

A related math tool is predictive analysis. This was widely used in Iraq to determine who the bombers are, where they are, and where they are most likely to place their bombs next....

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These systems become force multipliers. Can you imagine how many troops it would take to keep this kind of watch and how inconsistent that watch would be depending on the particular troop and his attentiveness?

I think we have been too slow in getting this technology in place in Afghanistan, but I understand the logistic challenge in doing so. I understand that one of the ways we are keeping the potential bomb sites covered is with tethered blimps high above Afghanistan that do not have the problem of time over target of the UAVs which are even better than manned flights.

Update: The Washington Post reports that Secretary Gates is unhappy with the progress on dealing with the IEDs and has formed a new task force to address the problem.