[LINK] The Secret History of Iraq’s Invisible War

[Kim Holburn]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/iraqs-invisible-war/all/1

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> All the gadgets built for Iraq were worthless against Afghanistan's throwback threats.

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> That enabled CVRJ to target the most advanced triggers — the ones which relied on the latest mobile and long-range cordless phones. The new phones hopped between frequencies and spread their signal across the spectrum to overcome interference. That made them much harder to jam. But the phones have a potential flaw. They relied on software protocols to establish connections between transmitter and receiver. Those protocols could be spoofed, keeping the connection from ever happening. That is, if you had a fully programmable countermeasure, like CVRJ.
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> In the broadest sense, the strategy behind the U.S. jammer buildup had succeeded. Thanks to the Americans' bleeding edge technologies, the militants had dropped back down the ladder of sophistication. They were now taking the Wile E. Coyote approach — pushing down the plunger to detonate the bomb — and suffering for it. "That was the whole intent of the program: pushing the enemy back to archaic means," says a source familiar with the effort. "So they'd actually have to face you and fight you."
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> In Afghanistan, however, the terrain favored the low tech. All the gadgets the Americans had bought and built for Iraq proved largely worthless against a new slew of throwback threats. The bombs were largely made of wood and fertilizer, making them practically invisible to metal detectors. No command wires were needed to set them off; just the pressure of an unlucky boot. The placement of the bombs added to their effectiveness. The U.S. military's new hard-shelled, blast-deflecting vehicles were built for Iraq's well-paved roads. So the insurgents put their explosives in the gullies and the mud paths, where the trucks were useless. The bomb-handling robots couldn't handle the rough terrain, either. And, during the summer, the weather was so hot, EOD technicians  didn't even bother wearing their protective suits.

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> But even if those networks are shredded tomorrow, there's a sense in the Pentagon that the improvised bomb has now become a permanent threat. Over the last six months, there's been an average of 245 jury-rigged explosives found or detonated — outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. The IED has gone global.


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Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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