Securing Iraqi roads a matter of tit for tat

[unhappycamper]

A soldier with the 66th Engineering Company slings his M-203 while guarding crews clearing debris from Route Plutos, a frequent site of roadside bombs. By making it harder for insurgents to hide the bombs, bulldozers like the one above can be just as essential in preventing these attacks as the weapons that soldiers carry.


Securing Iraqi roads a matter of tit for tat
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, March 24, 2008

TAJI, Iraq — Thursday night found the soldiers of Troop A, 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment on yet another patrol along dark roads just outside Taji. The soldiers stopped and searched three trucks on the road after the area’s 10 p.m. curfew and then did what cavalry scouts do best: Watch and wait for the enemy to appear.

The patrols are indeed a crucial part of the battle against roadside bombs that claimed more American casualties in the area just last week. But this is an engineer’s war as much as a foot soldier’s, and squadron leaders are turning to bulldozers and road graders as much as to the scout tactics they’ve spent so much time perfecting.

The roads just north of the Baghdad gates have historically seen many roadside bombs, said Troop A’s commander, Capt. Matthew Clark. Americans had success when Iraqis fed up with deaths in their community began helping the Americans fight roadside bombs. But on many of these roads, insurgents can slip in unseen through empty fields and hide their bombs in one of the numerous piles of trash that litter the area.

“We believe they’re so good it only takes a few minutes for them to pull over to the side of the road, get out, drop it and go,” he said.

Where insurgents once spent vulnerable minutes burying bombs in holes, they now just drop off pre-made EFPs, or explosively formed penetrators — a particularly vicious form of roadside bomb that shoots a piece of molten metal deadly enough to kill soldiers in the heaviest tank.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53553