How the IED Won: Dispelling the Myth of Tactical Success and Innovation

Jason Shell writes for War on the Rocks:

The U.S. military seems to have settled on the narrative that it won every tactical engagement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this view, failures of strategy and the challenges of nation-building proved the undoing of coalition counter-insurgency efforts in each conflict. Even the most critical accounts of U.S. military performance in the wars, like Lt Gen. (ret.) Bolger’s Why We Lost, emphasize American “tactical excellence” in the campaigns. Such a conclusion, however, seems to equate tactics with firefights and ignores the U.S. military’s failure to meet its objectives to counter the enemy’s weapon of choice — the improvised explosive device (IED).

As roadside bombs began to cause a majority of U.S. casualties, counter-IED efforts sought to defeat the IED’s strategic influence. Significant U.S. military investment and innovation to counter IEDs succeeded in improving the odds for American forces in any single engagement with the devices. At scale, however, these innovations imposed higher costs on U.S. forces even as the bombs got cheaper. And while these innovations reduced risk to U.S. forces, they did not change the way in which the devices challenged military objectives in the conflicts.  In a protracted fight in IED-laden ground, the initiative remains with the bomb builder.

As an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) officer charged with executing on counter-IED objectives, and after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have tried to examine what might be learned from this fight and to consider: How successful was the U.S. military against the IED? What worked and what did not? And what do the lessons of the counter-IED fight in Iraq and Afghanistan mean as improvised threats to U.S. military operations continue to diversify and proliferate?