90 Percent of U.S. Casualties in Afghanistan Traced to Pakistani factories

[LETHALFORCE]

90 Percent of U.S. Casualties in Afghanistan Traced to (Totally Legal) Pakistani Factories


Eighty percent of the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted in Afghanistan (resulting in 90% of all U.S. casualties) are made with components that come from just two legally operating factories in Pakistan. And while NATO forces know exactly where those factories are, and who the brokers are who sell their goods, there has been nothing they can do to stop the flow of materials to Afghan insurgents, according to the American general in charge of the anti-IED fight.

Each year, the two factories each pump out about 400,000 metric tons of ammonium nitrate—a common fertilizer used by farmers—and about 1% of that makes it to insurgents, Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, head of the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), said in a breakfast meeting with defense industry representatives this morning. While NATO forces have a lock on where the fertilizer comes from and where it goes upon initial sale, "what we don't understand is how this ammonium nitrate gets from these factories to the insurgents," he said.

Once insurgents get the stuff, "it takes from 40 minutes to an hour of processing" to make the fertilizer into bomb materials, he said. Echoing other American officials who have long complained about Pakistan acting as a haven and resupply point for Afghan insurgents, Barbero said that "we can't solve the IED problem in Afghanistan, in Afghanistan."

And the bombs keep coming. Compared to the same time last year, the number of IEDs found and cleared is up about 100%, and the destruction of caches of bomb-making materials is up about 200%. "We're seeing historic highs" of IEDs planted, with a record 1,600 "events" June and July of this year, he added. Still, JIEDDO was given $2.4 billion to fight the anti-IED fight in 2011, a figure that Barbero says he expects to remain about the same over the next two years.

One of the programs he highlighted came as a result of direct feedback from soldiers in the field, who told Army leadership that they didn't want or need any large, heavy robots to try to detect roadside bombs. Instead, they said they need lightweight, disposable robots that they could toss around corners and, if lost, replace easily. Taking that feedback, JIEDDO issued a formal request in June for "off-the-shelf, lightweight handheld robots," the first batch of which will reach Afghanistan in December for operational testing. The bots are probably the 10-lb., camera-mounted Sand Flea robots that can leap 24 ft. in the air in order to clear compound walls that the Army Times recently reported the Army's Rapid Equipping Force was sending to Afghanistan. But the Sand Flea is hardly the only throwable robot that the Army is interested in. ReconRobotics recently signed contracts with the Army for about 700 1.2-lb. camera-mounted Throwbots, which one can assume are heading for Afghanistan, and iRobot is furiously working on its First Look, a 5-lb. throwable robot that it is shopping around.

Bots or no bots, ammonium nitrate-based bombs are hard to detect, and the fact that their production can be directly traced back to poor enforcement at the Pakistani border is just another data point in how toxic the relationship has become between the U.S.and its "¦ ally.

 

[Yusuf]

So how come the US has no bombed the factories yet? I know its a legal factory but someone is doing illegal work. Since its paki, anything goes. Just bomb them.

 

[thakur_ritesh]

I have started to chuckle each time I read a report like this. Whats the point of making all such reports public or leaking them?

Pakistan will keep doing all it wants to, west will keep complaining and leaking news and the status quo will continue.

Whats the point?

West has developed an indian habit all too quickly, may be like us they should also start handing out dossiers, in fact they are already doing it by handing out "evidence" to the pakistanis, and each time Pakistanis out rightly rejecting it.

 

[nitesh]

^^
Or ritesh, we have to just take of goggles from which we think US and NATO as powerful, they are not so powerful as fanboys like to believe. They are getting butchered by pakis day in and day out. And best they can do about it is giving billions of dollars as direct aid, and begging others to keep pakis in good mood

 

[Tomcat]

The key to all the Problems that the west face as far as supply is concerned is iran if Both the parties could cooperate then the west could stop being so stuck to Pakistan but the Block heads on both sides will not see the light .

 

[Virendra]

Sounds like Americans made too many enemy for themselves?

 

[thakur_ritesh]

^^
Or ritesh, we have to just take of goggles from which we think US and NATO as powerful, they are not so powerful as fanboys like to believe. They are getting butchered by pakis day in and day out. And best they can do about it is giving billions of dollars as direct aid, and begging others to keep pakis in good mood

not sure mate, they are declining or not, though the perception is there but all these articles dont do much.

if it is about psy-ops or putting pakistanis on the back foot, all this is not yielding anything on surface, on the contrary all this comes across as geedar dhamkiyan and no more and puts the US and NATO is very poor light, and so the perception of the decline only grows.

so either they dont mention all these things and if they do, then they shouldnt come across as helpless and hapless, but should have some concrete action plan so that the pakistanis and the world at large get the message that you dont mess around with us like that ............................ and so i said, they are sounding more and more like us, recall the rhetoric post 26/11.

 

[Ray]

So how come the US has no bombed the factories yet? I know its a legal factory but someone is doing illegal work. Since its paki, anything goes. Just bomb them.

I reckon that since they know where it comes from, they can keep a surveillance on it, their supply chain and their terminal end.

That way, things can be predictable and actions taken to protect oneself.

By bombing the factories, there is no guarantee that others will not surface and then it would be a Hurclean task to identify them. In the interim since one would not know from where the IEDs are coming from, they would not be surveiled as they move to the target end, resulting in not knowing what precautions to take or where or when to take it.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Maybe US intelligence is not as good as we believe?? Many drone attacks have been on houses maybe they thought these were factories??

 

[Ray]

Actually IED is a cottage industry and can be assembled anywhere.

It is nothing very sophisticated or technical.

 

[JBH22]

Should we sympathise with the Yankees not long back their senators and military instructors were visiting Pakistani tribal areas encouraging the soldiers of god to fight the commies in Afghanistan.

Reap as you sow


Imho Yankees have no moral right to whine its their fault if there assets turned against them no sympathies because before 9/11 these terrorist were labelled as rebels or freedom fighters yet they killed innocent civilians as they are doing now the only difference was the nationality.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

U.S. Going After Pakistani IED Components | AVIATION WEEK

U.S. Going After Pakistani IED Components


The single largest intelligence gap in the fight against roadside bombs, which are responsible for 90% of allied casualties in Afghanistan, is uncovering how ammonium nitrate fuel makes its way from two legitimate manufacturing facilities in Pakistan across the western border into Afghanistan, says U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Office (Jieddo) at the Pentagon.

Eighty percent of the IEDs in Afghanistan are made using this ammonium nitrate, he says, and the designs are spreading worldwide, making them a near-term threat not only to deployed forces but a strategic problem for civilian centers in the United States and elsewhere. "This is the significant weapon of these conflicts. It is the greatest casualty producer," Barbero says. "The IED is the artillery of the 21st century."

Six months ago, the general says the U.S. government-wide effort to learn more about this transit process was at a "dead stop." Since then, however, an interagency effort — including help from the intelligence community — has begun to tackle the issue, and Barbero says the U.S. may be ready to "take action" on what it has learned about the ammonium nitrate network soon. This could include military action as well as economic pressure put forth by other parts of the government.

"You can't solve the IED fight in Afghanistan in Afghanistan," Barbero told an audience at a Nov. 10 breakfast hosted by the Institute of Land Warfare in Arlington, Va. "What we don't understand is how this ammonium nitrate gets from the factories and to these insurgents" who "can process this where it is more detonable than TNT" in about 40 min. "If you are just worrying about the devices, you are just playing defense," he says.

The amount of money the U.S. has spent to quickly develop and field technologies to detect and destroy IEDs — totaling billions of dollars — is far disproportionate to the cost of deploying the explosives, which employ the ammonium nitrate contained in plastic palm oil jugs, often a wooden pressure plate and a metal blasting cap.

In fiscal 2011, $2.44 billion was allocated for Jieddo and a similar amount is expected in the fiscal 2012 budget. Thus, Barbero says that stemming the flow of ammonium nitrate into Afghanistan is necessary to shift that dynamic and put a higher cost on the terrorist network to conduct IED operations. "They are too smart and they have got it figured out. We have got to close that gap and make it affordable," Barbero says, or "they are going to price us out of this."

Among the technologies helping to detect the homemade explosives facilities are new sensors — including hyperspectral detectors — fielded on aircraft and satellites. They are able to find targets based on their chemical composition — thus making processing and transfer operations harder to camouflage — as is done with optical sensors.

Barbero says the IED problem is not limited to Afghanistan and Iraq, and is an "enduring" threat globally. Thus, the office is planning to release a strategy in January that looks at what long-term capabilities will be needed and what research and development gaps must be addressed.