IED detection

What you are actually talking about is detecting the trigger mechanism, not the IED. This is not hard to do, and any competent radio type can do that, with existing equipment. A wide band receiver will find the signatures given off by the devices, for things like cell phones those frequencies are known, for things like garage door openers, same thing, and a directional antennae will tell direction, not necessarily range to the device. A conventional scanning wideband receiver with a frequency spectrum display is all you really need.

The other way to disable the triggers is brute force, just flood the area with high power RF of the frequencies that you suspect the trigger devices might be using, like the cell phone spectrum. This effectively saturates the trigger receivers, overloads them and prevents anything from getting to them, at least you hope it does.

The IF frequency you talk about is 455 Khz(455,000), not 455 hz. A wideband, sensitive receiver should be able to detect that, as most consumer grade devices are not that well shielded and give off a residual signature. When the triggers are switched to wires, or laser light, or proximity fused, the problem gets near impossible. Then you are going to have to resort to physically spotting the emplacements, since you don't know what trigger device may be being used, it's best to keep your eyes open and try and spot the devices first anyway.

The new bomb resistant trucks are a big step up, they should be put in production, now that the designs are nailed down, at maximum speed.

The CIA should be equipped to do all of this, and more, as standard operating procedure. It's not hard, that's why funding was likely not approved for the work you cite.

The explosives themselves, send in the dogs.

Baghdad must be an RF swamp. Trying to receive cell phones IF signals is problematic, as they are likely to be everywhere, including the pockets of our own guys and gals. I still say, if the cell network is a problem, just shut it down. Now you can detect other RF sources more easily.

If the enemy is forced to resort to wired or light devices as a trigger, good for us. They now have to be closer and/or their movement is going to be restricted.

According to my battlefield info source, most of the EFP EDs are wired now. Those are the hi-tech "coper lance" ones that will defeat the armor on a Bradley or Stryker, and probably on the new "diamond" body armored vehicles.

The "diamond body" technology is old already because of the copper-lance weapon (which, in it's larger versions, can defeat an Abrams tank). The principle behind the diamond-body is deflection of explosive or penetrative force (RPGs and barrel-fired projectiles). The orientation of the plane of the armor to the plane of the force matters little with a plasma jet, which is what the copper lance gives you.

The Israelis are believed to have an active system to defeat the electronics in IEDs of all types as well as the basic wiring of detonators. This is why Hamas, Al-Aqsa and the other islamofascists in their neck of the woods have stopped using the weapons. The Israeli system doesn't just overpower the signal with jamming, it projects rapid changes in a powerful data stream which will actually detonate the weapon, frequently as it's being transported or assembled, resulting in casualties ONLY to the enemy. When the enemy realized that they were only killing themselves off, they went back to Katyusha rockets as their primary terror weapon, and they basically quit taking on the IDF, period.

Our Engineering Dept. looked into this back in early 2004. We spent $1200 and a few days of engineering time on it. Also interviewed a few 'subject matter experts'. Conclusion was detecting the cell phones is easy and cheap. Problem is range. To do any good, you have to detect it at least three hundred meters away. And since getting a land-line in the Middle East is a multi-year process, Cell phones are even more common there than in the U.S. We had to do a lot of driving around eastern MA to find a spot where there was not a cell phone within a thousand feet!

Also, at the time, FRS walkie-talkies were also popular for triggering IED's, Here, there were far fewer in the combat zone, but the unit of choice were Motorola's. Since they had passed FCC emissions regs, it was not practical to pick up the local oscillators at the desired range with equipment that was within cost constraints.

The conclusion was that jamming was the answer. The specific frequency bands made it cost effective, and would not interfere with military communications. And there were already dozens of companies trying for a contract, so we dropped it.

At least Engineering got a nice 'Cellular-capable' receiver out of it :) It is in the lab tuned to Rush Limbaugh :)

Instead, we teamed up with a very small company to develop and test hardware for their idea to actively defeat RPG's (a very soft target. Chicken wire makes an excellent shield against them). Consisting of an off-the-shelf Cadillac radar system (for their Cruise-Control), a cheap processor, and four to eight 'shotguns', it would detect anything approaching at more than 250 MPH, determine its direction within a quadrant, and set off the correct quad-barrel Shotgun with three inch barrels mounted around the perimeter of the vehicle. Designed to be easily mounted to any military vehicle, it worked like a champ, and was priced at $6000 a vehicle. The ammunition is standard 12-gauge shotgun shells (bird shot). It was a one-time system, in that the firing head had to be manually reloaded after it was discharged, but it worked like a Champ! The tests at White Sands were spectacular. Although the pellets were designed to disable the shaped charge detonator, it often set it off in mid-air. And no moving parts to be clogged with dust (BIG problem over there). Nope, Army did not buy it, opting instead for a Raytheon system that cost $120k a vehicle, and kept breaking down from the moving parts getting clogged with dust. Needless to say, that one never made deployment.