A few days ago Lt. Gen. Tom Metz, DoD’s counter-IED chief, has reported the highest level of IED attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan in four years, with 200 IED incidents in April – June 2008:

• 120 IED’s exploded
• 40 explosions resulted in casualties
• 80 IED’s had been detected and cleared by NATO forces

Insurgents are going both high tech and low tech – the success of the NATO forces in deploying effective jammers has brought back to life IED’s triggered by wire and pressure plates.

According to HSRC’s report Global Counter IED – Markets & Technologies Forecast – 2008-2012 no single technology will be the “silver bullet “ defeating IED. HSRC forecasts global Counter IED market to reach $23 Billion in 2008 -2018.

The following technological evolutions are expected to counter IED threat:

• Directed energy technologies, explosive detection and integrated intelligence fusing tools (hardware, sensors and software)
• Jammers will evolve to integrated Electronic Warfare –like systems, with improved blocking effectiveness, much broader electromagnetic spectrum coverage and high level of integration with HPM-like systems
• Armored vehicles with enhanced resilience to IED attack