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Iraqi roadside bombs

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Since I was in Iraq, I figure I can speak to this a little. Regardless of what measures we find to counteract a tactic, they will come up with an even better tactic. This war is making them even better fighters. At the beginning of the war, the idiots would come running up near the camps and launch a bunch of mortars. It didn't take long for the US to start tracking where the mortars came from and launch missles right after they shot the mortars. They were all getting blown up pretty quickly. Then they started the run up and fire 1 or 2 mortars and run like hell. They lived a little longer. Now we have means to nail them when they do that.

Now they started doing new tactics.

It is just a game of cat and mouse. When we first got to Iraq, we didn't have armored humvees. They got blown up pretty easy. So we got armored ones. Took insurgents a few weeks to find the weak spots. Now humvees are easy targets again.

Find a way to jam the cell phones, they will move to another method within weeks.
 
The only way to win a war against an insurgency is to offer the local people a better life than the insurgents can. Insurgents cannot function unless the locals are at east passsive towards them. The best way to deal with IED's is for the locals to come out as soon as they are set in place to warn you. How is some clown going to jackhammer the sidewalk and set a 500lb. bomb in wet concrete without people for a mile around knowing what he did? It looks like we are getting to that point in Iraq now. As soon as the terrorists went after the locals with bombs, especially targeting the kids, things started going our way. We'll never stop all the crazies and fanatics but we can make it tolerable. I don't see any hi-tech solution that is going to work anywhere near as well as winning hearts and minds. If you are interested in the subject, the definitive text is "The War in the Shadows" by Robert B. Asprey.
 
How is some clown going to jackhammer the sidewalk and set a 500lb. bomb in wet concrete without people for a mile around knowing what he did?
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I think some of your assumptions are wrong. Very little in Iraq is good quality asphalt.

In the summer at about 130 degrees, the asphalt is actually pliable. You don't need a jackhammer to hide a IED in it.

Just ask a motorcycle rider in the states in hot areas. If you park a heavy harley bike in 100 degree weather on asphalt it is possible for the stand to sink into the asphalt making it fall.

We do need the local people to help. We are getting more iraqi police and army trained every month. The problem is many locals are scared of the insurgents. We can't protect all the locals. They are scared of what the insurgents will do if they start turning them in.

 
Not only are they already doing this, but the bombers have responded by turning the signal into a deadman's switch. In other words, the bomb goes off if the signal is interrupted.
 
The pictures I've seen show bombs planted in concrete curbs and sidewalks. The statement about the jackhammers still stands. Also a 500 lb. bomb is a sizable gadget to be digging a hole and planting it in the road. Once again a pretty obvious activity. The need to protect the locals requires that it be done a small area at a time and then spread out until the islands of pcification overlap. The book on this strategy was written thousands of years ago. There is nothing new under the sun. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
 
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