Bomb-buster delay criticized

WASHINGTON – A new high-tech vehicle that destroys roadside bombs has passed a series of U.S. military tests but has not yet been sent into battle, prompting charges that Pentagon bureaucracy is slowing the effort to protect American troops in Iraq.

Last April, Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of a Pentagon task force in charge of finding solutions for the makeshift bombs known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, endorsed development of the vehicle, called the Joint IED Neutralizer, or JIN. Based on Votel’s assessment of the remote-controlled device that blows up roadside bombs with a directed electrical charge, the Pentagon’s second-ranking official recommended investing

$30 million and dispatching prototypes to Iraq for testing by U.S. combat troops.

But 10 months later – and after a prototype destroyed about 90 percent of the IEDs laid in its path during a battery of tests – not a single JIN unit has been shipped to Iraq.

To many in the military, the delay in deploying the vehicles, which resemble souped-up, armor-plated golf carts, is a case study of the Pentagon’s inability to cast aside more cumbersome peacetime procedures to meet the urgent demands of troops in the field. More than half of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq have been caused by IEDs, and the number of IED attacks last year nearly doubled compared with the 2004 figure.

The Pentagon has identified the IED problem as one of its top priorities. Yet nearly two years after the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, called for a “Manhattan Project” to cut down on roadside bombing casualties, many believe that his level of concern has not been matched in Washington.

“There’s a bureaucracy that really slows things down, and sometimes people don’t have the same sense of urgency,” said one officer involved in the effort to counter improvised bombs. “That’s where my frustration comes in.”

The officer declined to be identified for the story because he feared retribution from his superiors.

The Defense Department under Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has faced similar charges of failing to act quickly to protect soldiers in combat. Dissatisfaction with the Pentagon’s overall response to the IED threat in Iraq follows complaints about the military’s failure to provide sufficient body armor for soldiers and adequate armor for transport vehicles.

During extensive testing completed on Sept. 16, 2005, at the Army’s Yuma Proving Grounds in the Arizona desert, a prototype vehicle destroyed most of the roadside bombs put in its way. But the Pentagon’s IED task force says that the device requires further testing, and that a decision to delay deployment has been made jointly by Pentagon officials and commanders in Iraq.

“The decision has been made that it’s not yet mature enough,” said Army Brig Gen. Dan Allyn, deputy director of the task force, recently renamed the Joint IED Defeat Organization. Iraq is “not the place to be testing unproven technology.”

But the Marine Corps believes otherwise, and recently the Marines decided to circumvent the testing schedule and send JIN units to Al Anbar province, the restive part of western Iraq where the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi are located and where Marines have been deployed since February 2004.

The Marines are now making final preparations to deploy a number of JIN prototypes to Al Anbar province. Based on its performance in the field, Marine commanders said they hope the device can eventually be used throughout Iraq.

The Joint IED Neutralizer, built by a private contractor in Arizona, is designed to drive in front of a military convoy or to operate separately as part of a mission to clear roadways of homemade bombs. The vehicle has a remote-control console that troops can use at a safe distance from the vehicle, directing it like a radio-controlled car.

A metal boom that extends from the vehicle’s chassis emits high-powered electric pulses – what military officials call “man-made lightning” – that set off the detonators of explosive devices. The JIN is a spin-off technology of a larger U.S. government effort to develop energy-based weapons that include lasers, electric shocks and microwaves.

Pentagon officials and defense experts agree there is no technological “silver bullet” for the IED problem in Iraq. Insurgents continue to build bigger, more powerful bombs, and have managed to continue carrying out successful attacks against U.S. and Iraqi troops even as the military develops new solutions to counter the explosive devices.

While nobody in the military believes that deploying JIN units to Iraq will eliminate the IED threat, many consider it one of the most promising technologies yet developed, and question what they believe is a slow deployment schedule set by Army leaders in charge of the IED task force.

“The Army isn’t saying ‘no’ to this. They are just saying ‘yes’ very, very slowly, and it’s a tragedy,” said a former senior Pentagon official who was involved in the development of JIN last year and who requested anonymity because he feared that speaking publicly might endanger the program.