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HowStuffWorks / Science / Military / Explosives

How IEDs Work

By: Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D.

An Iraqi police commando walks past the

aftermath of a vehicle-borne IED attack in
Kirkuk, Iraq. The war in Iraq has seen a
massive uptick in the number of deadly
IED bombings occurring. See more
explosives pictures.
MARWAN IBRAHIM/AFP/GETTY
IMAGES

A neighborhood in Iraq reverberates with a deafening explosion. A military convoy

has been hit by a roadside bomb. The explosion has left a crater in its wake, ripped
apart vehicles and injured the soldiers riding within them. In a nearby marketplace, a
suicide bomber blows himself up, maiming and killing scores of nearby civilians.
These violent scenes have played out repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan since
combat operations began there in the early 21st century.

It wasn't always this way. In the beginning of the Iraq war, U.S. soldiers were injured
mainly from gunfire, mortars and grenades. The injuries are wrought now by a
different source. The preferred weapon of insurgents and terrorists has become an
improvised explosive device, or IED. You might call it a homemade bomb or a
booby trap. Whatever you call it, an IED is relatively simple to make, easily hidden
and very destructive.

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Soldiers, civilians, as well as paramilitary and terrorist groups, have been building and
detonating homemade bombs for years.

During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong hid IEDs in soda cans because they
observed that U.S. soldiers liked to kick empty cans while marching along the
roads [source: GlobalSecurity.org].
The Irish Republican Army used them in the 1960s and 1970s during its
struggles with the British in Northern Ireland.
In 1996, Eric Rudolph made a pipe bomb (IED) and set if off in Atlanta's
Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Olympics. One person died and
more than 100 people were injured in the attack.

You could fill volumes with all the IED attacks that have occurred within the last d-
ecade. That's because IEDs can be an effective strategy when facing a superior or
more technological military force. Guerilla fighters, rebels and terrorists employ the
weapons mainly to harass the military and to terrorize civilians and governments.
Their use shows no signs of abating.

In fact, roadside bombs, which are typically IEDs, have reigned as the No. 1 killer of
U.S. troops in Iraq, although the number of IED casualties dropped substantially in
August 2008 [source: McMichael]. In Afghanistan, however, IED attacks are up 50
percent in 2008 [source: NPR]. No wonder the U.S. military is actively researching
countermeasures.

This article will explore the destructive world of IEDs -- how they're made and
detonated, why they're so prevalent, how they injure people and how to protect
people from them.

Up next: a look inside the deadly device.

Anatomy of an IED

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A cordless phone is a
popular remote trigger for
an IED since it may allow
a signal to be transmitted
up to a mile.
ED DARACK/GETTY
IMAGES

Before we pick apart an IED, a refresher on more conventional bombs might be

handy.

Landmines are planted within a designated area (a minefield) and are

intended to bring down entering soldiers or vehicles.
Soldiers throw hand grenades over a short range to clear an area of enemy
personnel.
Rocket-propelled grenades, or just RPGs, are launched over a larger range
and can rid a target area of enemy personnel or destroy enemy vehicles.
Bombs are dropped from planes, are self-contained and controlled to
devastate anything within a specific area.

Such bombs are commercially made. Armies purchase these weapons from defense
contractors for military and training operations, although other individuals can obtain
them through the thriving black market for weapons.

In contrast, IEDs are homemade with five basic parts:

1. A power supply, often provided by car batteries or alkaline flashlight batteries

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2. A trigger, switch or some other direct or indirect means of setting the device off,
such as a radio signal, trip wire, timer or firing button that someone presses. A
common form of remote trigger is a cell phone, cordless phone, radio or garage
door opener activated by someone who is watching [source: GlobalSecurity.org].
3. A detonator, a small explosive charge that sets off the main charge. Detonators
are usually electrical, like those used for explosions in construction.
4. A main charge, the primary explosive that's the big guns behind the blast.
Unexploded landmines fit the bill.
5. A container to hold everything together. The container may be designed to
force the blast in a specific direction.

Additional components packed in the device may include projectiles for shrapnel,
such as ball bearings, nails and stones, as well as hazardous, toxic or fire-starting
chemicals. IEDs may also be used as the explosive part of a biological or radioactive
dirty bomb.

Let's look at how these parts work together:

1. The power source supplies electricity to the trigger or switch and to the
detonator.
2. The trigger activates the detonator and initiates the explosion sequence. The
trigger may sense the target, be activated by the target, be a timed trigger or be
operated remotely.
3. The detonator explodes, thereby providing energy for the main explosive.
4. The main charge explodes, producing a high-pressure shock wave or blast
wave, and may propel shrapnel, toxic chemicals or fire-starting chemicals.

Here's the distressing part: IEDs are relatively simple to make with a little research,
time and training. After all, how hard is it to get batteries, cell phones and radios?
Detonators and explosives such as C-4, Semtex and dynamite can be found at
construction sites and oil rigs. They also may be stolen, purchased legally or cooked
up at home or in a makeshift lab. Terrorist groups have been known to post recipes on
their Web sites.

Once made, people tend to use one of three methods for delivering their weapon.
Often they'll conceal the device in a package that may be in plain sight, hidden or
buried. Insurgents have even hidden IEDs in animal carcasses alongside military
convoy routes. They may also place the IED in a vehicle's trunk (vehicle-borne IED

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or VBIED). A driver may park the vehicle alongside a convoy route. A remote watcher
can then detonate the VBIED from a safe distance. The last delivery method relies on
a suicide bomber. The suicide bomber may drive a VBIED into the target area and
explode it or strap the device on his or her body, walk into the intended target area
and explode it.

What happens when an IED explodes?

IED Impacts

Bryan Anderson, a U.S.

Army military policeman,
lost three limbs after an
IED exploded near his
Humvee in Iraq in October
2005.
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY
IMAGES

Aside from how it's made, an IED is like any other bomb -- it explodes. Before you can
understand the impact of an IED, it helps to know what's happening during that fateful
moment.

1. When the primary charge explodes, gases heat up and expand rapidly outward
under pressure.
2. The expansion creates shock waves or blast waves. The waves travel outward
at about 1,600 feet per second (488 meters per second) over hundreds of yards
or more depending upon the amount of explosive.

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3. The explosion fragments the container and sends pieces of shrapnel at high
speeds outward. If the IED also contained other fragments such as ball bearings,
nuts, bolts and pellets, then they also would be thrown outward.
4. The heat from the explosion causes fire.
5. The heat and fires from the explosion can cause secondary fires.
6. The blast wave leaves a partial vacuum, which causes air to rush back in under
high pressure. The inrushing air also pulls in debris and shrapnel.

So, an IED explosion causes damage to vehicles and property primarily through the
blast wave, heat and fires.

In contrast, casualties within the blast radius can stem from many causes. The
explosion can release shrapnel or create debris from secondary impacts such as
flying glass from broken windows. This debris can penetrate the body in many places,
leading to lacerations, bleeding, broken bones and loss of limbs. Second, the heat
from the blast causes fires; both the heat and the fires themselves can cause severe
burns. Finally, the pressure in a blast wave can be on the order of 1,000 times
atmospheric pressure. This intense pressure can rupture your eardrums and slam
your brain against the inside of your skull, which leads to concussion, blindness,
deafness and swelling of the brain. In addition, many air-filled tissues and organs
such as the lungs and bowels can be perforated by the pressure changes.

The type and extent of the injury depends on the person's location relative to the IED.
A person in the primary blast radius can be hit by pressure changes, heat and
shrapnel. Most likely, this person will die. Outside the primary blast radius, a person is
most likely to be injured by shrapnel. The person may survive depending on how
many injuries the shrapnel causes and where they're located. If shrapnel tears a hole
in a major artery, then that person can bleed to death.

Civilian casualties are often high in IED attacks because these people are
unprotected. Initial injuries to U.S. soldiers from IED attacks were caused mainly by
shrapnel. However, the use of Kevlar body armor and helmets has greatly reduced
shrapnel injuries. While these types of injuries have fallen, military surgeons have
reported increases in traumatic brain injuries caused by the blast effects [source:
Okie].

Defeating and Detecting IEDs

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U.S. Army bomb team members watch

the controlled detonation of an
improvised explosive device (IED) to
clear it from the streets in Baghdad, Iraq.
JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

Insurgents and terrorists don't just go make a bomb and use it. IED attacks are the
result of coordinated enemy activities such as financing, obtaining supplies, making
IEDs, and planting and detonating them. So defeating these devices must involve a
combined strategy of understanding and observing the enemy. Soldiers and
personnel have to be trained to be aware of the enemy's behaviors, to look for
indicators of IEDs in their patrol areas and to use technology to dispose or disable
them. The U.S. Army's IED defeat strategy includes the following measures:

Collecting data about enemy activities that might indicate upcoming IED
attacks. This could be anything from observing suspicious activities of people
within the combat area to tracing or disrupting the movements of supplies and
money.
Detecting the IEDs themselves
Disposing of or disabling the detected IED
Protecting military personnel and civilians from a detected IED

Training soldiers to be keen observers in combat operations is important. For

example, a U.S. Marine spotter near Habbaniyah, Iraq, noticed a man who was
videotaping a nearby patrol of assault vehicles. The man had a high-powered rifle in
his car next to him. After a sniper shot the man, soldiers discovered a cache of IED
materials and munitions in the car.

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A Category I (left) and Category II Mine

Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicle
(MRAP) drive through an off-road course
during a demonstration in Aberdeen,
Md. There's been a huge demand for
the vehicles in Iraq.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Likewise, soldiers or other personnel should be trained to be suspicious of unattended

packages along a road, fence, building or even a trash pile. IEDs are easy to hide.
Simulating more IED attacks during military training will help soldiers to detect and
deal with these attacks before encountering them in combat.

Besides training soldiers, some new technologies are capable of detecting, disrupting
or disabling IEDs. These technologies are designed to place a "bubble" of protection
around troops operating in combat situations. For example, many combat vehicles are
now equipped with radio frequency jamming devices, which disrupt the cell phone
signals often used to trigger IEDs.

Another device called a NIRF, which stands for neutralizing improvised explosive
devices with radio frequency, emits a high frequency radio pulse that deactivates IED
electronics within a short area. Microwave-pulsing devices also can be used to "fry"
the electronics of IEDs. Another device called LIBS (laser-induced breakdown
spectroscopy) uses lasers to detect IED explosives within a 100-foot (30-meter)
radius.

Alternatively, you might not need a soldier to deal with a suspected IED at all. The
military is exploring using robots and drones to protect people from IEDs. Aerial
drones may be able to detect IEDs or suspicious activities without exposing troops,
while robots can search areas for the suspected devices or handle shady looking
packages without involving soldiers.

What about protecting soldiers during an attack if the detection methods fail? Kevlar
body armor has shielded soldiers from the shrapnel released in an IED explosion. In
addition, armored vehicles have been redesigned with the blast impacts of an IED in
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mind. These vehicles are called Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP)
vehicles. Essentially, the usual flat undercarriage of a vehicle is changed to a V-
shaped undercarriage, which diverts the blast waves from an explosion underneath
around the vehicle rather than into it. Because IED attacks are a favored strategy in
modern war, the U.S. Department of Defense continues research aimed at IED
countermeasures.

Keep reading to learn more about modern warfare and military technology.

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