In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
How many IEDs do you think have been detonated or disarmed?

Quite a few, but most of them have been made out of much smaller devices
or just plain old plastic explosives.

It takes a lot of work and more skill to make an artillery shell into a
remote-detonated bomb, compared to using the other materials they have
available.

How difficult do you believe it is to fill the fusewell of an artillery
shell with plastic explosive and insert a detonator linked to (for
example) a garage door-opener receiver?

Much more difficult and risky to your own hide than the example I gave:

Making an RPG into an IED is much, much easier (a piece of
string tied to the trigger), and they have a *lot* of those.

....and somewhat more difficult than taking one of a whole lot of
leftover blocks of plastic explosive and sticking a detonator into it.

However, an RPG's warhead is measured in ounces and has a relatively
poor fragmentation effect: artillery shells have payloads of pounds and
are *designed* for area fragmentation.

But are very bad for portability and pretty much useless against
anything except soft targets unless you get them right up against the
hull of an armored vehicle. If you want frag damage, use mortar shells,
they've got a more useful payload and weigh less per round.

An "IED" isn't always made up of normal explosives, anyway. Cans
full of gasoline, a grenade tied to the gas tank of a bus sitting by
the side of the road, fertilizer and diesel in a plastic bag...
there's a lot of different ways to make them.

Yes, I know - they were an ongoing risk.

And *are*. What we're seeing now is the leftovers, and items from
undiscovered weapons caches. Like the sarin shell.

Artillery shells are popular, but with all of the explosive crap
sitting around in undiscovered bunkers in Iraq, there's a wide
variety to choose from.

So, again, what's your estimate of the number of IEDs found to date?

A couple of thousand, from what I've read. They were rare at first,
started coming in after the first three months or so, hit a peak a while
back, and are trailing off (since a lot of the people who were trying to
set them got blown up or shot while making the attempts).

You might also note that they were counting *anything* that could be
considered explosives as "IEDs" for a while, even if it was just an
unattended artillery shell sitting by the road.

--
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