Why Potassium Chlorate Matters

A year ago NATO and Afghan forces were seizing an average 60 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer a month. That was twice as much as 2011. This was part of an effort to deny the Taliban access to the most common explosive (using the fertilizer) for bombs. Currently 47 percent of roadside bombs are made with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, with about ten percent using old shells and bombs from the 1980s and the rest potassium chlorate. Over the last few years fertilizer bombs went from nearly 80 percent of all bombs to under fifty percent and falling. The terrorists have been substituting that loss with potassium chlorate (13 percent in 2011, 23 percent in 2012 and 45 percent this year). Potassium chlorate is more expensive than ammonium nitrate but not to the point where the terrorists cannot afford it. Potassium chlorate is a common industrial chemical used for all sorts of thing, including fireworks and matches.

 

In 2009, 60 percent of NATO dead in Afghanistan were from these bombs. It has declined ever since, in part because NATO and Pakistan has made it more difficult to get the raw materials for their bombs. For a long time the U.S. had a difficult time preventing the Taliban and drug gangs in Afghanistan from getting explosives. That was mainly because of the widespread use of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which has become the favorite bomb building material after 2001. In response to these problems, four years ago, the Afghan government agreed to ban the use of ammonium nitrate and make available other (less effective) fertilizers. That program did not work as expected. The problem was that the terrorists only needed about 600 kg (1,320 pounds) of ammonium nitrate a day to keep their bombing campaign going. The existing smuggling network (from Pakistan) had no problem sneaking that much in. Paying locals to build and plant these bombs cost less than a million dollars a month. Pakistan was, for a long time uncooperative when it came to halting smuggling of explosives into Afghanistan. But then the Taliban began using fertilizer bombs more frequently inside Pakistan. That got the Pakistani government to crack down on their end.

 

With no such abundance of leftover munitions the Taliban had to fall back on a common local explosive (ammonium nitrate) early on. This is a powdered fertilizer that, when mixed with diesel or fuel oil, can be exploded with a detonator. While only about 40 percent of the power as the same weight of TNT, these fertilizer bombs are effective as roadside bombs. But they are bulkier and a slurry, usually mixed in a plastic jug or a barrel. Moreover, the fuel oil must be mixed thoroughly and in exactly the right proportion, otherwise the explosive effect is much less than expected.

 

While these bombs are even less effective in Afghanistan than in Iraq they are still the main cause of NATO casualties and thus get a lot of media attention. In Afghanistan the enemy started off with one big disadvantage, as they didn't have the expertise or the resources of the Iraqi bomb builders. In Iraq the bombs were built and placed by one of several dozen independent gangs, each containing smaller groups of people with different skills. The Taliban bomb gangs are much less skilled than those encountered in Iraq. At the same time, the equipment, techniques, and troops who neutralized the bomb campaign in Iraq have been moved to Afghanistan. This is a major reason the effectiveness of Taliban bomb attacks are declining so quickly.

 

The main reason the Taliban keep at it with the roadside bombs is that when the foreign troops leave after 2014, they will take with them the sensors and weapons that made it so difficult to use roadside bombs effectively. The Taliban expect these bombs to be much more successful against Afghan soldiers and police.

Catterick Garrison soldiers discover Taliban bomb stockpile

Troops from the Queen’s Royal Lancers (QRL), based at Catterick Garrison, in North Yorkshire, discovered a significant cache of explosives and bomb-making equipment in a dawn raid on an enemy compound. 

Soldiers from the QRL-led Brigade Reconnaissance Force (BRF) were inserted by helicopter into the Taliban base in the Nad ‘Ali region of Helmand after receiving intelligence. 

Searching alongside Afghan troops, they discovered more than 200kgs of home-made explosives, as well as a large quantity of remote controls and pressure plates used for triggering deadly improvised explosive devices (IEDs). 

The teams also found a motorbike packed with explosives intended to be used as a suicide bomb.

The operation, which saw the QRL work shoulder-to-shoulder with colleagues from the Afghan National Army, marks a successful end to their six-month tour on Operation Herrick 17. 

The operation was conducted jointly as part of a handover with the incoming 1 Mechanized Brigade Reconnaissance Force, made up of soldiers from the Household Cavalry Regiment and 4 Battalion the Rifles, as well as specialists from other units. 

 

Major Adam Foden, commanding officer of the outgoing 4 Mechanized Brigade Reconnaissance Force, said: “We have remained at high readiness for seven months and have deployed 40 times, seizing 1,700kgs of insurgent explosives in all. 

“This operation enabled my officers and soldiers to hand over responsibility for our task and to make sure the new team are as ready as they can be for their role. 

“It went completely to plan; we were at the target for three hours and have had an impact on IED construction in the Nad ‘Ali area.” 

When asked about returning to the UK at the end of April, Maj Foden added: “It has been a rewarding tour, but the guys are keen to get home and be with their families.” 

The Army said the soldiers from QRL would arrive back at Catterick Garrison within the next few weeks.

Taliban deny their bombs kill more Afghans

The Taliban on Sunday dismissed a U.N. report that roadside bombs are causing most civilian casualties in Afghanistan as “Western propaganda.”

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that the insurgents only use the weapons to target foreign troops and the Afghan security forces.

“By spreading such propaganda they are trying to prevent us from planting bombs which cause the deaths of invaders in our country,” he said in an emailed statement.

On Saturday, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan urged the insurgents to end the use of improvised explosive devices, saying they were by far the biggest killer of civilians in the conflict. The organization used the term in reference both to bombs detonated by remote control and land mines that go off when a vehicle goes over them.

The call came a day after 19 civilians died and 15 were injured when their bus struck a mine in northern Balkh province on Friday. The U.N. said that blast was caused by an IED planted on a busy public road and set off by a pressure plate. It said the bomb was “consistent with documented patterns and tactics of choice by the Taliban.”

Insurgent-placed homemade bombs continue to be the deadliest weapon for civilians, according to the world body. IEDs killed 340 civilians and injured a further 599 over the past nine months, an increase of almost 30 per cent compared to the same period last year, the U.N. said.

The Taliban spokesman denied that any insurgents were operating in the area of Balkh province where Friday’s blast occurred.

He also said the Taliban use only remote-controlled roadside bombs which, unlike the devices automatically activated by pressure-plates, allow a bomber to choose the time of the blast and specifically target coalition troops and their Afghan allies.

About half of the casualties suffered by coalition forces in recent years have been caused by roadside bombs and mines.

Also Saturday, a service member with the NATO military coalition was killed by a bomb in the south, the alliance said in a statement. The coalition did not provide the service member’s nationality or any other details about the incident. The NATO force usually waits for national authorities to give such information.

Iran’s Naval Mines: The IED of the Seas

Earlier this year Iran threatened to shut down shipping in the enormously important Strait of Hormuz. Now the U.S. and other nations are worried about something else: that Iran could mine the body of water with improvised devices.

Any ship can be a minesweeper—once. So goes the gallows humor referring to the threat that naval mines pose to ships.

But that sardonic phrase underlies a more pressing reality: In recent months, the United States and other countries have grown increasingly concerned about Iran’s ability to mine the Strait of Hormuz, essentially cutting off a critical international waterway. Iran’s leadership has already threatened to shut down the international shipping route, while also crowing about its growing fleet of mini submarines that are difficult to detect and can be used to lay mines.

The problem with mines at sea, as with roadside bombs on land, is that they can be fairly easy to build but difficult to detect and clear. "You take an existing bomb and fit it with target detection, and voila! your bomb is now a mine," says Scott Truver, a naval consultant who has written extensively on mine warfare.

Like their land-based counterparts, even crude mines can be costly and deadly. Mine warfare experts like to cite the case of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a frigate that struck an Iranian-laid mine in 1988. The warship didn’t sink, but the mine, based on a Russian model from 1908, caused nearly $100 million in damage.

In fact, some naval officials are already talking about mines as the next improvised explosive device threat. "We’ve been there before, we just called it an IED," Rear Adm. Frank Morneau, deputy director for Expeditionary Warfare Division, told an audience at a naval conference earlier this year.

The Navy maintains a "triad" of capabilities to battle mines, which includes ships, aircraft, and divers. It also employs dolphins, whose echolation—the biological equivalent of sonar—is still one the most effective ways for finding and clearing certain mines. Like bomb dogs on land, the dolphins are actually sent to locate the mines (the marine mammals can also place a charge on the mines to destroy it). The push now, though, is to develop unmanned systems—drones in the sea—that can hunt down and neutralize the mines while keeping humans away from the threat.

The Navy recently unveiled a model of Knifefish, an unmanned submarine that would be used to hunt mines, but it won’t be ready for use until at least 2015. The Navy has reportedly purchased dozens of SeaFox drones to target Iran’s underwater mines. In another effort, AAI, a business unit of Textron, is hoping to sell the U.S. Navy its own unmanned surface ship that uses a command and control system based on the Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle, which has been used extensively by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company says it’s already demonstrated mine detection capabilities and is hoping to win U.S. navy business.

But for any immediate threat, the Navy will have to rely on its existing technology to clear mines, and that’s probably why it’s hoping that politics—rather than technology—will ultimately stave off the mine threat. Truver says that Iran mining the Strait of Hormuz would be regarded as act of war and would likely cause immediate retaliation. "They would not put many weapons in the water," he says—maybe a handful before the United States and other countries would likely intervene.

Perhaps to emphasize that point the U.S. Navy last month took part in a military exercise in the Persian Gulf that involved over 30 other nations’ naval forces. Though officially the mine clearing exercise was not aimed at Iran, it was intended to send a strong signal to the country’s leadership.

Retired Navy Capt. Robert O’Donnell, who was involved for many years in mine warfare, says that the exercise clearly sent a signal to Iran that the international community was ready to act together but added that he still hopes the next exercise will focus more on the actual clearing of mines. "The emphasis [this time] was not on hunting or clearing mines," says O’Donnell, who attended the exercise. "The emphasis was on resolve and communication."

U.S. troops find, destroy more Afghan IEDs

Almost afraid to say it out loud, lest they jinx their record, U.S. troops in Afghanistan achieved one small but important victory over the past year: They found and avoided more homemade bombs meant to kill and maim them than a year ago, thanks to a surge in training, equipment and intelligence.

Bomb-planters have picked up the pace during the summer months, planting improvised explosive devices along roads or footpaths. But the explosives are no longer the leading cause of death and injury in Afghanistan.

In the first three months of this year, only 5 percent of the bombs planted across Afghanistan hit their mark, according to Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization. That’s down from 10 to 12 percent over the same three-month period a year ago.

The figures released to The Associated Press show a slow but steady decline, from a high of 368 deaths caused by IEDs in 2010 to 252 in 2011, according to the privately run icasualties.org, which tracks war casualties. That decrease has happened even as the military has begun to withdraw its surge of 30,000 troops, scheduled to be complete by September this year. Troops are often more vulnerable as they withdraw from an area.

Officials concede that the rate of bombs that cause casualties has risen slightly from April through June, as NATO troops attacked Taliban-held areas in a return to heavy fighting with the summer months. But the year is on track to be lower still than each of the previous three years, with 77 deaths from IEDs so far out of 162 total troops killed, halfway through 2012, according to icasualties.org.

Barbero credits the slow turnaround to three years of an increase in intelligence-gathering equipment such as towers and aircraft outfitted with an array of cameras and other detection technology that have given U.S. commanders an edge, enabling them to spot the bombers as they approach often-traveled routes or revealing the signs of freshly dug earth where the explosives have been buried.

They installed “towers and balloons that give you persistent stare” to spot the Taliban trying to bury a bomb or approach a base in a bomb-laden car at fast speed, Barbero said. “Every commander told us [they] love those, because they can see [the threat] and take action.”

Training is the second key factor — teaching the troops how to use devices such as a hand-held remote robot with a camera that they can throw over a wall, then wheel around, checking if the coast is clear and trying to see whether the area shows telltale signs of being mined with explosives. The IED organization focused last year especially on equipment to help foot patrols, because so many troops were losing limbs, Barbero said. They rushed hundreds of devices into the field that are like a window washer’s telescoping pole, repurposed with a hook on the end, to probe for hidden bombs on footpaths.

That welcome trend is tempered by the looming drawdown of troops from Afghanistan by 2014, which will spell tough choices for commanders trying to balance keeping enough combat troops on the ground to challenge the Taliban with keeping enough intelligence support teams on the ground to keep combat troops safe. Then once the troops draw down, the small numbers of special operations forces and intelligence teams left behind will have to rely on smaller numbers still manning the sensors in the sky.

That reality is already being discussed by lawmakers on the congressional committees that oversee intelligence matters and the armed services.

“We may seek to offset the drawdown by boosting intelligence assets,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Even with those assets, the troops face another headache Barbero has not been able to solve: Explosives manufactured in the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan still pour across the border. Pakistani officials say only a fraction of 1 percent of Pakistan-made fertilizer gets turned into bombs used in Afghanistan. Barbero counters that 86 percent of IEDs in Afghanistan are made from ammonium nitrate from fertilizer made in Pakistan. In frequents trips to visit Pakistani officials, he requests that they find a way to change the fertilizer’s composition to make it hard to turn into explosives.

He’s made the same plea to the international fertilizer industry, telling a conference in Qatar this year to join in a global campaign to dye the ammonium nitrate to help track it, and to develop “a non-detonable formula.” In two years of pleading with the industry for a solution, no one has come up with one yet.