I hate to be all Ron Paul-y here, but I can't help but point out that a much simpler solution to this problem than anything posted thus far is to simply not invade countries in the first place.
Afghanistan was the war we started to get rid of the Taliban and cripple Al Qaeda after they (Al Qaeda) blew up the towers.
People pretty much universally agreed (and continue to agree) that going there was a good idea.
edit: I don't mean to sound rah rah about war, it sucks that we're there and it sucks that we will be for a while. All I'm saying is it wasn't unjustified and there's no reason to sit back with the benefit of hindsight and say "We never should have gone in in the first place." Time is better spent figuring out how to fix the problem and get out. Any suggestions there?
People pretty much universally agreed (and continue to agree) that going there was a good idea.
I don't. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, and the links between Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and OBL were tenuous at best and hugely overblown. As far as I can tell, our invasion seems to have affected an enormous increase in world opium production more than anything else. I don't know whom that benefits, but it sure isn't what I pay my taxes for.
Not quite: there was one person in the House who voted against the authorization of force in Afghanistan.
She is my representative :-)
And people continue to universally agree that going in there was a good idea? I mean, really? I grant you that nearly everyone was for it in the weeks after 9-11. Even I said something to that effect. But, hey, I was 19 and naive. Were the same thing to happen again tomorrow, I would not be so quick to judge, for what seemed liked a good idea at the time looks a lot more questionable 8 years later. Bin Laden is free, Afghanistan's cost to us in terms of lives and treasure grows by the week, the Taliban still rule large parts of the country, and Al Qaeda is not crippled.
I am not asserting that the invasion was unjustified, but you have got to admit that it's highly debatable whether the benefits outweigh the costs in this, the eighth year of the war.
Yeah, I agree that the costs are awful. The guys coming back aren't like they were when they left, for sure.
But how can we know the costs of not going? It's really hard to nail it down to any particular influence, but there hasn't been a domestic attack since 9/11, and it'd be foolish to say that the war in Afghanistan hasn't played a role.
Regardless, it was a hard choice, and easy to second guess. But that doesn't mean it's time to sit back and say "Yep, never should have went there in the first place." The better thing to wonder is "Where from here?"
it'd be foolish to say that the war in Afghanistan hasn't played a role
A role in what? Attacks on the US? That seems far from obvious. One thing that it certainly played a role in is opium production, which the Taliban prohibited. It certainly played a huge role (to the tune of billions of dollars), and big power shifts in the international drug trade...
Does the phrase "lives and treasure" weird anyone else out a bit? I know this is off-topic, but "treasure"? It sounds like we're losing pirate booty by the bucketful out there.
There was a great deal of opposition to a full-fledged invasion, just not on mainstream television networks. I personally remember reading about a lot of more peaceful alternatives that ranged from not actually invading, to targeting Osama directly, to accepting offers by the Taliban to hand Bin Laden over to an international tribunal or neutral third-party country.
God knows how serious the last offer would have been (perhaps it was a stalling tactic), but it would have been easier to find the man that way - assuming locating Bin Laden was the actual point behind the invasion. Regardless of how things play out now, claiming there were not alternatives to invasion only excuses the poor judgment of those who backed the war in the first place. These people need to be kept as far from government as humanly possible, not excused for the "inevitability" of the Michael Bay approach to foreign policy.
The papers authorising war in Afghanistan were on the President's desk on the 10th September 2001, waiting to be signed. This is completely documented and in the public domain.
The war had nothing to do with 9/11. It was completely pre-planned. The Taliban were promised a "carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs" if they didn't cooperate with the pipeline project. They didn't cooperate.
I could say a lot more -- especially about 9/11 -- but this isn't the site for it.
This viewpoint is very analogous to the Big Co. obsession with quarterly numbers. How many companies have screwed themselves by failing to look past next month's bottom line? Having a highly strategic location like Afghanistan controlled by a terrorist-run government bent on the destruction of the West seems like a bad idea long-term.
If we hadn't invaded Afghanistan, perhaps we'd have more money and fewer dead now. But I'd bet anything we'd be far worse off down the line.
So because it is difficult and fraught with past failure, we shouldn't do it? I don't really see how anybody could pose a logical argument for allowing a terrorist government to control a country.
We already completely dropped the ball on Afghanistan once and it wouldn't surprise me if we do it again, but if a country is being used to train an army of extremists bent on the destruction of the free world... well, somebody should probably look into stopping that. And I don't think saying "please" works on those people.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if we never invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban-controlled government, everything would be peaches right now. I certainly wouldn't have wasted a year of my life in the shit hole. But that seems like the riskier road to take, given what I've learned on the topic.
So why don't they get a few planes in the air, loaded up with cellular transmission equipment, and have them "call" every cell phone in the area?
Would blow up all the hidden IEDs and all the IEDs that are being worked on. Would clear out a lot of the area, and might blow up a number of terrorists in the process.
I've been looking at the photo, and I think the description is incorrect. I don't think it's a cellphone. It looks to me like a 2-way radio.
I can't see any keypad, and it has what looks like a very small display, stubby antenna, and PTT switch on the side. It looks very much like the cheap Chinese FRS or GPRS radios you see in some import stores here in the 'States.
Some of those radios can be set up with squelch codes (similar to PL tones or CTCSS) so that a receiver won't break squelch unless a transmitter set to the same code uses the channel. That would be a fairly reliable short-range detonation mechanism, and it would explain why the Coalition jammers work without setting them off.
At any rate, it sure doesn't look like a cell phone to me.
it's one of the older models - I used to live in Afghanistan and you could get the very old models of cellphones still in mint condition (case in point, I still have one with me) - I remember being in a hotel when all my signal went away - it turned out that President Karzai was having a meeting next door! :)
I've never been to Iraq and I don't know very many veterans that can confirm this, but I do know from my PhD research that this problem is not an easy one to solve.
As was mentioned in another post, these explosive devices are improvised, so once our deployed forces come up with a solution to a problem, the terrorists are quick to try another method. They have infra-red triggers, trip wires, pressure plates, RF triggers, and possibly using other forms of wavelengths. Some wavelengths are particularly hard to jam because they interfere with our troops' own communication systems. Plus these jamming systems are expensive and high powered which is not easily scalable.
The Washington Post ran an excellent series in which they talked about the difficulty of this problem [1]. As for me, I'm doing my PhD research on trying to stop these acts of violence prematurely. So even though this technology isn't immediately deployable, we're looking at other types of sensing technologies that can "see" explosives devices from a stand-off distance, particularly > 50meters.
Hi, I've been there, and seen more than one up close.
You're right - there are a number of triggering methods in use, to include IR, GPRS/"family band" radio, and cell. More sophisticated devices use a combination, like cell arming and IR/pressure plate/trip cord detonation. Simple command-wire detonation begat command-wire with a stand-off cell phone arming unit. This was so we couldn't follow wires to the bomber. For a time fake command wires were set up and boobytrapped. When we stopped following wires, they'd do it again. Or use something really simple like a washing machine timer for a regularly scheduled convoy.
In Afghanistan (at least 5 years ago), "long range cordless" was a popular option in remote areas without cell grids. These are Chinese-made cordless phones operating in the 20-40mhz frequencies with ranges of 10 miles or more. These are also popular in areas of Iraq without cell infrastructure.
It is a cat and mouse game of trigger mechanisms versus detection/deterrent. New detonation methods would show up all the time, with various techniques being popular in different regions at any given time (in both Iraq and Afghanistan). New methods are analyzed, equipment is designed to counter, companies bid on devices, and the countermeasures are pushed into the warzone as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, in my experience, these devices are always behind the curve.
It wouldn't be a good idea for me to go into detail about what these detection and deterrence methods do specifically. Sufficed to say I browsed this article's responses and didn't run into any suggestions or techniques that I hadn't personally used or seen implemented.
There's a wide variety of communications equipment insurgents have access to, because there aren't Iraqi or Afghan equivalents of the FCC. There is access to consumer radios and devices of all frequencies and outputs in these countries. The entire spectrum is game. I don't think there's a magic deterrent or detection method here.
Our best bet was always to schedule movements and map routes as erratically and randomly as possible. If we could, we would mix vehicle movements with foot and air movement. Keeping a good relationship with locals and randomizing movement as much as possible proved much more valuable than using the hottest new gizmo. Pulling over and buying a soda from a street vendor and chatting with the local police generally yielded better information about the road ahead than sitting sealed in an armored vehicle staring at computer displays.
Thanks for your confirmation. I feel like lots of science and engineering projects could benefit a great deal from having a veteran on their team. Your insight is truly valuable.
As for the rest of the hacker community, I can see no better example of the importance of the "release-early-release-often" motto. It's frustrating for me as a scientist sometimes working on technology that has years of development time, when people's lives are immediately at stake.
I sincerely hope the military is getting more of a hacker-mindset.
It would be pretty stupid to only have one method of detonating a bomb now wouldn't it?
For every cell-phone detonator, there are hundreds of less sophisticated weapons. Simple mines, pressure switches, springs, tripwires, etc etc.
It is near impossible to defend against a booby trap. It's far more effective to ensure survivability. This of course has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging larger bombs.
Ergo: the reason troops moved in Humvees early in the conflict; now use RG-31's (or equivalent) or when available, helicopters.
* Each jammer is different and caters to a specific type of detonator, or group of detonators.
* Effective ranges aren't large enough.
* Lack of proper training for soldiers means most have no idea if the jamming device is even working; many keep them off because they interfere with radios, etc.
* The lag time between new jammer tech and proper fielding is a year+ in many cases. I rarely road in a vehicle with the "latest and greatest".
But yeah, good enough for the time being, until something more practical can be implemented. Sucks that not being perfect means people die, but you will never win a chess match if you try not to lose a single piece.
I don't see this catching more than a tiny percentage of them. What would be the point in leaving a cellphone connected to the explosives while you were working on it? Even without specific safety precautions, it seems unlikely that most would do this -- it would take extra effort to be vulnerable to this tactic.
My guesss is - assuming terrorists aren't complete idiots - that they keep the phone off until the very last moment precisely for that reason, the 'wrong connection' incoming call that sets off their bomb. See below for an easy fix to that.
If you can get the cellphone companies to cooperate: develop a system that inhibits cellphones ringing in the vicinity of moving convoys. You can use a system that sends GPS coords to a computer, which then sends (encrypted challenge-response) inhibit messages to the towers close by the convoy.
Although this solution and the solutions mentioned in the above threads are technically sound, I am aghast at the sincerity with which they were suggested.
It is not appropriate to interfere with such a crucial piece of infrastructure. In developing countries especially, cell phones are the only link many people have. They run their small businesses, allow people to call family to see if they have been hurt, etc.
Would you tolerate something like this in your Country? Shut down the internet for a little while to prevent a terrorist threat?
In many cities, specialized police units either already have or are in the process of being issued cell phone jamming units.
They are being issued with these sorts of scenarios specifically in mind. If the police think there's a bomb somewhere, set to be triggered via cell phone, damn right I'd want them to block the cell phones in the local area to keep it from going off.
The problem with cell jamming technology isn't when it's being used to stop bombs from going off, the risk is that it'll be used for more trivial purposes.
Note that the posts above are not advocating disabling the cell network, but they are instead advocating autodialing -- something that is regularly tolerated (although despised) in the U.S.
According to the article, the military is already jamming cell signals along caravan routes, but one has to wonder if it's even noticeable to the locals, given that cell phones are inherently unreliable, especially in mountainous regions. Cell phone jammers are in regular use in other countries, purely for the convenience of their owners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer
I keep wondering how sophisticated the insurgents are. If they have some savvy equipment and know-how they can easily modify the software to reject calls from anyone but a hardcoded number.
Well, let me give you an idea how sophisticated they could easily be: Where I live (netherlands) we have a whole bunch of cell phone operators and they all cell their phones together with subscriptions based on sim-lock. These sim-locked phones are usually pretty expensive models sold at a great discount, so there is now a cottage industry of sim-locked phone unlockers.
These people are all at about the same level of tech as the satellite code crackers a couple of years ago, and it isn't rare to see top of the line scopes, all kinds of specialized soldering equipment (including vacuum smd soldering stations) and laptops full of software geared towards getting a cell phone to do something it really doesn't want to do.
This involves forced firmware upgrades, replacing chips on the board (usually eeproms or flashed chips with blank ones to be able to trick the firmware into thinking it is on a new, unused phone).
If any one of these guys gave a seminar for a week or so the 'bad guys' would be in the possession of all the knowledge and gear they would need to do just about anything they wanted, short of rewriting the phones OS completely. And they wouldn't need that because in their world simpler is better, and writing software is a complicated business.
Small correction: should say just "NATO" not "US and NATO". US is part of NATO isn't it? I'm tired of Canadian and other NATO countries getting the shit end of the stick. The US didn't start to pull its weight until this year because they were side-tracked by Iraq...
i think its referring to the command structure rather than making a political statement. if the US troops are operating apart from NATO command then they should be referenced that way
It's probably a lot cheaper and easier just to wire it directly and go find a house to camp out in until the vehicles pass.
Not all IDE's are designed the same way. Hence the "I".
The easiest one would just be 3-4 AT mines linked together. This one looks to be anti-personnel/light vehicle, as fuel/air won't really defeat most armour.
Yea, but then you would be nearby when a few dozen pissed off Marines jump off the other trucks in the convoy. Plus air support, tanks etc. The last thing insurgents want to do is be anywhere near the actual fight.
You'd be nearby looking like every other civilian.
And very few shots are fired during an IED strike unless there is the accompanying ambush (That does happen occasionally) inbound. Even Marines don't shoot randomly at things.
SOP on an IDE strike is to secure the area and evac the wounded. That won't involve shooting unless there is reason too.
Seems like that would entail something in the phone that could see if it's connection to the base stations had unexpectedly fallen to almost zero. Assuming this is how being jammed works. This is probably quite hard to do on any non-sdk'd phone, so it might not have come up yet. Iphone prices probably need to drop a bit more...
Cleary a dedicated radio detonator could be programmed to work like this, but then we are talking improvised here.
Radio detonators are not so easy to improvise. So you end up buying off the shelf parts. But since there are many fewer radio controlled devices, this means your signal is a lot easier to trace. The nice thing about cell phones, is that there are a lot of them. And activation can be on a ring. How do you distinguish a hostile call before it has even been answered?
You just need to temporarily setup the network to block incoming calls to the phones in the patrolled area. This does not mean the 'signal' will drop to zero at any time, from the phone point of view. The phone will have absolutely no way to tell a blocked call from a lack of calls.
An even better option: work with the cell providers, so that the US has a back door to deactivate cell towers, but not completely -- just keep them from ringing phones. Then, the US just needs to have software that deactivates ringing of phones hear convoys. If there aren't to many convoys, then this will only be a minor inconvenience.
So they'll find a new way - timer after loss of signal, FRS radio, long-range cordless phones, IR sensors, etc. Worse comes to worse, they'll do it manually and blow themselves up in the process.
This isn't the kind of problem that you can solve with technology - sure, you can make it more difficult, but the people who make these things do nothing else during a day but make IEDs; they'll find a new way to blow things up. Nothing encourages people to tinker with electronics like the perception that their country is being invaded and that they can fight back with bombs.
So take control of their cell system (which, by the way, will do wonders for the perception that the US doesn't run the country) if you want, but don't expect that to change much. The way to beat IEDs is to make it so they don't want to set IEDs, or at least so that you've got enough people who don't want them set that they can report when others are.
That would probably require a more advanced manipulation of the phone. When they trigger on ring, it's probably just using the power to the speaker or something built-in.
cell phones have this neat little 'buzzer' in them to alert you during meetings. It's a little motor with an excentric weight attached to them, when the motor spins the weight will cause the phone to vibrate.
This is almost tailor made to set stuff off by remote. Beta test using the ringer, when it's all good make it hot by switching your profile to 'silent'.
cell phones have this neat little 'buzzer' in them to alert you during meetings. It's a little motor with an excentric weight attached to them, when the motor spins the weight will cause the phone to vibrate
The favored method of IED detonation was just to have the attach a small spool of thread to the motor and have it pull a thread to activate something. Not sure what the favored method is now.
That was a pretty lucky guess then. I swear I never blew anything up, but I love to tinker with stuff. Hooking up a small relay to the motor outputs or using the motor directly seemed like the obvious thing to do.
Well, won't some easily accessible electrical parameter about the phone change on a call getting cut? Voltage across the battery / speaker output / resistance of mic / something ? They can make a call after setting up the IED, they can just wait for the call to get cut for the IED to explode.
What if the call gets cut off just because it's a bad line? What if the jammer takes effect 500m before the first vehicle? What if the phone runs out of battery, which it will within hours if it's active on a call? Not to mention that finding the IEDs would be much easier if they were radiating like a mobile phone.
I'm sure the Iraqi people - let alone the Russians and the Chinese - would love it if the US set off twenty or thirty EMPs every day as they went about their daily business.
