Jordan Spurlin’s riveting home movie opens with him at the wheel of a US army Humvee barrelling along a rubbish-strewn street in Baghdad. The radio is crackling with reports from other units patrolling in the same area, where the risk of being ambushed by insurgent fighters is high. Suddenly the vehicle rocks and the view from the dashboard-mounted video camera becomes blurred, while debris bounces off the reinforced windscreen. Spurlin knew immediately that his squad had been targeted by what the military designate as an improvised explosive device (IED), triggered by remote control. In the 10 months he had spent driving Humvees in Iraq, he had survived three previous attacks by roadside bombs.

“Right when it hits, you feel a blast wave come across you, then you hear the sound – you hear the actual explosion itself – and your head gets blown back,” Spurlin recalled. “You’re looking away and all the time you’re thinking, ‘I hope I’m all right.’” His tape, shown on CBS, vividly captures the moment the rest of the soldiers in the Humvee realise that nobody has been hurt. “Whooo-eee,” one shouts. “Wow, I have a f***in’ headache,” another exclaims. Then Spurlin’s voice is heard observing: “Hey, that’s four.” Evidently undeterred, the young man from Alaska later signed up for another tour of duty.

It is more than five years since the first recorded IED attack on US forces in Iraq took place, at a traffic checkpoint near the turbulent holy city of Najaf. A taxi with its boot packed full of explosives blew up, killing the driver, another Iraqi civilian and four men of the 3rd Infantry Division. Surveying the carnage, the local battalion commander Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Rutter, a much-decorated officer who had led the assault on Baghdad airport, concluded that they were “entering into an area of warfare that’s going to be completely different”.

By any measure, Rutter got it right: IEDs are now rated by the Pentagon as “the single most effective weapon” to be deployed against US troops serving in Iraq. Buried in potholes or beneath rubbish, concealed in cars, storm drains and discarded army ration packs – even hidden in the carcasses of dead animals – roadside bombs are perfectly suited to the type of “asymmetric” war in which a militarily inferior force devises methods of striking at a powerful enemy’s most vulnerable points. In the judgment of the former CIA case officer Robert Baer, an old Middle East hand, IEDs have “levelled the battlefield in favour of insurgent and terrorist groups”. That applies particularly to car bombings, says Baer, who lost six colleagues in a suicide attack on the embassy in Beirut in 1983. “All you need is a battered old car and a couple of hundred pounds’ worth of home-made explosives.”

By the end of July this year, Iraqi insurgents had carried out about 40,000 IED attacks on US forces, with roadside bombs accounting for around 70% of the 4,155 American deaths to date. On top of that, more than 38,000 have been wounded, often maimed for life, by the hail of shrapnel the devices spew out. While British troops operating in southern Iraq have suffered proportionately less from IEDs, current casualty figures reflect the increasing impact of such attacks. The same goes for Afghanistan, where the heavy losses suffered by the Taliban in pitched battles with Nato forces led to the insurgents making a tactical switch to roadside bombs.

In June, the fighting in and around Helmand claimed the lives of 44 western soldiers – more than that month’s entire toll in Iraq, where almost three times as many troops are engaged. Four of the 13 British fatalities occurred in a single IED attack: they included the 26-year-old intelligence specialist Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first woman to die in action since hostilities in Afghanistan began in 2001. The incident sharpened the controversy over the army’s use of lightly armoured Snatch Land Rovers, originally developed for service in Northern Ireland. The acute shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan has meant that the vehicles serving soldiers call “coffins on wheels” were extensively deployed on roads where there was a high risk of IED attacks (according to the Ministry of Defence, the Snatches are being progressively phased out).

Meanwhile, there is growing concern among western intelligence services about the exploitation of the internet by radical Islamist groups, most associated with Al-Qaeda, to disseminate detailed technical information about constructing IEDs. This ominous trend is examined at greater length later, but the extent of the problem was illustrated by a survey that found the number of bomb-making, extremist and illegal websites had increased by over 40% since the start of the war in Iraq. The so-called “electronic jihad” also features videos depicting grisly executions, interviews with suicide squads and dramatic real-time footage of roadside bombs destroying targets.

Researchers tracking the level of IED attacks beyond Iraq and Afghanistan estimate between 200 and 300 are now occurring each month. The countries affected include Algeria, Chechnya, Pakistan, Colombia and Sri Lanka. In July, a wave of explosions killed more than 50 civilians in India’s big cities, while 16 people died in two blasts in Istanbul. Basic IED technology is becoming increasingly transferable, warns Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst and fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. “This is the urgent threat we face now, and one of the few things capable of defeating us.”

) ) ) ) )

In the face of everything that the US military machine has thrown at them, Iraqi insurgent groups have succeeded in developing their own cheap, simple but highly effective bomb-making technology. Understandably wary of direct confrontations with US fire power – small-arms attacks are becoming increasingly rare – they are pursuing the objective of “bleeding” US forces and undermining the nation’s will to continue fighting a war that is increasingly unpopular at home. The parallel with Vietnam, where home-made bombs and booby traps were used extensively by the Vietcong, is inescapable.

Last year, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, concluded that the insurgents have demonstrated “a cycle of adaptation that is short relative to the ability of US forces to develop and field IED countermeasures”. An infantry officer who had survived a roadside attack in Iraq and spoke to The Sunday Times Magazine on condition of anonymity put it more bluntly: “Whatever we come up with, the bad guys are always a step ahead.” The prime example of insurgents’ resourcefulness has been their exploitation of the wireless technology used in easily available electronic products to detonate bombs by remote control. Mobile phones, doorbells, even the timer from a washing machine, have been put to use. “Before we went to Iraq, I had no idea a guy with a pager could blow away a bunch of grunts,” the officer observes. “We had to learn that the hard way.”

At the same time, tried and trusted low-tech trigger mechanisms such as command wires and pressure plates have been adapted to suit the asymmetric-warfare strategy. A sergeant serving with a National Guard unit in northern Iraq came across a particularly ingenious device on one heavily patrolled road. “You know years ago, when you had service stations where you’d drive across the rubber hose and it would go ‘ding, ding, ding’?” he told The Washington Post. “Here, you drive across a little hose and it sends water back into a little bottle with wires sitting there. When water goes back into the bottle, it connects wires, and off goes the IED.”

As the insurgents’ technology evolved, so did the destructive power of their bombs. In the first two years of the war, booby traps often consisted of little more than a pound or two of C4 plastic explosive packed into a soft-drinks can and set off by a tripwire. But that soon changed. Iraq was awash with explosives. Saddam Hussein’s armouries contained at least 650,000 tons, the TNT equivalent of around 40 Hiroshima atom bombs – and there were plenty of former Iraqi soldiers with experience of handling them. US patrols began to come under attack from IEDs incorporating heavy artillery rounds. Packages of 155-millimetre rounds linked together and detonated simultaneously by a radio signal obliterated Humvees and killed troops riding inside a 30-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

About three years ago, the appearance of an even deadlier type of IED, not seen before on the Iraqi battlefield, set alarm bells ringing in the Pentagon. Usually described as an explosively formed projectile (EFP), it provided insurgent groups with a weapon that could take out the most heavily armoured enemy targets, including 70-ton Abrams tanks. The design is simple: a pipe welded shut at one end, packed with high explosive and topped by a concave plug of metal (often copper). On detonation, this forms a molten projectile that knifes through armour plating and spatters the interior of the target.

The bombs would be concealed at choke points such as busy road junctions, where traffic congestion provides insurgents with static or slow-moving targets. “That way, a massive amount of destructive energy gets focused on a relatively small area,” says a marine, who has seen the results of EFP attacks. “Believe me, you don’t want to know what that does to the guys inside.”

) ) ) ) )

The spearhead of the US effort to counter the roadside-bomb threat is a body with the unwieldy title of Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). Established in summer 2005, when the death rate from attacks in Iraq was rising fast, it began with a budget of $100m and an urgent brief, as one senior officer put it, to “stop the bleeding”. By the end of this year, JIEDDO expects to have spent over $15 billion (around £8 billion) on force-protection measures, with more in the pipeline. By contrast, Britain’s entire military budget is about £34 billion, and constant government pressure to rein in spending has contributed to the resignation of officers with invaluable combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

JIEDDO’s director is Lieutenant-General Thomas Metz, a burly, grey-haired old soldier who served for over 40 years in the infantry and has impressive engineering qualifications. Metz could talk about IEDs all day, and he readily acknowledges the “proven capabilities” of the insurgents fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Our enemies adapt quickly and constantly learn from their mistakes – and from ours too,” he told The Sunday Times Magazine. “We’re engaged in a long war in both theatres against a bunch of thugs trying to wear down America’s will, and that challenge is very far from over.”

As Metz is fond of pointing out, there is nothing new about the use of IEDs in war. “Man has been ambushing man for ever, and as long as there are people intent on wreaking havoc you’ll see IEDs.” The Arab irregulars T E Lawrence led against the Turks from 1916 to 1918 planted concealed bombs to disrupt the enemy’s railway network. Apart from the damage they inflicted, Lawrence wrote, this created “an uncertain terror for the enemy”. Jordan Spurlin, the Humvee driver, would endorse that: “Everyone’s afraid [of IEDs], but you just have to go out and do it.”

While some of Metz’s projects remain classified, measures taken include introducing a new fleet of troop carriers – known as mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs – whose V-shaped hulls and improved armour are designed specifically to mitigate the effects of roadside blasts. A sustained effort has also gone into developing sophisticated electronic systems that can be mounted on vehicles to detect and jam or scramble the radio signals that are most commonly used to detonate roadside bombs.

The British Army is developing similar protective technology, though like the Americans it has discovered jamming can also disrupt radio communications between its own units. In July, an inquest heard how Major Alexis Roberts, Prince William’s former instructor at Sandhurst, was killed in Helmand when his troop carrier was caught in the explosion of a bomb contained in a cooking pot buried on a stretch of road known as “IED alley”. Shortly before the incident, his convoy had lost vehicle-to-vehicle contact, while electronic countermeasures were being deployed against the threat of roadside blasts.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has made extensive use of unmanned drones fitted with specially designed optics that can detect recent changes to road surfaces and verges that could indicate the presence of IEDs – though when it comes to interpreting the images, says one official, “the human eyeball is still more effective than any computer”. Other drones fitted with remote-controlled missiles roam above the combat zones, hunting for bombers preparing an attack. In one video, the airborne camera tracks a group who have just buried an IED beside a road: the cross hairs settle for a moment, then the target disappears in a cloud of flame and dust.

Besides America’s huge investment in protective technology, new troop-training programmes drum in the importance of IED awareness and the value of feedback from units on the ground. “Obviously, we take a close interest in what the enemy is up to in the here and now,” says Metz, “but we also need to anticipate what he’s going to be doing next.” An increase in the insurgents’ use of command wires and pressure plates could indicate that the US jamming of their radio signals is having an effect.

Metz is understandably eager to pass on some encouraging statistics: taking account of roadside bombs detected and cleared, there has been a 50% reduction in IED attacks since last summer. The US body count is also falling steadily, he adds. “Back in 2004/ 2005, when I was commanding the Multi-National Corps in Iraq, it was a one-to-one attack to a casualty. Today it takes seven to eight IEDs to inflict a casualty, so it’s costing the insurgents more effort.” Last September the US lost 80 soldiers in Iraq, the majority to IEDs: in the same month this year there were four deaths, while the number of wounded also fell sharply. The turnabout is down to several factors, Metz explains: the significant impact of last year’s troop surge, more extensive use of bomb-disposal robots and more aggressive efforts to locate insurgent weapons caches and eliminate bomb teams before they can strike. The new troop carriers have withstood numerous blasts that would have killed soldiers in a Humvee. In one instance, a big IED ripped the vehicle’s engine from its mounting and hurled it 100 yards, yet the crew sustained only minor injuries.

Even so, JIEDDO’s strategy has its share of critics, who argue that throwing money at the roadside-bomb threat in the belief that US technology will always deliver a “silver-bullet” solution has effectively handed the initiative to the insurgents. The buzz word here is “friction”, a term used by the military strategist Carl von Clausewitz for the process by which one side forces the enemy to fight on its own terms. As one commentator noted, to secure the logistical tail of fuel, mechanics and spare parts required to support the MRAPs (which guzzle gas at a rate of less than four miles per gallon) will inevitably involve increasing the number of supply trucks. More trucks on the roads means more targets for the bombers, he pointed out. “It’s catch-22.”

) ) ) ) )

When two powerful remote-controlled bombs exploded in quick succession at a train station in Algeria in June, killing 13 people, investigators soon concluded that a group linked to Al-Qaeda’s north African network was responsible. They also suspected that a high-powered cordless phone had been used to trigger the blasts. This method was first developed in Iraq, and detailed information on how to employ it had subsequently been posted on a jihadi website. There is some evidence to suggest that the same means of detonation was used

in previous bombings in Jordan and Pakistan.

According to knowledgeable observers, the appearance of the EFPs in Iraq involved a similar “migration” of battlefield technology. They are believed to have been developed originally by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite militant group, for use against Israel’s armoured tanks. The Iranians, Hezbollah’s main backers, then added refinements to improve the weapon’s destructive capability and, in turn, provided them to the Shi’ite militias battling the US forces in Iraq.

Last year, EFPs began appearing in Afghanistan: a senior US military official hinted that “criminal elements” behind the country’s heroin trade may have smuggled in key components from Iran that the Taliban lack the facilities to produce.

US intelligence agencies have also accused Iran’s regime of supplying insurgent groups with an advanced trigger mechanism that utilises infrared sensors available on the open market. Unlike radio waves, these devices do not emit a detectable signal, so cannot be jammed with the technology developed by Metz’s boffins.

As in Iraq, the technology of the components incorporated into IEDs in Afghanistan is steadily growing in sophistication. One remote-control detonation device, known as a “Spider” and believed to have been developed originally by Iranian experts, operates by transmitting a code number through a mobile-phone text message. British troops have also encountered cruder but equally effective trigger mechanisms such as the blades from a pair of household saws that are wedged apart by a sliver of wood. The device is placed inside the rubber inner tube from a car tyre and buried beneath the road surface. When a vehicle passes over it, the blades are forced together, initiating the explosion.

The investigation into the Islamist cell that blitzed London on July 7, 2005 was unable to establish whether its members had acquired their lethal know-how through the internet. One of them had received explosives training in Pakistan and may simply have passed on his expertise. “My feeling is that they were among the last generation of UK terrorists who could relatively easily arrange for hands-on training abroad,” says one British terrorism expert. “Security is so tight now, our own wannabe jihadists are almost certainly turning to the web.”

A good deal of the extremist material on the internet is fairly basic, says an Israeli analyst who monitors online terrorism, “but if you know where to look, there are some very scary sites providing step-by-step guides to making and detonating a powerful IED”. One that he singled out, requesting its name was not published, had a video produced by an Iraqi extremist group that showed how to prepare an IED for use in a roadside ambush. As martial music blares, there is a detailed demonstration of how to attach the detonator to a bomb composed of two artillery rounds. The scene then shifts to a dusty track where the camera shows the bomb – to be set off by a command wire – being dug into a roadside verge. When a pair of tanks come grinding past the ambush point, there is a blinding flash and a huge explosion, followed by exultant cries of “Allahu akbar” – “God is great”. A message in Arabic claims that one of the tanks was destroyed. Half an hour later the dramatic footage was available on the internet. “The insurgents understand very well the power of such images as a recruiting tool,” Metz acknowledges. “A huge, smoke-filled explosion that leaves a gaping crater in the road is far more impressive than a simple bang.”

At a briefing for Congress last year, Pentagon officials revealed the Bush administration was so concerned about terrorists exploiting the internet that a special research unit had been assembled to trawl over 5,000 jihadist sites. Some were devoted to fundraising and recruiting new fighters, others advertised for internet specialists to work for the cause, while war video games had been modified to allow site users to play at killing American troops. “These guys doing this stuff are very savvy technically,” one official testified.

Other experts say extremist websites are increasingly protecting themselves from penetration by intelligence services with encryption programmes that allow messages to be concealed within seemingly innocuous e-mail traffic or pictures. One posting headed “The Shortened Way of How to be Cautious… In the Name of Allah, the most Gracious and Merciful” offered helpful advice to internet cafe users about internet spy ware, protecting passwords and detection of online surveillance.

To borrow The Economist’s apt phrase, “jihad’s open university” is flourishing in cyberspace.

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?