LandWarfareIntl
Eurosatory 2010: Coalition forces meet IED threat
US special operations forces and other coalition troops are discovering innovative new methods of countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as employed by enemy combatants in Afghanistan, Land Warfare International has been informed.
Defence sources have told LWI that systems including Chemring Defence’s Heavy Portable Explosive Minefield Breaching System (HEPMBS), which was designed to clear paths for foot patrols, are being used in the direct fire role to initiate suspected IEDs.
Now regularly employed by enemy combatants across Afghanistan, IEDs have become a major issue for NATO International Security Assistance Force contributors, so much so that the US Department of Defense set up its own dedicated counter-IED taskforce in 2006, known as the Joint IED Defeat Organization.
According to Chemring, HPEMBS is a 25kg backpack comprising a 50m long igniter cord complete with approximately 60 equally-spaced plastic explosive bomblets. A 75m system is also available.
With the top end of the detonating cord launched from a small rocket system, the bomblets can be ‘accurately’ fired to within centimetres of an object suspected of being an IED, booby-trap or anti-personnel mine, Chemring said.
The company was unable to comment on specific explosive details but told LWI that individual bomblets were more powerful than standard high explosive 40mm grenades. This allows mines or IEDs buried down to 30cm to be successfully detonated. The company said the system boasted a 96% success rate.
Chemring added that the device was being routinely used by French, German, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish and US forces on operations and revealed that trials with the UK’s Ministry of Defence had also been completed.
‘There has been a role change for special operations forces and there is now a requirement to breach mines and have something available to fight IEDs,’ a military source told LWI.
By Andrew White, Paris
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