JAMMIN'
Blogger Darren Kaplan suggests that Coalition casualties in Iraq are down because new cellular jammers are blocking the "improvised explosive devices" used by Islamic guerilla forces.
Given the increased use of IEDs, what accounts for the decline in Coalition deaths? I'm going to take a wild guess based on nothing more than my own intuition and a single sentence in an article from the Wall Street Journal. The Coalition has begun to equip its military convoys with cellular jammers. Cellular jammers are widely available and can be portable. The Pentagon is known to have been working on large-scale cellular jammers back in August, but I've thought for some time that the threat from IEDs in Iraq could be defeated by the Pentagon simply issuing portable cellular jammers to its convoy passengers. An article from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) strongly suggests that's exactly what the Pentagon has done.
Procurement accounts for a relatively small share, just $1.9 billion, including the purchase of 595 heavy mobile Army vehicles, kevlar body armor and electronic jammers to block terrorists from using cellular phones to trigger bombs near troops.
If IEDs can no longer be detonated by remote control, the Iraqi insurgents are going to have an even harder time inflicting casualties on U.S. troops. (I note that the most recent reported IED death does not give any indication that the targeted vehicle involved was traveling in a convoy). We'll know that jammers have come into widespread use when we begin to see increased uses of other methods of attack such as suicide bombings and truck bombings of stationary targets (which I think we've already seen). What we will not see more of is increased attacks on U.S. convoys using small arms such as rifles and RPGs, those attacks proved to be suicidal for the attackers and have now been largely abandoned by the insurgents unless they happen upon isolated vehicles as targets of opportunity.
Remember you heard it here first; cellular jammers are the newest U.S. weapon in Iraq.