Counter-IED

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) have become the weapon of choice of adversaries and this phenomenon is likely to continue for decades. IEDs are fabricated in an improvised manner and designed to destroy property or incapacitate people and vehicles. The design of IEDs and the trigger systems used range from the ‘simple’ to the technologically developed. The production costs in general are low, and the components used include military ammunition like mines or artillery shells as well as freely available chemical components that can be combined to make explosives. Although already used for many decades in civil wars and conflicts worldwide, the casualties caused by IEDs have a cumulative campaign effect and their use is key for terrorists, resistance movements and rogue elements in their fight against technologically superior forces. In Iraq and Afghanistan they have caused the majority of fatalities and casualties of international troops.

Likewise, IEDs threaten, harm and kill both civilian personnel working in these crisis management areas and the local population. IEDs not only cause tactical effects in the field. IED incidents on operations can cause strategic effects in the home countries of deployed forces and can influence political decision-making. Therefore, it is not sufficient to just deal with the IED event itself. The whole IED network needs to be tackled in order to find, secure and remove the decision makers, planners, backers, financiers, bomb makers and the supporting logistics chain.

As C-IED is an overarching issue for EU Member States’ Armed Forces operating abroad and civilian actors dealing with security aspects at the European level and in the European Union Member States, close cooperation and coordination with these partners is being pursued by EDA.