'Prowlers' detonate roadside bombs

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/39Prowlers39-detonate-roadside--bombs.3908993.jp

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Military technicians have been locked in a constant battle to outwit the insurgents. In the past, US forces have relied on jamming the airwaves around soldiers and convoys to stop their enemies using remote controls, such as mobile phones and garage door openers, to detonate hidden explosives.

Now they are changing tack, turning to revamped spy-planes which emit trigger signals instead, sources have told The Scotsman. The goal is to detonate the bombs before the ground troops arrive.

The EA-6B "Prowler" aircraft – which debuted at the end of the Vietnam War – have been refurbished with a top-secret signals system designed to emit waves of electromagnetic radiation, which apes the insurgents' triggering devices.

They are sweeping the roads ahead of vulnerable US convoys in what troops on the ground call "courtesy burns", because they are designed to burn up concealed explosives.

The tactic is banned under British rules of engagement because the pilots have no way of locating the bombs, or any nearby civilians, before they set them off.

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American electronic warfare experts call the Prowler flights "IED defeat missions".

While it is standard practice for Nato patrols to emit jamming signals to stop remote triggers from working near allied vehicles, the US technology is so secret officials are banned from talking about it on the record, and the US has refused to share it, even with its closest allies.

But the Afghan ministry of defence confirmed that two senior American soldiers briefed the defence minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, on the technology last year. A spokesman said: "We discussed the technology that lets them control bombs."

There are four navy Prowlers in Afghanistan, based at Bagram air base. They are part of the 134 Electronic Attack Squadron, and they support US ground troops in eastern Afghanistan. The region suffered more than half of all the IED attacks last year.

Speaking privately, senior American officers claim that the idea is to get the bomb makers at the factory. "It's win-win when that happens," said a US officer. But civilian analysts insist that it is very unusual for insurgents to arm the bombs before they lay them.

The US military spokesman in Afghanistan refused to comment on what he called "counter-IED efforts involving aerial platforms", except that they made the country "a safer and more secure place".

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