Four-inch and eight-inch IED escalation in Iraq

Tom traces the technical escalation: four-inch pipe (~200 kJ) → eight-inch pipe (1.6 MJ), with foreign-machined copper liner discs. The pipe was Iraqi oilfield stock; the precision-machined copper liner came from a country Tom cannot name on tape (classified).

Yeah. Improvised explosive devices are nothing more than shaped charges. Let me give you a little of the history. When they first went into Iraq — President George Bush's time — they would use a four-inch black iron pipe, just a steel pipe four inches in diameter. They'd put a bottom on it — machined or welded. Then you put the explosive in, and you have to have a piece of copper that's sort of dish-shaped, like a saucer. When you set off the charge, the copper folds outward — remember little clickers you had as a kid that you could click and they'd buckle? The copper bows outward, and as it does, the stress causes enough frictional heating that the copper melts. You end up getting what's called a shaped charge.