Iraq War Humvee IED vulnerability and MRAP armor development

Secretary of Army mission-driven response to IED casualties. Friday 4pm conference calls with commanders. Tom uses this as exemplar of mission-driven lab effectiveness vs. budget-driven trashcan-lab failure mode (Watertown Arsenal counterexample).

The Secretary of the Army — we were losing all kinds of soldiers after we took over Iraq, to the weapons of mass destruction. We went there to get weapons of mass destruction, but they couldn't find them — they found IEDs. So we were losing soldiers to IEDs. The Humvees were not resistant enough. Secretary of the Army goes down to Aberdeen and says, you've got to solve this problem. Within a year and a half, we're not losing any more soldiers. One of the things they did is they had a four o'clock conference call every Friday afternoon with the commanders.

Four-inch black iron pipe IEDs escalating to eight-inch (1.6 megajoule) devices destroyed Humvees; MRAPs were the response.

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.