Troops combat Taliban’s new weapon of choice – secondary bombs

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Troops combat Taliban’s new weapon of choice – secondary bombs
By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, December 6, 2009

KANDAHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan - As armored vehicles improve, killing soldiers with roadside bombs becomes increasingly difficult. So insurgents do what they can to separate the two.

Roadside bombs are still effective in stopping a convoy. If the insurgents can disable a vehicle, they can force U.S. troops out of the protective vehicles to investigate, exposing them to secondary bombs — increasingly a weapon of choice in the badlands of southern Afghanistan.

Soldiers with the 4th Engineer Battalion’s 2nd Platoon, 569th Engineer Company are well aware of the risks of dismounting vehicles along Highway 1, the main road connecting Kandahar and Kabul.

Land mines are strewn across the area, and picking them out of the darkness and uneven soil off the road is difficult. Insurgents have also started using booby traps to target foot patrols.

But on a paved road — where culverts are the favored place to plant bombs, many of which include hundreds of pounds of explosives — an on-the-ground peek is sometimes the only way to check when cameras attached to hydraulic arms can’t get a clear view.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66485