'You can't armor your way out of this problem'

Before retiring from active duty in 2003, Meigs had commanded the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and the 57,000 U.S. Army soldiers in Europe. His doctoral dissertation, written at the University of Wisconsin in 1982, scrutinized the management of the Manhattan Project during construction of the atomic bomb. He had also written a book on the elaborate -- and successful -- methods used to defeat German submarines in the North Atlantic during World War II.

Despite his credentials, Meigs in other respects was an unlikely choice. Skeptical of the war in Iraq, he had also publicly accused the Pentagon leadership of evincing an attitude that "anybody who disagrees with us is a Luddite." At Syracuse University, where he had held a chair in public policy, he taught a course titled "Why Presidents Go to War When They Don't Have To."

But to Meigs, the roadside bomb was personal. Among his oldest friends was an Army colonel, whose daughter, Laura M. Walker, had captained the West Point women's handball team that won a national championship. On Aug. 18, 2005, after commissioning as an Army engineer, 1st Lt. Laura Walker was killed in Afghanistan by an IED triggered with a pressure plate. She was 24.

As the motto for his new organization, Meigs adapted a Latin inscription favored by the English physicist and novelist C.P. Snow: "Aut viam inveniam aut faciam." I'll find a way or make one.

Whether found or made, a way was needed. By New Year's Day 2006, the number of U.S. troops killed in action by IEDs in Iraq approached 700. "Complex attacks" had become more common, with roadside bombs used to stop or slow a convoy that insurgents then attacked with small-arms and mortar fire.

One assessment calculated that an IED could be detonated 90 ways, but Meigs knew that the number was almost infinite. Bombmakers used the world's vast consumer electronics market as a research lab and test bed. "Microsoft pumps out enhancements of software about every nine months," Meigs said. "You get a new generation of cellphones between a year and 18 months. That's the rhythm we're on, and it's a totally different way of doing business. . . . You can't just play defense in this game."

Most "low-hanging fruit" -- off-the-shelf technology that could be sent to the field quickly -- had been harvested. "We should focus less on the bomb than on the bombmaker," Votel had often said. But only 13 percent of the counter-IED budget for fiscal 2006 was dedicated to "offensive operations." Little headway had been gained in getting the vast U.S. intelligence apparatus into the fight by searching for the financiers, bombmakers and cell leaders who formed the insurgent networks. JIEDDO's intelligence cell totaled four people.

Simply sketching a coherent picture of IED trends was difficult. Much of the data were "dirty," with the anomalies and errors inevitable in combat reports. Some analysts believed that 20 percent or more of all IEDs were never reported. An infantry platoon, bomb squad and medical team might report the same incident using three 10-digit grid locations, which in a database could become three incidents. Was the "Kia" cited in various reports a Korean-made vehicle or "killed in action?" Were soldiers using local time or Zulu (Greenwich Mean Time)?

On Jan. 18, 2006, Meigs left on a two-week visit to both war zones. Flying first to Afghanistan, he found troubling signs. The 782 IEDs in 2005 had more than doubled over the previous year, and the number would double again in 2006. A single Army brigade occupied a country larger and more populous than Iraq. Many commanders believed the Taliban and al-Qaeda were resurgent, because the U.S. military, including bomb squads, had been diverted to Iraq.

"The IED fight was not put in check," an Army colonel complained. At a Central Command conference in Qatar in January 2006, another colonel showed a slide of vast stacks of equipment in a huge assembly area. It was labeled "Counter IED in Iraq." The next slide showed a man on a donkey holding a basketball. It was labeled "Counter IED in Afghanistan."

Suicide attacks were approaching three each week, according to State Department and United Nations figures, from three in all of 2004 and 17 in 2005. Often recruited in Pakistani madrassas and frequently driving a Toyota Corolla painted to look like a taxi, the typical bomber was male, 15 to 35 years old, "clean-shaven . . . nervous, restless, eyes fixed, glazed, avoids eye contact," according to a U.S. military description. Hair samples from dead bombers showed that many were drugged with sedatives.

The Spider Mod 1 radio-controlled bomb trigger first seen in 2002 continued to appear, but evolutions had reached the Spider Mod 5. Those, too, came from Pakistan, U.S. intelligence believed, often with the radio frequency and firing code written on the case by the bombmaker for the emplacer's benefit. The Acorn jammer initially sent to Afghanistan in 2002 still worked against the Spiders, but additional jammers would be needed against other devices detonated by radio waves.