When 'Physics Gets in the Way'

In four months, Ionatron built a dozen JIN prototypes, at a cost of $800,000 each, mounted on what looked like diesel-powered golf carts. The company leased manufacturing space at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. Then Hurricane Katrina hit in late August 2005.

Ionatron organized a rescue operation to truck the unfinished JINs to Arizona. Within days, the Mississippi congressional delegation began pressing the Pentagon to support JIN as part of a Katrina recovery program for the Gulf Coast. "Are you joking me?" Votel complained.

Moreover, additional testing in realistic IED scenarios at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona and elsewhere "revealed that the system has limited effectiveness," a Pentagon document stated. "Additionally the system suffers from extensive safety and maintenance problems."

Another Pentagon document noted that JIN was "severely limited by the fact that the device must be literally positioned on top of undetected IEDs" -- within three feet, sources said -- to induce a detonation, a proximity that would "destroy the vehicle." After one demonstration, a four-star admiral said, "This is a Rube Goldberg solution," according to an Army brigadier general who was present.

Under pressure from Capitol Hill, Votel in December 2005 urged U.S. commanders in Iraq to accept JIN for operational tests on the battlefield. "You've got to take it," he said, according to an Army colonel then in Baghdad. "It's a huge congressional issue here." After scrutinizing test results from Arizona and studying what the colonel described as "two dozen safety precautions" that were required before JIN could operate, both the Army and Marine Corps refused.

The pressure continued. After ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman were wounded by an IED on Jan. 29, 2006, reports circulated that the Pentagon was ignoring a countermeasure -- JIN -- that could have prevented the calamity, according two Defense Department officials. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Feb. 14, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) asked why the Army was "delaying a decision" on deploying JIN. She was told that any deployment was up to commanders in Baghdad.

A day later, two JINs were flown to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where "they were willing to try anything," the brigadier general said. Votel's successor, retired Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, believed that a field test would help appease Congress. That same week, a radical Islamic Web site posted simple and specific advice on "How to Disable U.S. 'Joint IED Neutralizer.' "

For 45 days, with help from an Ionatron technical team, JIN was tested in the Pech River Valley in northeast Afghanistan. At one point, three senior officers said, the kill switch failed and the device continued to fire bolts of electricity. Steep mountain terrain and poor roads also proved difficult; one JIN rolled downhill and flipped over, the officers reported.

Last spring, Col. Chuck Waggoner, commander of Task Force Paladin, the counter-IED unit at Bagram Air Base, ordered that the tests be stopped. "We're shipping this thing out of theater," he said.

In an interview last week, Meigs said: "We went the extra mile on this thing."

Ionatron collected $16.7 million for JIN, a company executive said, but last year posted $18.3 million in operating losses, according to corporate financial statements. Company executives said inexperienced operators played a role in JIN's troubles. "We don't think it's either accurate or appropriate to describe our work as a constructive failure, or a failure in any way," said Dana Marshall, the company's new chief executive.

If JIN has retreated from the Afghan battlefield, the dream of a directed-energy countermeasure lives on. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) inserted $400,000 into the 2007 appropriations bill for further testing of JIN, which was supervised by the Marine Corps, according to Pentagon and congressional sources.

Defense officials say Ionatron is trying to combine JIN with a cylindrical mine roller used to detonate pressure-plate triggers in front of a convoy. The apparatus has been dubbed Joller. More tests are scheduled for mid-October, underwritten with $1.5 million from Meigs's organization.

Ionatron also has recently signed Navy contracts for work on laser energy, a company executive said, and for development of the "Dual Effect Standoff IED Neutralization System."

Still, the technical challenges remain profound. "The laws of physics are the laws of physics," said Macy, the rear admiral. "You don't have to like them, but you will obey them."