A Primer on Bomb Jamming
If you’ve been watching the news reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you may have heard reporters or pundits referring to the American practice of “bomb jamming” when troops are on the road in convoys between battles. These two terms together make little sense to the civilian American, however, so here are a few important details about the practice and what you need to know.
What is bomb jamming?
If you’ve ever tried to make a phone call while you sit in traffic at the end of the day, you’re no doubt familiar with the message that says, “all circuits are busy, please try your call again later.” That’s because the cellular towers are overloaded and there are too many radio signals flying through the sky for your call to be made successfully. Essentially, this is what the American military is trying to accomplish with a bomb jammer: make sure that any radio-frequency device cannot receive radio signals that make a bomb detonate and harm American troops in a convoy setting.
How does the military accomplish this?
Early on in the War on Terror, the military challenged private contractors to create radio jamming devices that would broadcast a large number of frequencies at the same time. They theorized that this would effectively shut down the wireless phones that were being used to detonate IEDs (improved explosive devices) remotely by terrorists. The early IED jammers were not successful, but improved technology has allowed the military and its contractors to produce small devices that, when enabled, broadcast a large amount of radio waves. These radio jamming devices are portable and will prevent almost any mobile phone on the market from registering even one bar of reception. That sends a bomb-detonating terrorist to voicemail — and voicemail can’t blow up a bomb.
What types of bombs does a bomb jammer neutralize?
Not every bomb can be neutralized by IED jammers. Only those bombs designed by terrorists to be activated via cellular phone detonation can be disarmed with this device. More traditional bombs, such as land mines, require no such remote detonation and are still a very real threat to troops in the Middle East. However, this convoy protection device has greatly improved American effectiveness in Iraq and Afghanistan and has helped to turn around the War on Terror.
How do these devices help troops in the War on Terror?
The goal of IEDs has always been to kill American troops before they could even get within close range of the terrorists they were sent to disarm and disband. With this convoy protection device now keeping troops safe between battles, they are able to take the fight directly to terrorist headquarters and campsites, rather than coming under siege during the trip. That means they’re increasingly effective at capturing and killing the enemy and that’s an excellent thing.