IED Trends: Turning Tennis Balls Into Bombs
From the post:
Terrorists are relentlessly evolving tactics and techniques for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), and analyzing reporting on IEDs can provide insight complementary to HUMINT on emerging militant methods. Preparing for an upcoming webcast with our friends at Terrogence, we found incidents using sports balls, particularly tennis balls and cricket balls, more frequently appearing as a delivery vehicle for explosives.
When we break these incidents from the last four months down by location, the city of Karachi in southern Pakistan stands out as a hotbed. There is also evidence that this tactic is being embraced around the globe as you can see sports balls fashioned into bombs found from Longview, Washington in the United States to Varanasi in India.
We can use Recorded Future’s Web Intelligence platform to plot out the locations where incidents have recently occurred as well as the frequency and timing.
Interesting but the military, by their stated doctrines, should be providing this information in theater specific IED briefings.
See for example: FMI 3-34.119/MCIP 3-17.01 IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICE DEFEAT
On boobytraps (the old name) in general, see: FM 5-31 Boobytraps (1965), which includes pressure cookers (pp. 73-74) and rubber balls (p. 87).
Topic maps offer over rapid dissemination of “new” forms and checklists for where they may be found. (As opposed to static publications.)
Interesting that FM 5-31 reports an electric iron as boobytrap, but an electric iron is more likely to show up on Antiques Roadshow than as an IED.
At least in the United States.