Mitigate IED threat by Leveraging an Effect-based Approach

Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs have proven to be the insurgency’s most effective method to date in Iraq and Afghanistan for countering the military superiority of coalition forces. Their consequences are devastating to coalition troops and their use derails Combatant Commanders from establishing security, stability, and paving the way to meet U.S objectives. DoD has spent billions of dollars looking at ‘hardware’ solutions to the IED problem, but the positive results have been short lived. Clearly, to succeed against IEDs in present and future conflicts requires more than a pure military ‘hardware’ solution. The key is to understand the root cause and effect relationships motivating and enabling terrorist activities. To this end, Securboration is teaming with Dr. Eugene Santos from Dartmouth College to develop the Effects-Based Approach to Neutralizing IEDs, or EBANI. The concept is an effects-based computational model that incorporates cultural, motivational, historical, political and economic root causes throughout assessment, what-if analysis, and prediction of terrorist activity. While EBANI focuses on the IED threat, IEDs are basically a tool terrorists are using in an attempt to achieve their goals. The effects-based techniques in EBANI are also applicable to countering the terrorist’s next, currently unforeseen weapon.