Standing Well Back
2010-2020

Explosives Protecting Surveillance Devices and Micro IEDs

Interesting development reported here and elsewhere   Basically a covert electronic surveillance device was discovered somehwere ‘interesting” in Iran which seemed to have had a Victim operated explosive penalty integral to it.  Poses interesting theoretical challenges for security staff and potential EOD response needed to a find of a suspected surveillance device.

Reportedly similar devices were discovered over the past couple of years in Lebanon, monitoring phone lines, and an associated explosive incident occurred, but it’s not entirely clear if the explosion in that case was directly integral to the surveillance device or dropped from the sky.

Of course there is a common likely perpertrator in both the Lebanese and Iranian incidents, but the potential threat of an explosive device to reduce the evidence associated with the electronic eavesdropping remains whoever the perpertrator is.

I think there are also some intreresting deeper aspects to this, namely:

a. Is the purpose to deter searchers?

b. Or to destroy sensitive components? – if so what’s so sensitive that it needs destroying?

c. How would your design a surveillance device with an associated explosive payload so that it was certain to destroy the component you are concerned about.

d. What are the EOD implications of such a design.

Seperately, the fascinating accusations that Siemens components sold to Iran had small quantities of explosives (and presumably an initiation system) hidden within them is intruiging. Siemens deny even selling the components. But let’s guess that someone in the West provided a component with hidden micro devices in them for sabotage…. and that’s a fascinating concept.

 

 

19th Century

US Made “Trojan Horse” IED Used Against the British in 1813

Another interesting booby trap IED set by our American cousins against the Brits:

The United States Congress decided to encourage private citizens to get involved in the war effort. In March 1813, they passed legislation encouraging the development of weapons and tactics designed to disrupt the blockade. John Scudder, Jr., a New York businessman, soon rose to the challenge. He outfitted a schooner named “Eagle” with kegs of gunpowder, sulfur, turpentine, and two flintlock firing devices, which were attached to two barrels of flour on deck. If either barrel were to be moved, the entire vessel would be detonated. The boat was filled with a standard load of provisions, then sailed toward the mouth of the Sound.  It arrived off Millstone Point on June 25, 1813, and dropped anchor. The crew headed for shore as a British boarding party approached, then fired on the boat.  The boarding party, to save themselves and the schooner, cut the anchor line and sailed back toward safety. The Americans had planned on this, assuming that the British navy would tie the prize to HMS Ramillies. Instead, the Eagle was tied to another recently captured vessel. That afternoon, one of the flour barrels was moved, causing a massive explosion that destroyed both the Eagle and the boat it was tied to, killing a second lieutenant and ten British sailors in the process.

What is it about these New Yorkers?  : – )

 

China

Early Chinese Victim-Operated IEDs

I’ve been “following my nose” looking for some early historical uses of victim operated or booby trap IEDs and found an interesting reference to an intriguing Chinese IED of the 14th century.  While there are references to both command and victim operated IEDs in China a century earlier (connected to war against Kubla Khan’s Mongols) there is a Chinese text called the Houlongjing (Fire Dragon Manual) from around 1350 which contains some fascinating detail of booby trap IEDs and their initiation system.

 

The Huolongjing describes IEDs constructed from iron spheres filled with gunpowder, and within a range of other IEDs describes two of particular note, translated as the “ground thunder explosive” and the “self-trespassing” types.  The text says the following:

These mines are mostly installed at frontier gates and passes. Pieces of bamboo are sawn into sections nine feet in length, all septa of the bamboo being removed, except the last; and it is then bandaged round with fresh cow hide tape. Boiling oil is next poured into the tube and left there before being removed (I’m guessing these measures are to waterproof the container.)   The fuse starts from the bottom of the tube and the explosive (blackpowder) is compressed into it to form an explosive mine. The powder fills up eight tenths of the tube, while lead or iron pellets take up the rest of the space:, then the open end is sealed with wax. . A trench five feet in depth is dug (for the device to be concealed). The fuse is connected to a firing device which ignites when disturbed.

The Houlongjing then describes an initiation mechanism for this device as consisting of a steel wheel, which directed sparks onto the connection of fuses running to the buried explosive charges. That alone is interesting, but a further Chinese document of 1606 adds detail, about a flint connected to the steel wheel and the steel wheel being driven by a weight drive. There appears to have been some sort of pin release caused by the victim stepping on a flexible board, which releases a weight on a string. The string is wrapped around the axle of the steel wheel or wheels , to which a flint is attached. The flint rotates round striking a steel, causing a spark, which initiates the IED.

There’s a connection here to the invention of the wheel-lock mechanism by Leonardo da Vinci in about 1500. I’m pretty certain that as well as being used as the initiation mechanism for muskets, wheel-locks began to be used as IED initiation systems in the late 1500s.  Of course too there is a link between the weight drive of the Chinese IED and the development of weight driven clocks with escapements.  Technology development is interesting when various aspects run in parallel.

There are some detailed diagrams of the initiations systems in the Houlongjing but I confess I can’t yet make head nor tail of them.

20th Century

Martini-Henry and Other IED Initiation Systems

My friend Ian Mills  has studied the South African origins of the Martini-Henry triggered IEDs, (discussed in the two earlier posts below) and written about it in the British Army Review. I’ll try and get permission to copy his article here, but that may not be possible.  The Boer IED team were led by a former British boy-soldier turned deserter, Captain Jack Hindon, but Ian describes the IED design as liekly being the work of one Carl Cremer, a fellow Boer.  Interestingly while on a posting to South Africa, Ian had the opportunity to conduct some trials on the Martini-Henry trigger system (real Martini-Henry, real trains!) and found it worked just fine.  He also found reference to the Hindon gang using “copper wire” as a pull switch command mechanism

In looking at this I have found reference (albeit unclear and vague) of pressure initiated IEDs used in the US Civil war to attacks trains on railroads.   IED use in the US civil war was very extensive and I have blogged about it before a little, here. I keep finding extensive Civil War references to electrical initiated IEDs, victim operated or target operated devices, (often friction pull switches) and the like for both land and water based IEDs (called torpedoes in the vernacular of the time.).   There’s a lot on intersting development in waterproofing under-water IEDs.  I have just found a good description of a “horological torpedo” or timed IED used successfully by Confederate forces.  As an example see the image below of electrically in initiated command wire IEDs from 1862, recovered by Union forces in Kentucky.

I’d be grateful if any of my US colleagues who might be able to help to write about US Civil War IEDs (you know who you are!) and post as guest blogs.  There’s a lot of open source information out there but you guys can probably dig a little further.  There are interesting connections to be made….

20th Century

Garland’s first IED attack

I continue to be interested by the story of Herbert Garland detailed in this blog a couple of weeks ago.   I have found some more details here (the primary source being Garland’s own reports held in the UK National Archives) of Garland’s adventures.  Garland had a very dry sense of humour and his reports are full of droll phrases.

Some examples:

Garland went to the town of Yanbu in what is now Eastern Arabia to help the Arab revolutionaries defend it against the Turks.  The defences were short of firepower, but Garland found an ancient Turkish cannon at the fort but as it “was apt to fire astern instead of forward we relied on its warlike appearance to help us scare off the Turks”

Here’s his own words describing  the first IED attack on the railway at Toweira station, I think on the night of 20 February 1917. After a week’s camel ride to the attack point, Garland argued over the tactics for the IED attack with his Arab guide. The guide wanted him to place the device and then scarper, but garland wanted to watch the explosion from a nearby hill. As Garland says “The approach of the train five minutes after starting work settled the matter.”

The trains rarely ran at night which was the cause for surprise. Garland, hearing the shriek of a whistle followed by the squeal of wheels was startled. He scrabbled for the three 5 pound cartons of dynamite which he jammed into the hole under the track he had started excavating.   He pulled from under his black Arab cloak the action of the old Martini Henry rifle. Its barrel had been sawn off and the trigger guard removed so that all that was left was an oblong of brown steel from which the trigger protruded, exposed.  This he loaded with a round of ammunition.. Turning the mechanism upside down, so the trigger was uppermost he wedged it under the rail, bullet pointing into the explosive, trigger brushing the rail above.  The lights of the engine were now close, barely two hundred yards away, travelling at, he guessed, 25 mph.  He got up and ran “ I wished I had devoted more time to physical training in my youth,” he says. His Arab robe swirled around his legs, as if determined to trip him up. Beneath his bare feet, the stony ground felt like ”carving knives, bayonets and tin tacks”.

As the locomotive’s front wheels passed over the device , nothing happened, but a split second later the heavier driving wheels of the train flexed the track enough to pull the trigger.  The explosion threw the train from the track, followed by the carriages behind it as they fell down a stony embankment with a “clanking, whirling and rushing” noise.   It was “the first time that the Turks have had a train wrecked” he reported. Some commentators have said it was the first ever act of sabotage committed by the British Army behind enemy lines.  I’m not sure of that – its an interesting thought – if any reader of this blog can think of an earlier sabotage attack by the British, please let me know.

 I’m truly fascinated that Garland was copying, in part, the IED design used by the Boers some 15 years earlier.  I’ve blogged an image of that Boer device before – but here it is for ease.  Somewhat different but very similar in many ways.

I’m intrigued as to how Garland learned about and decided to copy the Boer IED.  The concept of using a bullet fired from a gun as an initiation mechanism was not that unusual – indeed some of the fenian devices of the 1880s used a similar principle.

In looking closely at the role of the Arab Bureau, of which Garland and Lawrence were part a couple of interesting things come out:

Firstly, while I admire Garland’s efforts immensely, of course I’m torn because essentially he was planting IEDs and I’m normally interested in defeating IEDs and view with contempt those who plant them so there is a dichotomy there that I’m struggling with.

If you were to think of modern day night vision images of local terrorists  planting roadside IEDs being planted next to a road in Iraq or Afghanistan there is very little difference between that and the descriptive image Garland gives of himself scuttling away from the railway track near Toweira in 1917.

Separately I’m intrigued as to the parallels with the Arab Bureau and modern day “special forces operations” in terms of working within a country aiding revolution, identifying future leaders amongst a revolution, encouraging the right people, discouraging the “wrong” people, and enduring battle alongside indigenous forces.   Garland and indeed Lawrence didn’t regard themselves “special forces” and were essentially amateur, but there is no doubt that the paradigm they developed by the seat of their pants is identical to certain SOF principles being developed (again) today.

Next I’m going to hunt out details of Garland’s grenade launcher.

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