Pentagon sending counter-IED group to Iraq as Islamic State attacks spike

A spike in IED attacks by the Islamic State group has prompted the Pentagon to ready its Joint IED Defeat Organization to train Iraqi security forces.

“We will be assisting with training in Iraq and with providing the assistance to the warfighters with situational awareness and analytics as we have in Afghanistan and as we did when we were in Iraq last time,” Lt. Gen. John Johnson, director of the Joint IED Defeat Organization, said in an interview with Defense One on Wednesday.

IED attacks perpetrated by the radical Sunni terror group killed more than 800 Iraqis and wounded close to 1,300 in October, the website reported.

“There’s a lot of assessment going on right now to see where are their skills, what’s the status of their equipment, that kind of stuff, so that we can … bring the right kind of training assistance to bear there to help them do the things that they’re clearly having to do right now,” Gen. Johnson told Defense One.

The officer added that the difficulty in combating IEDs is the ever-changing technology and tactics used by those creating the bombs. With each innovation in detecting and diffusing IEDs made by JIEDDO, terrorists respond in time with new destructive devices.

“[I]t’s a problem that is not going away and … in whatever the next inevitable conflict is going to be, we’re going to see the use of IEDs,” Johnson said.

Gen. Johnson did not provide Defense One with JIEDDO’s deployment date.