Roadside bomb use will drop, general says

WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) -- The number of roadside bomb attacks against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan will likely drop by the end of the year, a Pentagon general said.

Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, chief of the joint Improvised Explosive Devices Defeat Organization, said its counterinsurgency strategy will be fully implemented, troops will have better equipment to counter the bombs and more bomb-planting insurgents will have been killed, USA Today reported Monday.

"If those three elements come into play, and I do think they will, my estimate is that we should see a turn down in the IEDs' effectiveness and number sometime six months from now," Oates said. "The confluence of those three factors is going to have a significant effect on the enemy. It will improve our ability to operate."

The use of IEDs is the top killer of U.S. troops and the insurgents' preferred weapon, he said.

James Carafano, a military expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told USA Today the threat of IEDs is "overblown." While a reducing their effectiveness is good, it would lead insurgents to switch to other forms of attack, he said.

Defeating the insurgency is the key to limiting IEDs, said John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, is implementing insurgency countermeasures that involve protecting Afghan civilians.

"But IEDs, like bullets, are now an enduring feature of modern warfare that all future commanders and force planners will have to deal with forevermore," Nagl said.