Pentagon: Six-month Push Against Roadside Bombs

ANNE GEARAN

OSHKOSH, Wis. (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he will lead an intensive push for new ways to defuse the threat from homemade bombs, the crude ambush weapons that account for eight in 10 casualties in Afghanistan.

"The best solution isn't always the most elaborate," Gates told workers assembling rush orders of a new armored combat truck that, like many of the bombs themselves, is an improvisation.

With numerous offices and agencies working on ways to find and protect against booby-trap bombs, Gates said he wants a brainstorming review across the Defense Department that would last about six months. He will get a monthly report on the progress, Gates said.

The weapon of choice for insurgents in Iraq, improvised bombs once were unheard of in Afghanistan. Deaths among U.S. and NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan have risen sharply as insurgents there learned to adapt the bombs to Afghan terrain, and as the military's technology sometimes failed to keep up.

In September 2009, the Pentagon counted 106 effective attacks that killed 37 coalition service members and wounded 285 more. Two years earlier there were 19 successful attacks.