Bomb squads need the best tools available.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Technology Tomorrow

* Lt. Col. Percy "Wes" Rhone at a recent conference said Army explosive ordnance disposal personnel are currently using 13-year-old bomb suits.

The deputy chief of the Army EOD directorate lamented the fact that a typical acquisition program could take up to seven years, meaning by the time Army bomb technicians have new suits, the current generation will be 20 years old.

In the moments after the Boston Marathon terrorist attack, bomb squad personnel were forced to take pocketknives and slit open dozens of backpacks abandoned on the sidewalks by those who fled to make sure there were no secondary bombs. They did this without any personal protection.

Bomb squads--both military and civilian--deserve and need the very best technologies the nation can offer them.

There are two reasons: going face to face with a bomb is dangerous work and takes courage. Those who choose to go into this profession should have the best protection available.

Second, bombs have been for more than a century, continue to be, and will be for the foreseeable future, a terrorist's go-to weapon. From pipe bombs to car bombs, they are relatively easy to procure and die results can be deadly and devastating.

Yet teams on the ground that are charged with disposing of bombs seem to get the short shrift when it comes to technology.

Military EOD personnel have been waiting eight years for new bomb disposal robots, as a September National Defense article "Explosive Ordnance Disposal Robot Program at Risk of Collapse" spelled out.

Yet there have been no congressional hearings on this program and no Government Accountability office reports. It didn't make it into the 2015 GAO's annual assessment of selected weapons acquisition programs report.

Funding-wise, it's small potatoes in the Pentagon. It's technology that serves some 6,000 personnel. And yet everyone knows roadside bombs nearly brought the U.S. military to its knees in Iraq. The scourge was so bad the Defense Department created the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization to bring all its efforts under one roof and it was funded accordingly.

Now that there are few troops in the field, JIEDDO is no more. It has been replaced by the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency. The glass is either half empty or half full when it comes to this development. The organization does live on--an acknowledgment that IEDs are here to stay--although it will have to continue its mission with a sharply reduced budget.

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