JIEDDO emerges from wars as combat support agency.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* In May, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization was given a new name and a permanent place in the Pentagon bureaucracy under acquisition, technology and logistics at the office of the secretary of defense.

That ended years of speculation as to the fate of the organization that was created specifically to tackle the scourge of roadside bombs in the early days of the Iraq war.

Now called the Joint ImprovisedThreat Defeat Agency (JIDA), it will expand its role beyond lEDs to other emerging non-conventional weapons that could be employed against U.S. forces, its leaders said at the Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Symposium in Bethesda, Maryland.

The updated mission statement said JIDA will enable Defense Department actions to counter improvised threats with tactical responsiveness and anticipatory acquisition in support of combatant commanders' efforts "to prepare for, and react to, battlefield surprise in support of counter-terrorism, counterinsurgency and other related mission areas including counter-improvised explosive devices."

Army Col. Rich Edwards, chief of strategy, plans and policy at JIDA, said, "counter IED will remain our stock and trade as we continue to develop our contributions to these other mission sets and look to identify those networks that are pursuing disruptive technologies that will attempt to negate our battlefield advantage."

Clandestine tunnels and countering unmanned aerial vehicles are two missions beyond improvised explosive devices that the organization might tackle, he added.

JIDA is still being stood up. It is aiming to reach its initial operating capability by October 2016 and to be staffed and ready for full operations by October 2017, he said.

"We have a bit of a way to go to get to our IOC date, but I think we have a pretty good pathway through the next year to merge into traffic and become an enduring organization for the Department of Defense," Edwards said.

Its new director Army Lt. Gen. Michael H. Shields, JIEDDO's former deputy director of operations and requirements, was confirmed in late July.

JIEDDO was created in February 2006, growing out of two separate task forces that were attempting to "stop the bleeding" as insurgents in Iraq--and later Afghanistan--were effectively using roadside bombs against U.S. troops, allies and civilians. Its overarching mission was to defeat IEDs "as a strategic weapon of influence," Government Accountability Office documents said.

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