Roadside bombs: an 'arms race' with no end in sight.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: DEFENSE WATCH

WHAT IF ROADSIDE BOMBS LURKED ON A STREET NEAR YOU?

While nobody really wants to contemplate that scenario, maybe defense contractors and government scientists should, suggests Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Douglas Stone.

Maybe, if those deadly improvised explosive devices that haunt U.S. troops in Iraq were aimed at school buses or commuters traveling on American roads, someone would have to come up with better ways to foil the attacks, Stone tells a roomful of contractors and scientists attending a conference in Washington, D.C.

Stone, who heads one of the Marine Corps' largest training organizations, conveys the frustration that military commanders experience in the war zone, where inescapably, almost on a daily basis, troops are killed and maimed by hidden explosives.

"I want to know the IED is there before we step on the IED," Stone tells the audience. If roadside bombs went off in your hometown, "I want you to think what you would want to know before your kids on a school bus hit an IED ... That's the answer I want."

More than three years after roadside bombs became the weapon of choice against U.S. troops in Iraq, the code for defeating them has yet to be cracked. Vehicles and troops have been weighed down with armor, and the Pentagon has spent billions of dollars fielding bomb-disarming robots, frequency jammers and other technologies. But the casualties continue to mount.

"Nobody knows the right answer," says a military officer who works closely with U.S. commanders.

Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. forces in the Middle East, called for a "Manhattan Project" to conquer IEDs. In response, the Defense Department two years ago created the "joint IED defeat organization," led by a one-star general. No major breakthroughs were achieved, so the Pentagon upgraded the agency, boosted its budget to more than $3 billion, and appointed a four-star general to lead it. But so far, there is little evidence that the additional money and stars have been enough to trump IEDs.

The United States, by far the most innovative culture in the world, is being out-innovated. Many experts and military leaders have acknowledged so, and wonder what can be done.

One obstacle often cited for slowing down progress is the plodding bureaucracy. The joint IED organization, critics contend, is physically too far removed from the war.

"Why isn't the primary technical effort in Kuwait or Iraq?" asks the officer, who requested that he not be quoted by name because of the...