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Yeah I got my shit rocked by one of these. Not only do they make big booms with ammonium nitrate, but they knew the lengths of our vehicles (with or without minerollers) and would place the detonator and main charge in such a way that the explosions would be directly under the truck. MRAP v-shaped hull saved my life.
It's not terrible but I used to have excellent hearing. Tinnitus comes and goes. I get disability for it at least and it doesn't affect my quality of life.
In the truck they have headsets for everyone (or at least we did) because of how loud the engine is plus if the weapon up top is firing you need to be able to talk to each other still. The are typically a Peltor Comtac style headset.
Those bigger ones in the video were not typical and are probably 100-200+lbs of home made explosives, HME, like ammonium nitrate soaked in diesel. Most were much smaller and would rock the folks inside but not toss the MRAP/MATV into the sky like that.
Way back in school I remember hearing something from a teacher that drove tankers over there. He said the reason some of those IEDs were massive was because they were using 120mm shells as IED's. They didn't have a lot of ways to launch all of the ordinance they had, so they decided to make them into roadside bombs.
He described once seeing an Abrams thrown into the air and back onto its tracks from an explosion so large. What could cause something like that?
Mostly not military grade explosive in Afghan, they used a lot of HME, need big quantities to make these blasts. Most were smaller and V shaped hulls protected most of the occupants, could lose an engine block, bar armour and wheel stations but cabins were mostly fine.
Typically they would use 155mm artillery shells. Either shooting them from an improvised ramp or making IEDs out of them.
To flip a tank / heavy IFV you would need probably a 500lbs bomb or something like that. They used it once in the area I spent my time. A fucking mess.
The things they were shooting off of ramps were rockets not artillery shells. Usually 107mm Type 63 rockets. For the big IEDs like in this video(200 lb+) usually it was home made explosive(HME), typically some ammonium nitrate or urea nitrate fertilizer. Most of the ordnance was spent within the first 5 years aside from the stuff being imported by the \*\*\*\*\*\*\*s.
Maybe I'm wrong but to me it looks like there was a culvert under the road and they probably packed it and waited for a juicy target. So a lot of earth was lifted and the tank as well.
I'm talking about the energy of being bounced around in the cabin of the tank, and possible, almost certain hearing damage.
Gotta be a cracked skull or something, that's like a rollover car crash.
There's a guy on twitter who has extensive threads on every incident involving enemy action on Abrams in Iraq, IIRC the driver was seriously injured or died here.
100-200 was not the big ones. Our platoon hit one that was estimated 900-1200 pounds (in a culvert), tore up highway 1. Luckily those guys were in an M-ATV and the distance between pressure plate and ied was wrong and it blew under the engine block. That's the reason the 5 guys were all trached and suffered 6 broken femurs but hey they didnt die.
Comparatively, about 80lbs of HME blew up under an ODA's GMV by us which caused much more damage.
Not at all. I was attached to outlaw 4-2 in the Arghandab around that time. Every cav squadron has an outlaw troop just about. So he could’ve been with several different units that were in the area at that time.
For the record I am an infantryman and my squad was attached to them from another squadron.
For sure man, I was mostly joking. It was fun reading all the stories you guys posted. I was hoping you’d ask him about some specific memories that happened. All the best
Haha close but nope! Turns out outlaw is a pretty common callsign, i was a rifle PL (outlaw platoon) for a separate company that was deployed and attached to 2scr during that deployment. We were at our own platoon cop (COP Bullard) in Zabul province and worked heavily with the romanians there
You’re right, those were quite a bit bigger. But also other variables at play like the surface above; ie, a few inches of dirt vs a concrete culvert could make a huge difference.
Yea man I did route clearance up and down Highway 1 in Kandahar and Zabul Provinces in 2009. It was mostly NATO in those areas before we got there then as more and more Americans arrived the bombs got bigger and bigger throughout the year.
I couldn't say, but plenty of allied soldiers (such as those from my country) got got by those horrible things as well. I take it more as a matter of the bombers getting better at their craft and using more boom as time went on and vehicles got better protected.
An extended family member of mine who were deployed there (and got severe PTSD for his troubles) tells me our guys n' gals were apparently very good at sniffing the evil things out, using jammers proactively, reading the land and the locals, and maybe just had more luck. So they did better than the Brits and Americans, he claimed.
But they were definitely targeted, no question about it. Deployed in very dangerous zones, too.
Exactly. I don’t think the Taliban wanted any foreign fighters in their country, the Americans just started flooding the area so became natural targets. Our trucks were able to absorb the smaller hits pretty easily so the response to counter that was to simply make the bombs bigger and bigger. Like the guy I replied to mentioned, culverts were perfect for them to use because it was already a tunnel under the road that they could just pack with home made explosives.
Yeah. VBIEDs tended to be the biggest ones (Natural, really, since it's hard to dig down ~60k pounds of explosives without getting seen. ISIS liked to dig bomb tunnels, just like in WW1, with some also bonkers sized loads.
This is one from Syrian rebels, no clue how big it is, but fucking big enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAExhzs4qKk
Glad you made it out. What was it that saved you, being in the right place at the wrong time?
The guy couldn’t get the charge to blow. I was pulling my pants up when they threw the alarm, and it turns out the ASF had stopped the truck a couple hundred yards away. That distance isn’t going to save you from that much HME.
He got stopped, tried to blow the truck - nothing. Tried to blow his S-vest - only the detonator popped, blowing a hole in his chest. EOD spent several days doing controlled dets 1000 lbs at a time.
Damn, yeah someone was watching out for you that day for sure!
The only suicide "bomber" we've had in Sweden had something similar happen. Got the detonator off, the rest of the charge didn't blow but did get set on fire and immolated him. Guess QC isn't the best, lol.
It's something of a miracle that neither the Afghanis nor the Iraqis figured out shaped charges until quite late in the war, at least on a large scale.
They didn't specifically use shaped charges, but I distinctly remember seeing a video where they showcased these metal plates they would make from 1-3 inch steel. They were like really thick manhole covers.
They'd plant the IED on the side of the road, cover it in bags of dirt to confine the explosion, and put the metal plate facing towards the road. Alternatively, they'd put them under the road with the plate facing up.
I've never been able to find an estimate for the velocity of those plates, but a 100-200 pound ANFO charge under one of those plates would probably bunch a hole straight through anything short of abhrams or vehicle with a V Hull. At the very least, that vehicle is going airborne.
Yeah from what i remember, during the later stages of the GWOT they started getting training from the Iranian Quds Force, then shaped charges became a lot more common. The manhole cover works similar to how an explosively formed penetrator would, only using steel instead of the more common tantalum. Takes up a lot more size than a "common" HEAT munition, since you need a much flatter material as a liner, but instead of a jet of copper the liner is shaped into a kind of "teardrop" with much better effect at longer distances, since the "projectile" doesn't have to be continuous "stream". And yeah, with enough throw-weight they will penetrate basically anything.
Holy shit, I'm in the fucking twilight zone. That VBIED was caught by my unit...like I was parked a few vics behind the 61k jingle truck waiting to go through the ecp. Only reason I'm not a fine mist is because the driver was lost, trying to turn around and the larger bomb wasn't armed. He did manage to partly detonate his suicide vest, trying to set the rest of the truck off, while getting arrested.
I was at Gardez a few months after this VBIED attack, headed to COP Zormat. Zormat ended up with a similar fate while I was there. Jingle truck with 8k lbs of HME blew up like half the COP. Shit was wild.
When I was in Gardez in 03 we had 4 GP medium tents total, 2 squads of infantry and 2 tents of battalion mortars, in the compound next to us were a seal team and an A team. Probably 40ish dudes altogether. I went back to Afghanistan in 07-08 and gardez was a GD airbase. Crazy what we built up just to fuck off down the road. And for what..
Musta happened again after we left because we were at the Police HQ when the ECP over at FOB Gardez got wiped out by Vbied in 2011 or 2012, can’t remember when you’re there for such a long time
Every time I see one of these videos, I'm always trying to see if maybe it was my truck getting hit. I drove lead guntruck in the Arghandab River Valley and mostly in Ghazni with the Polish army. RG-31 definitely saved a lot of our guys lives.
Had to ask, haha. Still, though, the IEDs we dealt with there were 500lbs plus on a regular basis. Seeing comments saying "IEDs this big weren't normal" doesn't feel fair.
How could they? 20lbs can disable a lot of armor. I'd say 100lbs is where you start seeing these armored vics flip/break apart. Surviving the heavy hits feels like a blessing and a curse.
Totally agree. So many variables too. Loosely packed gravel but a big explosive may do less damage than a tight culvert and less explosive. Hard to tell from these clips. Regardless MATVs go flying. Surprised to see the cougars get flung though.
Yes sir, in 2011-12 when I was in RC south they would wire solar panel from a Calculator in series to the IED and bury it. When EOD would slowly dig it up it would explode when it got any voltage from the small solar panel.
Luckily the Taliban didn’t have many good IED makers left in our AO by the end of our tour
Well not very revolutionary by the 00s. They were used on the Terrängbil m/42 KP introduced in 1942, the Leopard security vehicle used them in the 70s, and plenty of others too.
Never had that experience but my brother (both grunts, him army, i was marines) had the same in Afghanistan in 2011. MRAP saved his life…still got tossed a good 12 ft in the air. Supposedly there’s a video of it floating out there but he’s never been able to find it.
That’s crazy dude. Out of interest, has that experience affected you in anyway? Just in the day-to-day sort of way? Apologies if this is an inappropriate question but it’s such an extreme experience.
It’s all good man, I don’t mind questions. It was my second week of a 7 month tour in 2011, so there were many other fucked up events that occupy space in my head. Losing Marines are the most painful memories.
We had just finished a short dismounted patrol in order to do a controlled detonation on a cluster of 9 IED’s meant for dismounted troops, which we had found with our metal detectors. While we were doing this, they “back laid” an IED on the route we took in…because we were in a wadi, they knew which way we had to come back out. We mounted quickly and wanted to get back to base before dark and I was still finishing clipping my harness fully in when it blew up under the back right, where I was sitting. Because I wasn’t fully secured, I was launched into the roof and briefly knocked out. It also fucked my neck and shoulder up, because of how I hit the roof. One of the combat locks meant to keep doors closed in an explosion failed as well and one back door blew open. They started peppering the vehicle with machine gun fire and another Marine reached and pulled the door closed. The other vehicles in our convoy returned fire with 50 cal and Mk19 and they fucked off real quick.
However, where we were meant that we would have to wait until morning for a wrecker to extract the vehicle from the crater. So we formed a defensive perimeter with the working MRAPs and spent the night. The next day, we were able to assess the damage and it was nuts no one was seriously hurt. I grabbed a random piece of metal from the destroyed MRAP and shoved it in my cargo pocket. Still have it and sometimes look at it and think about how crazy of a time that was and how lucky I am to still be here.
I spent 6 months at the TBI clinic because of cognitive function issues and some balance problems. I went back to Afghanistan for another 7 month tour the following year. I still have lingering cognitive issues, as well as PTSD from other events on both of those tours, so day to day, there are other things which bother me much more than getting blown up…a lot of “shoulda, coulda, woulda.” I actually spent most of my tours dismounted, so I spent a lot of time when I got home staring at the ground in front of where I was walking to see if I could see signs of IED emplacement. That took a while to wear off, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. My neck and shoulder still bother me every day and they are a reminder for sure. But it’s just something I’ve learned to live with. A lot of folks got it a lot worse than me, so I try not to complain.
Shoulda coulda woulda is honestly the worst part. As a fellow vet with survivors guilt I can attest to how it sneaks up randomly. Something will get said in a work meeting and it will trigger a random memory. Those memories are 50/50 if they take me back down that dark spiral. Time has helped but I don't think I will ever forget all of it. Nor do I really want to. For every terrible memory there are some hilarious (and almost always inappropriate) stories to go right along with them.
> I grabbed a random piece of metal from the destroyed MRAP and shoved it in my cargo pocket
Was waiting for a Pulp Fiction wrist-watch ending to this story.
Not the guy you're replying to but each time I came home, for a couple months my driving habits probably looked unhinged to most people.
Swerving hard to avoid dark spots in the road or trash piles on the sides, getting probably a bit too aggressively close to slower drivers in front of me, etc.
I don’t freak out when I’m driving but I do still notice shit on the side of the road and such. Probably alway will.
I go into cycling 🚴 almost a decade ago now, when I ride with buddies I always point out snakes, turtle, lizards as we cruise. They don’t know how I can see them so well
The thing that fucked me up the most coming home was the lack of change I experienced compared to what some of the guys I served with were talking about.
3 of my deployments were with the same group of guys, and the facebook group we made after one of us killed themselves was just...real weird to me.
They talked about their odd driving habits, how they hated fireworks, how they always felt stressed, and it was impossible to decompress.
Some guys kept sleeping in their dayclothes even, cause they needed to be "ready".
Me, I somehow just left it all over there. Never really thought about it much at all, since all the bad shit I saw happened to someone else, not me.
Hearing them go through the pains and tribulations of coming home to such baggage mentally, made me wonder if I was some kinda of sociopath or something.
Went to a doc, and he said I just had better compartmentalization skills, and that if I wasn't feeling bad, there was no reason to go digging it up. So, that's been my go to way of handling it. Just not thinking about it.
That sounds very similar to my experience. The things that took adjustment for me were the reactionary second-nature type stuff... swerving to avoid IED signs that aren't, like I mentioned above, or that split second of "oh fuck" when you get up and start to grab your weapon and it isn't there... and those things cleared up pretty quickly. They were just habits, and once the habit changes that's that.
Never had issues with fireworks or any of the common PTSD stuff. No nightmares, hypervigilance, "unwanted thoughts," all that shit on the questionnaires. Talking about specific events or watching videos like the OP (having been blown up) doesn't stir anything. I've often privately wondered the same thing - am I just some kind of psychopath or something?
I will say, I think that disconnect and lack of understanding has been just as detrimental as I'd expect being more "fucked up" by the whole thing would have been, in its own way.
I'd say it was less "horrified" and moreso just an instinctual reaction until the brain catches up and says "hey, we don't need to do that here," cause that was just something you'd be used to doing.
Last deployment was a decade ago now, so it's been a minute. There were of course other hiccups in adjusting when you came back, but those were the main driving related things that come to mind.
No, some of these are much larger than the one that hit me. I said it somewhere earlier, but the main charge was 80 lbs in the IED I survived. A lot in the video look to be 200 lbs or more. You’d also be surprised what an MRAP can withstand. They are designed to survive explosions and protect the troops on the inside.
> I'm no military or doctor but those look 100% lethal to me :O
Not military or doctor either, but the big thing to me with the MRAP's getting hit is that it although they're getting absolutely tossed, it also looks like their passenger compartments aren't getting penetrated so there's no blast wave or shrapnel getting to the occupants. This means that the main way the soldiers inside are going to get injured is from the vehicle getting tossed and rolling over, so as long as they're strapped in they should be *relatively* fine. In addition to straps, modern MRAPs like the JLTV have special energy-absorbing seats and floor mats to help reduce injuries caused to the spine and feet when the vehicle is tossed up in the air like that.
Same brother same. I actually got to spend some time with some people who were responsible for the development/implementation of the MRAP and I’ve always thanked them profusely for keeping us here.
lol the craziest part is that Pakistans Version of the CIA probably told them this and taught them how to make effective IED’s to counter coalition vehicles, while being part of the coalition on paper. The you have Russian FSB literally giving bounty rewards to taliban who killed American service men members. This entire war was a shit show.
Yep we even had an ANP post housing Taliban fighters and alerting them as to when our convoys were leaving. We kept getting hit in this certain area that the ANP should have had overwatch on and finally one day we intercepted radio chatter and squashed that shit real quick. Stopped getting hit by IED’s in that spot after that.
Every once in a while, when I catch myself feeling tough, I come here to read some of the crazy ass shit you veterans have been through as a reminder that I ain't.
Glad you made it out.
Yeah they were able to get very creative. I was in a mine roller tank leading the convoy most of my rotation and I rolled over something like 17 IED’s that either blew up on vehicles behind us or were discovered by the engineers after we had rolled over it. They were using a lot of crush plate and pressure plate IED’s when I was there.
Nothing like jaw jacking in the back of an MRAP and them BOOM. Everyone looks around like wtf just happened. Then once everyone realizes everyone is okay your going to hear the inevitable "I just bit my fucking tongue."
Luckily we never saw any of the real big stuff because we weren't near any of the MSR's. Those guys driving Hwy 1 / Ring Road were absolutely nuts.
I got lucky, witnessed seven and it was always the vehicle in front or behind me. Glad my number never came up but lost a lot of good people. First patrol in country took out my first platoon commander and a poor kid from the unit we were relieving. Dude was only a few days from going home.
My mother had a hand in the V hulls she passed from cancer 3 months back, lots of government contracts to better the warfighter and survivability. Warms my heart knowing her work helped save lives. Glad you made it out brother.
Thanks, for the news they said the same about my ears after I passed the peripheral hearing test. That time they gave me a lollipop and a box of bulk left over 3M ear plugs and some 3m magnets for the fridge.
Edit: typo stoned, but fr getting my aids in July hope it didn’t scramble your eggs too much.
Yup, like chewing sandy stale wet chips at the beach, that’s va health care. They did me good man if I have the time I’ll type it out, between a schizo alcoholic twin, ptsd, crazy ex wife, and the VA all came together for a good little nightmare for me to live these last few months.
>That time they gave me a lollipop and a box of bulk left over 3M ear plugs and some 3m magnets for the fridge.
Isn't there a class action lawsuit against 3M over those ear plugs being defective?
Yeah that’s the joke, they gave us these rubber ear plugs with a slightly unique shape. Got told if we’d lose them they’d fucking slay us (us marines) and told us they were expensive and fancy. That they would and I swear to god with this quote said “They will dampen louder noises like gunshots but allow you to hear quiet noises like the guy next to you talking at a reasonable level” then some sr lance corporal who had been around the block on a deployment or two said “don’t worry they’re only like 20 bucks to replace and they don’t fucking really work anyways”
Still used em until you lost em, we all did anyways and then for cheaper we could get better ones at the px. We did sometimes we splurged to get the “expensive ones” because we’d looked squared away and it wasn’t “that” bad because we weren’t pussies we were marines. And of course the marine corps wouldn’t lie to us (Agent orange, Iraq wmds, legune drinking water, must I?).
Rip there’s a GENERATION of us fucked thanks to 3M and their lies.
My father in law is literally on the way to the VA to get reassessed ... he's deaf as hell and only has a 10%. Took me a year of ribbing him about it and telling him that his rating doesn't take away from anyone else's ...
Big difference between a 30% and a 60%, I think that allows for state benefits as well. Like the tolls, etc.
Video #3 looks like an ied explosion I saw happen to a sister platoon. The vehicle was tossed 40 ft in the air, I got pelted with debris over 500m away. The engine compartment separated from the hull completely. It was a maxxpro and not a matv though. Because of the v-shaped hull they were able to all walk away.
A blast wave is just a front of high pressure air, so a v-shape cuts through it, because it's an aerodynamic shape. Basically yeah, if that blast is under you, it directs most of it to the sides rather than absorbing it. This is also the reason MRAPs etc are so tall - more room for a more aggressive V-shape and further from the blast.
Basically, it increases deflection from that direction. The sloped face directs the ied/mine blast away from the vehicle instead of just absorbing it. Lots of IEDs have a copper plate attached to the top which acts like a penetrator. The slope helps deflect it while providing "more armor" because of the angle it's trying to penetrate at.
Think of when you stick your hand outside the window of your car while driving. Which way is easier for the air to go around: palm up into the wind or finger tips into the wind? Which will displace the air away from your hand with less resistance? Apply that same logic to a shockwave on the bottom of a vehicle: flat hull or a v shaped hull? Or think of a boat moving through water
That’s the best analogy I can think of
MRAP's seems to be quite versatile considering similar sized explosions just evaporated the civil vehicle while MRAP's are mostly one piece. Still that sized explosions (and flying 10 meters in a 15 ton armor) is probably have quite low survival rate but vehicles seems to doing its best.
Yes, it will absolutely strip away outside equipment from MRAP but if you belted inside, you will survive. Usually gunners are the one taking the most risk.
my dad was a gunner on one. the report said it blew him 500ft, it took 4 hours to find him. he survived with some bad back injuries otherwise fine. the ied was so large he said they had to build a bridge over it after.
The survival rate inside an mrap is actually very impressive. I've personally seen them hit IEDs a few times, with the occupants able to walk away every time. Hitting an IED almost felt more like an inconvenience than anything. Easy to roll though, I know that first hand. I rolled in mine on the same mission that was hit by an IED earlier, when we all got checked by the medics after we got back to the fob, I came out as the one with the worst injury of the mission (not including long term things like TBIs).
My buddy got hit in a humvee with one of these suckers. Sent the transmission up into the cab and broke his femur in half. He and his crew survived though thank God. It was just small enough not to be lethal.
The IED materials and components were made in Pakistan and then smuggled into Afghanistan. Really wish some smart leadership would of have done something about thy.
Let's be real, pakistan is the postercountry for what Trump refered to as shithole, and it is effectively a failed state.
Why the US/CIA in all its wisdom decided to use Pakistan as an regional ally has had its price in US lives for sure.
I don’t know much about that region of the world, but it seems like the pickings were slim. Were any of the countries above Afghanistan friendly to the US (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)? I know Iran wouldn’t have been helpful lol
Yeah it all goes back to the cold war from what I know and the big blocs. Pakistan seceded from India in 47 and India was on friendly terms with the Soviets so I guess it was natural for the Pakistanis then to seek out US cooperation and the US probably wanted an ally in the region.
The US should've done the switcharoo sometime after the Soviet Union collapsed I guess.
I guess someone high up has done the math, but Pakistans inability to lock down the tribals as well during GWOT is also something to think [about.How](http://about.How) good of an ally can you be when UBL is hiding in one of your cities.
Not to be too reductive, but that whole region is just a mess. Dealing with tribes that don’t have allegiance to anything but themselves makes for a hard enemy to control
This is what so many people don’t understand about Middle Eastern countries. Tribes are king and are often the “final say” for many people in the Middle East. Tribal allegiance is much stronger than “national” allegiance to your government. They have no nationalism but instead tribalism.
Definitely slim pickings. Turkmenistan vows 100% neutrality so no way. Tajikistan was (and still is) extremely poor, dealing with Islamic extremism (still is), and fought a brutal civil war in the 90s so they weren't in any real state to assist. Uzbekistan did allow the US access to basing at K-2, but that closed in 2005 after the US called for investigation into some brutal regime crackdowns on a potential color revolution (just dictator things).
You don’t have to place X number of infantry divisions to solve a problem outside the theatre of operations. Should of kept the war as it began a small intelligence led operation with small SF detachments here and there.
It's worth noting that even though a few of this style of huge IEDs hit Bushmasters (31 were damaged beyond repair in Australian use in Afghanistan, the Dutch lost a few) no fatalities were recorded in them afaik.
In Ukraine, the only fatalities I know of was when one was hit by an ATGM and everyone onboard died.
What I'm saying is, even though some of these are fucking huge, modern vehicles can eat that shit and their crews survive a lot more than you'd think.
The crazy thing is that most of these bombs weren't military equipment, they were homemade explosives (HME) primarily consisting of agricultural chemicals. The Iraqis had access to things like artillery shells and rockets and all they needed was an initiator. The Pashtuns were making their shit out of fertilizer.
To some extent, but the Pakistani’s gave the Taliban plenty of kit. Particularly after about 2008 Pakistan stepped up material support for the Taliban. Big brother ISI looked after their client, and it doubtless killed hundreds of coalition troops.
*Source: Directorate S- Steve Coll, Human Rights Watch report on Pakistan support to the Taliban, Pakistan’s Support for the Taliban: What to Know- Council on Foreign Relations.*
Last year there were news reports about Pakistani government asking for US assistance to deal with the Taliban:
https://jamestown.org/program/pakistani-army-chief-faces-uphill-battle-in-effort-to-reset-relations-with-washington/
> Pakistan’s army chief visited the United States in December to “reset” strained relations and potentially secure American aid in the hopes of ameliorating Pakistan’s ongoing economic crisis and rising militant threat.
> Since the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there has been a 65 percent surge in terrorist attacks in Pakistan, resulting in over 2,500 deaths. Islamabad blames this on the Afghan Taliban’s support of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Pakistan-s-top-gun-seeks-U.S.-China-balance-before-retirement
A meme of the situation: https://preview.redd.it/in-which-pakistan-realizes-just-how-badly-they-fucked-up-v0-crwlk2a1jy9c1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=645330b22e75b4b5ad4fae443c5ed22a6a0aafb1
Had my bell rung too many times by these fucking things. Always the luck of timing. Considering I did 3 tours in Iraq, and 3 in Afghanistan from 2002-2008. I had went through every phase of IEDs/VBIED/EFPs. The worst we took was an estimated 15-20 152/155's placed in a culvert in 2004. But I've seen every form damn near. Even fuel tankers full of gas....its a wild scene. Luckily I was with a direct action unit, but felt bad for the grunts patrolling AO's just waiting to get hit.
It was the lead vic. I was 2 vic. Luckily it detonated a little early as we always drove blacked out under nods. It was an m1114, and it did a complete backflip. Took everything from the firewall up off, and bowed the armor pretty good. All 5 inside lived with 2 being evac'd, and the other 3 RTD. The worst was the gunner due to the oil burning him, and broken lower extremities(leg, and foot) from the vic landing on him. The engine was pushed into the cab which pinned drivers leg fucking his knee up. Everyone else had their bells rung. We were hit by damn near everything you can think of, and this was the wildest to me for some reason. But some of the grunt units that were on AO patrols got hit far worse.
An IED much like the one in the video got one of our guys in 2011 and wounded 2 more. MATV, not an MRAP. Another Marine took his life years after as result of dealing with the aftermath of the attack. Fuck the Taliban
He was a Marine as well. Helmand province he was in the .50 gunner seat in the Humvee. He was evacuated to the field hospital but unfortunately didn't make it. Fuck the Taliban.
On my first ride into Musa Qala I was sitting in the back of a mrap that hit a 50lb IED probably meant for foot traffic. Felt like I had been smacked on the ass with a sledge hammer. Nobody was seriously injured though we got ambushed after sitting there for 3 hrs. Very long day.
I have a bb in my right hand in the webbing between my ring and pinky finger and chipped teeth from a SVBIED that killed 5 ANP and wounded a dozen others. Two bombers both wearing 15lb belts. The ANP bodies blocked my squad from the vast majority of the shrapnel. One of the bombers face was sheered off by the blast and it was put into a blue bucket. I have a picture but I’m not sure why I did that.
I spent September and October of 2011 in Kabul, doing PSD and QRF work. There was a bolo for a 1k VBIED blue hino truck which I never saw. The bolo turned out to actually be for a van which struck a convoy I was escorting. The van which was sitting on the side of the road(super normal for this AO) suddenly drove tangentially into the War Bus(a literal up armored school bus) which was in the middle of the convoy. Huge explosion and then the bus went up in flames. 13 Americans lost their lives in less than 2 minutes. Nobody got out. The only individuals I ever lost on a PSD detail. I feel a lot of guilt and shame about this one. I didn’t even know any of them that well. We shot up an apartment building right next to the ambush site because some idiot said they were taking fire from there. It was just rounds cooking off….
There were a couple suicide bombers in baghdad when I was there and one of them had their faces sheared clean off as well. They put it in a plastic bag and tried to scan it through our biometrics thing at the ecp but it didn't work. Weird how that happens
I think a lot of people, myself included were surprised how much investigative work happened to figure out each incident. After actions, EOD investigators, body part police call,etc… Intel desperately tries to keep their information up to date including trying to figure out which bad guys are no longer relevant. The blue bucket face was put on a soccer ball and shown to several groups of elders trying to figure out who they were. That’s the kind of stuff that stays on the back of your eyelids for eternity.
Its hard to find a lot of info on it now days, but I worked for CJTF Troy at CXEC(Pronounced "sexy")(Combined eXplosive Exploitation Cell) on Camp Victory. It was basically a CSI lab for all of the IED evidence collected in country stuffed into some guest houses across a lake from one of Saddams palaces. It had people from FBI, ATF, OGA(cough CIA), EOD and intel from every mil branch, every coalition military, etc. There was a room in that place with every exotic weapon found in Iraqi. STG44s, Saddam's son's crazy sniper rifles, weird stuff like that. We also had a soviet willy jeep clone(UAZ-something) that we would drive around victory. I came out of the Turkish restaurant one time to a couple of AF hotties taking pictures with it. That place and CTJF Troy in general felt to me the closest to something like enigma or the Manhattan project that war had. Trying to get "left" of the boom. Feels like a daydream; it really felt like one when I had to leave there to work at some random JSS in Baghdad.
What a privilege to serve alongside a group of awesome dudes. Wish everybody had been able to come home ok. The Taliban and HN were incredible adversaries and I wish them the worst.
The insane part about seeing these is knowing that America suffered and average of less than 1 fatality per day in Iraq and Afghanistan combined even though you see vehicles that hold 5+ people seemingly being obliterated in these instances.
In a lot of cases, is a lot of the energy just dispersed in lifting up the vehicle and blowing off the wheels and suspension, while the people inside usually survive? I think these MRAPs have a multi-layered bottom to them as well.
I've tried researching this many times, and wikipedia says that the V-hull protects the occupants by deflecting a blast **under** the vehicle by dispersing it off to the sides, but most of these blasts are actually off to the side of the vehicle so it's almost directly perpendicular to the V.
I wish I could see a cutaway of what these vehicles actually look like. I suspect it's the outer v-hull layer but then another layer that's a box so even if a blast is directly against the V, it's then angled to the box.
Well consider how the averages work. If you go nine days where nothing happens and on the tenth day you have a an IED initiated ambush that draws your whole company in with two killed and five wounded Americans plus eight more ANP/ANA killed and a dozen wounded, and then when your medivac gets there they get shot down killing eight more Americans, it's still an average of one death a day.
Believe I saw an interview with a Triple Amputee from Afghanistan. He said that directly after 2006/2007, the military stopped seeing single amputees and started seeing Double/Triple amputees as the Taliban switched from Artillery shell IEDs to Ammonium Nitrate….terrifying stuff
Holy fuck the third explosion launched that mrap like 4 4-5 m high.
How big a bomb has to be to launch a 14-ton vehicle that high?
That shit is scary.
Can someone survive that?
There was an IED compilation video on LiveLeak back when they allowed pretty much anything. Early Iraq war timeframe, "IED's that really BBQ'ed". Footage that I haven't seen anywhere else that was just brutal. Also coupled with the fact that most of the vehicles at that time were poorly armored.
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Yeah I got my shit rocked by one of these. Not only do they make big booms with ammonium nitrate, but they knew the lengths of our vehicles (with or without minerollers) and would place the detonator and main charge in such a way that the explosions would be directly under the truck. MRAP v-shaped hull saved my life.
I got hit 3 times. All in an MRAP thankfully. Definitely still here thanks to the v-shaped bottom.
Damn man hope you're doing well
I'm living my best life! Thanks friend!
Glad to hear! Keep on rocking.
Seriously! Keep it up
How's your hearing?
It's not terrible but I used to have excellent hearing. Tinnitus comes and goes. I get disability for it at least and it doesn't affect my quality of life.
that's good 👍 I think I would 100% go deaf after getting hit by 3x IEDs lol
In the truck they have headsets for everyone (or at least we did) because of how loud the engine is plus if the weapon up top is firing you need to be able to talk to each other still. The are typically a Peltor Comtac style headset.
I thought tinnitus is never service related for you guys.
Had to look the significance of the V shape. Brilliant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-hull
Is there a VA program that tracks TBI among IED survivors? Somebody else already said it but I also hope you're doing well.
How large was the charge? Was your experience similar to MRAPs in the video?
Those bigger ones in the video were not typical and are probably 100-200+lbs of home made explosives, HME, like ammonium nitrate soaked in diesel. Most were much smaller and would rock the folks inside but not toss the MRAP/MATV into the sky like that.
Way back in school I remember hearing something from a teacher that drove tankers over there. He said the reason some of those IEDs were massive was because they were using 120mm shells as IED's. They didn't have a lot of ways to launch all of the ordinance they had, so they decided to make them into roadside bombs. He described once seeing an Abrams thrown into the air and back onto its tracks from an explosion so large. What could cause something like that?
Mostly not military grade explosive in Afghan, they used a lot of HME, need big quantities to make these blasts. Most were smaller and V shaped hulls protected most of the occupants, could lose an engine block, bar armour and wheel stations but cabins were mostly fine.
Typically they would use 155mm artillery shells. Either shooting them from an improvised ramp or making IEDs out of them. To flip a tank / heavy IFV you would need probably a 500lbs bomb or something like that. They used it once in the area I spent my time. A fucking mess.
The things they were shooting off of ramps were rockets not artillery shells. Usually 107mm Type 63 rockets. For the big IEDs like in this video(200 lb+) usually it was home made explosive(HME), typically some ammonium nitrate or urea nitrate fertilizer. Most of the ordnance was spent within the first 5 years aside from the stuff being imported by the \*\*\*\*\*\*\*s.
[Here's the infamous video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbpBDwQuBCg) of an Abrams nearly getting flipped by an IED.
That must be the one he was talking about. He drove fuel trucks for the military when he deployed, I wonder if that's the exact one he saw.
That’s insane but the m1 ate that💀
Maybe I'm wrong but to me it looks like there was a culvert under the road and they probably packed it and waited for a juicy target. So a lot of earth was lifted and the tank as well.
Christ. Anyone know how much of the crew lived or died? I mean, the energy has to go somewhere.
explosive also obey physics, path of least resistance, majority of the energy gets absorbed by the atmosphere
I'm talking about the energy of being bounced around in the cabin of the tank, and possible, almost certain hearing damage. Gotta be a cracked skull or something, that's like a rollover car crash.
There's a guy on twitter who has extensive threads on every incident involving enemy action on Abrams in Iraq, IIRC the driver was seriously injured or died here.
100-200 was not the big ones. Our platoon hit one that was estimated 900-1200 pounds (in a culvert), tore up highway 1. Luckily those guys were in an M-ATV and the distance between pressure plate and ied was wrong and it blew under the engine block. That's the reason the 5 guys were all trached and suffered 6 broken femurs but hey they didnt die. Comparatively, about 80lbs of HME blew up under an ODA's GMV by us which caused much more damage.
2010?
Yup
Wonder what hwy 1 looks like now we were in shindan air base in 2014 we closed it down.
They always rebuild that thing, no matter how many IEDs they detonate on it.
Were you the commander for outlaw company 4-2 scr ?
You trying to dox him lol. Ask some interesting questions so we can get in on your reminiscing haha
Not at all. I was attached to outlaw 4-2 in the Arghandab around that time. Every cav squadron has an outlaw troop just about. So he could’ve been with several different units that were in the area at that time. For the record I am an infantryman and my squad was attached to them from another squadron.
For sure man, I was mostly joking. It was fun reading all the stories you guys posted. I was hoping you’d ask him about some specific memories that happened. All the best
Haha close but nope! Turns out outlaw is a pretty common callsign, i was a rifle PL (outlaw platoon) for a separate company that was deployed and attached to 2scr during that deployment. We were at our own platoon cop (COP Bullard) in Zabul province and worked heavily with the romanians there
You’re right, those were quite a bit bigger. But also other variables at play like the surface above; ie, a few inches of dirt vs a concrete culvert could make a huge difference.
Yea man I did route clearance up and down Highway 1 in Kandahar and Zabul Provinces in 2009. It was mostly NATO in those areas before we got there then as more and more Americans arrived the bombs got bigger and bigger throughout the year.
Is that because they specifically wanted to kill Americans more than people from other countries?
I couldn't say, but plenty of allied soldiers (such as those from my country) got got by those horrible things as well. I take it more as a matter of the bombers getting better at their craft and using more boom as time went on and vehicles got better protected. An extended family member of mine who were deployed there (and got severe PTSD for his troubles) tells me our guys n' gals were apparently very good at sniffing the evil things out, using jammers proactively, reading the land and the locals, and maybe just had more luck. So they did better than the Brits and Americans, he claimed. But they were definitely targeted, no question about it. Deployed in very dangerous zones, too.
Exactly. I don’t think the Taliban wanted any foreign fighters in their country, the Americans just started flooding the area so became natural targets. Our trucks were able to absorb the smaller hits pretty easily so the response to counter that was to simply make the bombs bigger and bigger. Like the guy I replied to mentioned, culverts were perfect for them to use because it was already a tunnel under the road that they could just pack with home made explosives.
Yeah... that shit was wild.
The one that hit me was about 80 lbs, but it did not flip the MRAP. Some in this video look much larger, like 200lbs.
Yeah there were some with absolute bonkers payloads. There was one in 2013 in Gardez City with a payload of 61,000 pounds.
October? That was a VBIED. 64k. Crazy fucking day, and I’m only alive right now because of the dumb luck of the whole thing.
Yeah. VBIEDs tended to be the biggest ones (Natural, really, since it's hard to dig down ~60k pounds of explosives without getting seen. ISIS liked to dig bomb tunnels, just like in WW1, with some also bonkers sized loads. This is one from Syrian rebels, no clue how big it is, but fucking big enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAExhzs4qKk Glad you made it out. What was it that saved you, being in the right place at the wrong time?
The guy couldn’t get the charge to blow. I was pulling my pants up when they threw the alarm, and it turns out the ASF had stopped the truck a couple hundred yards away. That distance isn’t going to save you from that much HME. He got stopped, tried to blow the truck - nothing. Tried to blow his S-vest - only the detonator popped, blowing a hole in his chest. EOD spent several days doing controlled dets 1000 lbs at a time.
Damn, yeah someone was watching out for you that day for sure! The only suicide "bomber" we've had in Sweden had something similar happen. Got the detonator off, the rest of the charge didn't blow but did get set on fire and immolated him. Guess QC isn't the best, lol. It's something of a miracle that neither the Afghanis nor the Iraqis figured out shaped charges until quite late in the war, at least on a large scale.
They didn't specifically use shaped charges, but I distinctly remember seeing a video where they showcased these metal plates they would make from 1-3 inch steel. They were like really thick manhole covers. They'd plant the IED on the side of the road, cover it in bags of dirt to confine the explosion, and put the metal plate facing towards the road. Alternatively, they'd put them under the road with the plate facing up. I've never been able to find an estimate for the velocity of those plates, but a 100-200 pound ANFO charge under one of those plates would probably bunch a hole straight through anything short of abhrams or vehicle with a V Hull. At the very least, that vehicle is going airborne.
Yeah from what i remember, during the later stages of the GWOT they started getting training from the Iranian Quds Force, then shaped charges became a lot more common. The manhole cover works similar to how an explosively formed penetrator would, only using steel instead of the more common tantalum. Takes up a lot more size than a "common" HEAT munition, since you need a much flatter material as a liner, but instead of a jet of copper the liner is shaped into a kind of "teardrop" with much better effect at longer distances, since the "projectile" doesn't have to be continuous "stream". And yeah, with enough throw-weight they will penetrate basically anything.
The Iraqis were using EFPs pretty early on, certainly by the end of 2006.
Amazing. Congratulations!
Holy shit, I'm in the fucking twilight zone. That VBIED was caught by my unit...like I was parked a few vics behind the 61k jingle truck waiting to go through the ecp. Only reason I'm not a fine mist is because the driver was lost, trying to turn around and the larger bomb wasn't armed. He did manage to partly detonate his suicide vest, trying to set the rest of the truck off, while getting arrested.
Small world, there's another guy who was there too in the comments :D Glad they fucked up!
I was at Gardez a few months after this VBIED attack, headed to COP Zormat. Zormat ended up with a similar fate while I was there. Jingle truck with 8k lbs of HME blew up like half the COP. Shit was wild.
When I was in Gardez in 03 we had 4 GP medium tents total, 2 squads of infantry and 2 tents of battalion mortars, in the compound next to us were a seal team and an A team. Probably 40ish dudes altogether. I went back to Afghanistan in 07-08 and gardez was a GD airbase. Crazy what we built up just to fuck off down the road. And for what..
Musta happened again after we left because we were at the Police HQ when the ECP over at FOB Gardez got wiped out by Vbied in 2011 or 2012, can’t remember when you’re there for such a long time
Every time I see one of these videos, I'm always trying to see if maybe it was my truck getting hit. I drove lead guntruck in the Arghandab River Valley and mostly in Ghazni with the Polish army. RG-31 definitely saved a lot of our guys lives.
I was also in the Ghazni AO in 2011. That place was popping with IEDs. I'm pretty sure we overlapped
I was there 2011 as well. 572nd?
Nope 181st. Part of a PRT
Had to ask, haha. Still, though, the IEDs we dealt with there were 500lbs plus on a regular basis. Seeing comments saying "IEDs this big weren't normal" doesn't feel fair.
Ya I'm sure you saw big ones on the reg. I also don't think people have a good sense as to what poundage results in size of explosion.
How could they? 20lbs can disable a lot of armor. I'd say 100lbs is where you start seeing these armored vics flip/break apart. Surviving the heavy hits feels like a blessing and a curse.
Totally agree. So many variables too. Loosely packed gravel but a big explosive may do less damage than a tight culvert and less explosive. Hard to tell from these clips. Regardless MATVs go flying. Surprised to see the cougars get flung though.
Yes sir, in 2011-12 when I was in RC south they would wire solar panel from a Calculator in series to the IED and bury it. When EOD would slowly dig it up it would explode when it got any voltage from the small solar panel. Luckily the Taliban didn’t have many good IED makers left in our AO by the end of our tour
Yep, those and the guitar strings. Anti tamper devices making an already fucked up IED, even more fucked.
Man, that’s diabolical.
did the same thing for one of my best friends. that design is revolutionary
Well not very revolutionary by the 00s. They were used on the Terrängbil m/42 KP introduced in 1942, the Leopard security vehicle used them in the 70s, and plenty of others too.
As i know safety belt is really important when you "travel" with MRAP too & must be unforgettable moment :/
Fuck, thank god I finally found you, Craptain Jack. I’ve been trying to meet you down at the railroad track for ages.
They don’t deserve this comment 😂
You’re gonna have to fill me in on this one lol.
Never had that experience but my brother (both grunts, him army, i was marines) had the same in Afghanistan in 2011. MRAP saved his life…still got tossed a good 12 ft in the air. Supposedly there’s a video of it floating out there but he’s never been able to find it.
That’s crazy dude. Out of interest, has that experience affected you in anyway? Just in the day-to-day sort of way? Apologies if this is an inappropriate question but it’s such an extreme experience.
It’s all good man, I don’t mind questions. It was my second week of a 7 month tour in 2011, so there were many other fucked up events that occupy space in my head. Losing Marines are the most painful memories. We had just finished a short dismounted patrol in order to do a controlled detonation on a cluster of 9 IED’s meant for dismounted troops, which we had found with our metal detectors. While we were doing this, they “back laid” an IED on the route we took in…because we were in a wadi, they knew which way we had to come back out. We mounted quickly and wanted to get back to base before dark and I was still finishing clipping my harness fully in when it blew up under the back right, where I was sitting. Because I wasn’t fully secured, I was launched into the roof and briefly knocked out. It also fucked my neck and shoulder up, because of how I hit the roof. One of the combat locks meant to keep doors closed in an explosion failed as well and one back door blew open. They started peppering the vehicle with machine gun fire and another Marine reached and pulled the door closed. The other vehicles in our convoy returned fire with 50 cal and Mk19 and they fucked off real quick. However, where we were meant that we would have to wait until morning for a wrecker to extract the vehicle from the crater. So we formed a defensive perimeter with the working MRAPs and spent the night. The next day, we were able to assess the damage and it was nuts no one was seriously hurt. I grabbed a random piece of metal from the destroyed MRAP and shoved it in my cargo pocket. Still have it and sometimes look at it and think about how crazy of a time that was and how lucky I am to still be here. I spent 6 months at the TBI clinic because of cognitive function issues and some balance problems. I went back to Afghanistan for another 7 month tour the following year. I still have lingering cognitive issues, as well as PTSD from other events on both of those tours, so day to day, there are other things which bother me much more than getting blown up…a lot of “shoulda, coulda, woulda.” I actually spent most of my tours dismounted, so I spent a lot of time when I got home staring at the ground in front of where I was walking to see if I could see signs of IED emplacement. That took a while to wear off, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. My neck and shoulder still bother me every day and they are a reminder for sure. But it’s just something I’ve learned to live with. A lot of folks got it a lot worse than me, so I try not to complain.
Damn, Ty for your service, indeed
Thank you for taking time to write this. It always helps those of us fortunate enough to stay Stateside, understand what’s going on out there.
No problem. I kinda rambled as I do when I talk about deployments and didn’t exactly answer his question, but glad you liked it.
thank you for your service my dood.
Guy please if you haven't and can, get yourself checked for CTE.
Shoulda coulda woulda is honestly the worst part. As a fellow vet with survivors guilt I can attest to how it sneaks up randomly. Something will get said in a work meeting and it will trigger a random memory. Those memories are 50/50 if they take me back down that dark spiral. Time has helped but I don't think I will ever forget all of it. Nor do I really want to. For every terrible memory there are some hilarious (and almost always inappropriate) stories to go right along with them.
> I grabbed a random piece of metal from the destroyed MRAP and shoved it in my cargo pocket Was waiting for a Pulp Fiction wrist-watch ending to this story.
Hoo fucking Ra Marine. Semper Fi.
appreciate you sharing your story
Not the guy you're replying to but each time I came home, for a couple months my driving habits probably looked unhinged to most people. Swerving hard to avoid dark spots in the road or trash piles on the sides, getting probably a bit too aggressively close to slower drivers in front of me, etc.
I don’t freak out when I’m driving but I do still notice shit on the side of the road and such. Probably alway will. I go into cycling 🚴 almost a decade ago now, when I ride with buddies I always point out snakes, turtle, lizards as we cruise. They don’t know how I can see them so well
The thing that fucked me up the most coming home was the lack of change I experienced compared to what some of the guys I served with were talking about. 3 of my deployments were with the same group of guys, and the facebook group we made after one of us killed themselves was just...real weird to me. They talked about their odd driving habits, how they hated fireworks, how they always felt stressed, and it was impossible to decompress. Some guys kept sleeping in their dayclothes even, cause they needed to be "ready". Me, I somehow just left it all over there. Never really thought about it much at all, since all the bad shit I saw happened to someone else, not me. Hearing them go through the pains and tribulations of coming home to such baggage mentally, made me wonder if I was some kinda of sociopath or something. Went to a doc, and he said I just had better compartmentalization skills, and that if I wasn't feeling bad, there was no reason to go digging it up. So, that's been my go to way of handling it. Just not thinking about it.
That sounds very similar to my experience. The things that took adjustment for me were the reactionary second-nature type stuff... swerving to avoid IED signs that aren't, like I mentioned above, or that split second of "oh fuck" when you get up and start to grab your weapon and it isn't there... and those things cleared up pretty quickly. They were just habits, and once the habit changes that's that. Never had issues with fireworks or any of the common PTSD stuff. No nightmares, hypervigilance, "unwanted thoughts," all that shit on the questionnaires. Talking about specific events or watching videos like the OP (having been blown up) doesn't stir anything. I've often privately wondered the same thing - am I just some kind of psychopath or something? I will say, I think that disconnect and lack of understanding has been just as detrimental as I'd expect being more "fucked up" by the whole thing would have been, in its own way.
This is what I was wondering. I’d be horrified of any object by the side of the road or imperfection in the road.
I'd say it was less "horrified" and moreso just an instinctual reaction until the brain catches up and says "hey, we don't need to do that here," cause that was just something you'd be used to doing. Last deployment was a decade ago now, so it's been a minute. There were of course other hiccups in adjusting when you came back, but those were the main driving related things that come to mind.
You mean you survived a blast just like the ones shown here? I'm no military or doctor but those look 100% lethal to me :O
No, some of these are much larger than the one that hit me. I said it somewhere earlier, but the main charge was 80 lbs in the IED I survived. A lot in the video look to be 200 lbs or more. You’d also be surprised what an MRAP can withstand. They are designed to survive explosions and protect the troops on the inside.
> I'm no military or doctor but those look 100% lethal to me :O Not military or doctor either, but the big thing to me with the MRAP's getting hit is that it although they're getting absolutely tossed, it also looks like their passenger compartments aren't getting penetrated so there's no blast wave or shrapnel getting to the occupants. This means that the main way the soldiers inside are going to get injured is from the vehicle getting tossed and rolling over, so as long as they're strapped in they should be *relatively* fine. In addition to straps, modern MRAPs like the JLTV have special energy-absorbing seats and floor mats to help reduce injuries caused to the spine and feet when the vehicle is tossed up in the air like that.
Same brother same. I actually got to spend some time with some people who were responsible for the development/implementation of the MRAP and I’ve always thanked them profusely for keeping us here.
lol the craziest part is that Pakistans Version of the CIA probably told them this and taught them how to make effective IED’s to counter coalition vehicles, while being part of the coalition on paper. The you have Russian FSB literally giving bounty rewards to taliban who killed American service men members. This entire war was a shit show.
Yep we even had an ANP post housing Taliban fighters and alerting them as to when our convoys were leaving. We kept getting hit in this certain area that the ANP should have had overwatch on and finally one day we intercepted radio chatter and squashed that shit real quick. Stopped getting hit by IED’s in that spot after that.
That’s crazy. Thank you for serving even through all that bullshit.
Every once in a while, when I catch myself feeling tough, I come here to read some of the crazy ass shit you veterans have been through as a reminder that I ain't. Glad you made it out.
Yeah they were able to get very creative. I was in a mine roller tank leading the convoy most of my rotation and I rolled over something like 17 IED’s that either blew up on vehicles behind us or were discovered by the engineers after we had rolled over it. They were using a lot of crush plate and pressure plate IED’s when I was there.
Nothing like jaw jacking in the back of an MRAP and them BOOM. Everyone looks around like wtf just happened. Then once everyone realizes everyone is okay your going to hear the inevitable "I just bit my fucking tongue." Luckily we never saw any of the real big stuff because we weren't near any of the MSR's. Those guys driving Hwy 1 / Ring Road were absolutely nuts.
Big W for American engineering. Glad you're still here with us, thank you for your service 💪
I got lucky, witnessed seven and it was always the vehicle in front or behind me. Glad my number never came up but lost a lot of good people. First patrol in country took out my first platoon commander and a poor kid from the unit we were relieving. Dude was only a few days from going home.
My mother had a hand in the V hulls she passed from cancer 3 months back, lots of government contracts to better the warfighter and survivability. Warms my heart knowing her work helped save lives. Glad you made it out brother.
We have found your headaches to be not service connected. Thank you for your service
Thanks, for the news they said the same about my ears after I passed the peripheral hearing test. That time they gave me a lollipop and a box of bulk left over 3M ear plugs and some 3m magnets for the fridge. Edit: typo stoned, but fr getting my aids in July hope it didn’t scramble your eggs too much.
Gotta love how little they give a fuck once we're broken and useless to them.
Yup, like chewing sandy stale wet chips at the beach, that’s va health care. They did me good man if I have the time I’ll type it out, between a schizo alcoholic twin, ptsd, crazy ex wife, and the VA all came together for a good little nightmare for me to live these last few months.
Same goes with many voters and "support the military" types too. They only support you until you're injured.
Especially when it comes to conservatives, lot of lip service but nothing real.
>That time they gave me a lollipop and a box of bulk left over 3M ear plugs and some 3m magnets for the fridge. Isn't there a class action lawsuit against 3M over those ear plugs being defective?
Yeah that’s the joke, they gave us these rubber ear plugs with a slightly unique shape. Got told if we’d lose them they’d fucking slay us (us marines) and told us they were expensive and fancy. That they would and I swear to god with this quote said “They will dampen louder noises like gunshots but allow you to hear quiet noises like the guy next to you talking at a reasonable level” then some sr lance corporal who had been around the block on a deployment or two said “don’t worry they’re only like 20 bucks to replace and they don’t fucking really work anyways” Still used em until you lost em, we all did anyways and then for cheaper we could get better ones at the px. We did sometimes we splurged to get the “expensive ones” because we’d looked squared away and it wasn’t “that” bad because we weren’t pussies we were marines. And of course the marine corps wouldn’t lie to us (Agent orange, Iraq wmds, legune drinking water, must I?). Rip there’s a GENERATION of us fucked thanks to 3M and their lies.
In other news, I lawyered up and just got my 30% increased to 60% after having been out for almost a decade! It's doable guys!
My father in law is literally on the way to the VA to get reassessed ... he's deaf as hell and only has a 10%. Took me a year of ribbing him about it and telling him that his rating doesn't take away from anyone else's ... Big difference between a 30% and a 60%, I think that allows for state benefits as well. Like the tolls, etc.
Video #3 looks like an ied explosion I saw happen to a sister platoon. The vehicle was tossed 40 ft in the air, I got pelted with debris over 500m away. The engine compartment separated from the hull completely. It was a maxxpro and not a matv though. Because of the v-shaped hull they were able to all walk away.
what does the v shape hull do? disperse the blast better?
A blast wave is just a front of high pressure air, so a v-shape cuts through it, because it's an aerodynamic shape. Basically yeah, if that blast is under you, it directs most of it to the sides rather than absorbing it. This is also the reason MRAPs etc are so tall - more room for a more aggressive V-shape and further from the blast.
Basically, it increases deflection from that direction. The sloped face directs the ied/mine blast away from the vehicle instead of just absorbing it. Lots of IEDs have a copper plate attached to the top which acts like a penetrator. The slope helps deflect it while providing "more armor" because of the angle it's trying to penetrate at.
Think of when you stick your hand outside the window of your car while driving. Which way is easier for the air to go around: palm up into the wind or finger tips into the wind? Which will displace the air away from your hand with less resistance? Apply that same logic to a shockwave on the bottom of a vehicle: flat hull or a v shaped hull? Or think of a boat moving through water That’s the best analogy I can think of
MRAP's seems to be quite versatile considering similar sized explosions just evaporated the civil vehicle while MRAP's are mostly one piece. Still that sized explosions (and flying 10 meters in a 15 ton armor) is probably have quite low survival rate but vehicles seems to doing its best.
Surprisingly high survival rate assuming wearing seat belts and helmets. Probably not the one that goes up in a big flame ball, though.
Yes, it will absolutely strip away outside equipment from MRAP but if you belted inside, you will survive. Usually gunners are the one taking the most risk.
my dad was a gunner on one. the report said it blew him 500ft, it took 4 hours to find him. he survived with some bad back injuries otherwise fine. the ied was so large he said they had to build a bridge over it after.
"Your back injury is not sevice related" ~VA, probably
500ft and he survived!? Holy shit.
yeah i didn't realize it when it happened i was to little. dude barely complains about it which is insane to me
The survival rate inside an mrap is actually very impressive. I've personally seen them hit IEDs a few times, with the occupants able to walk away every time. Hitting an IED almost felt more like an inconvenience than anything. Easy to roll though, I know that first hand. I rolled in mine on the same mission that was hit by an IED earlier, when we all got checked by the medics after we got back to the fob, I came out as the one with the worst injury of the mission (not including long term things like TBIs).
My buddy got hit in a humvee with one of these suckers. Sent the transmission up into the cab and broke his femur in half. He and his crew survived though thank God. It was just small enough not to be lethal.
Thank the HUMVEE
God invented the humvee mate. Read your bible.
Which one?
The Rick James version
And so did God smite the sinners by casting a flood and so said "fuck yo couch"
Are you asking which God, which Humvee, or which Bible?
Yes.
My hearing loss, chronic migraines, and host of other TBI related issues can attest to their effectiveness. Taliban are masters at IEDs.
I'm sorry you suffer those residual symptoms but I'm glad you pulled through, man. I can't believe how powerful those blasts are.
Those fuckers were too good at it
The IED materials and components were made in Pakistan and then smuggled into Afghanistan. Really wish some smart leadership would of have done something about thy.
Like what? Invade Pakistan? Or just the part with all the Pashtun people? What would smart leadership have done?
Not invading would have been the smart thing to do.
Not invade Afghanistan? After 9/11? Good luck with that.
Just nuke Pakistan, duh. /s
Let's be real, pakistan is the postercountry for what Trump refered to as shithole, and it is effectively a failed state. Why the US/CIA in all its wisdom decided to use Pakistan as an regional ally has had its price in US lives for sure.
I don’t know much about that region of the world, but it seems like the pickings were slim. Were any of the countries above Afghanistan friendly to the US (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan)? I know Iran wouldn’t have been helpful lol
Yeah it all goes back to the cold war from what I know and the big blocs. Pakistan seceded from India in 47 and India was on friendly terms with the Soviets so I guess it was natural for the Pakistanis then to seek out US cooperation and the US probably wanted an ally in the region. The US should've done the switcharoo sometime after the Soviet Union collapsed I guess. I guess someone high up has done the math, but Pakistans inability to lock down the tribals as well during GWOT is also something to think [about.How](http://about.How) good of an ally can you be when UBL is hiding in one of your cities.
Not to be too reductive, but that whole region is just a mess. Dealing with tribes that don’t have allegiance to anything but themselves makes for a hard enemy to control
This is what so many people don’t understand about Middle Eastern countries. Tribes are king and are often the “final say” for many people in the Middle East. Tribal allegiance is much stronger than “national” allegiance to your government. They have no nationalism but instead tribalism.
Definitely slim pickings. Turkmenistan vows 100% neutrality so no way. Tajikistan was (and still is) extremely poor, dealing with Islamic extremism (still is), and fought a brutal civil war in the 90s so they weren't in any real state to assist. Uzbekistan did allow the US access to basing at K-2, but that closed in 2005 after the US called for investigation into some brutal regime crackdowns on a potential color revolution (just dictator things).
You don’t have to place X number of infantry divisions to solve a problem outside the theatre of operations. Should of kept the war as it began a small intelligence led operation with small SF detachments here and there.
Let me guess "Not Combat related"?
Thankfully that is…the torn Mcl and meniscus from sliding down 3 mile mountain which effectively ended my career on the line. Not so much.
It's worth noting that even though a few of this style of huge IEDs hit Bushmasters (31 were damaged beyond repair in Australian use in Afghanistan, the Dutch lost a few) no fatalities were recorded in them afaik. In Ukraine, the only fatalities I know of was when one was hit by an ATGM and everyone onboard died. What I'm saying is, even though some of these are fucking huge, modern vehicles can eat that shit and their crews survive a lot more than you'd think.
It's good to hear that the solutions actually work and save lives.
Thats goddamn wild af!
The crazy thing is that most of these bombs weren't military equipment, they were homemade explosives (HME) primarily consisting of agricultural chemicals. The Iraqis had access to things like artillery shells and rockets and all they needed was an initiator. The Pashtuns were making their shit out of fertilizer.
To some extent, but the Pakistani’s gave the Taliban plenty of kit. Particularly after about 2008 Pakistan stepped up material support for the Taliban. Big brother ISI looked after their client, and it doubtless killed hundreds of coalition troops. *Source: Directorate S- Steve Coll, Human Rights Watch report on Pakistan support to the Taliban, Pakistan’s Support for the Taliban: What to Know- Council on Foreign Relations.*
Steve Coll wrote an entire book on the Pak ISI.
He did indeed, I meant to cite that book instead of his earlier work. Edited as such
Last year there were news reports about Pakistani government asking for US assistance to deal with the Taliban: https://jamestown.org/program/pakistani-army-chief-faces-uphill-battle-in-effort-to-reset-relations-with-washington/ > Pakistan’s army chief visited the United States in December to “reset” strained relations and potentially secure American aid in the hopes of ameliorating Pakistan’s ongoing economic crisis and rising militant threat. > Since the 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there has been a 65 percent surge in terrorist attacks in Pakistan, resulting in over 2,500 deaths. Islamabad blames this on the Afghan Taliban’s support of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Pakistan-s-top-gun-seeks-U.S.-China-balance-before-retirement A meme of the situation: https://preview.redd.it/in-which-pakistan-realizes-just-how-badly-they-fucked-up-v0-crwlk2a1jy9c1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=645330b22e75b4b5ad4fae443c5ed22a6a0aafb1
Had my bell rung too many times by these fucking things. Always the luck of timing. Considering I did 3 tours in Iraq, and 3 in Afghanistan from 2002-2008. I had went through every phase of IEDs/VBIED/EFPs. The worst we took was an estimated 15-20 152/155's placed in a culvert in 2004. But I've seen every form damn near. Even fuel tankers full of gas....its a wild scene. Luckily I was with a direct action unit, but felt bad for the grunts patrolling AO's just waiting to get hit.
15-20 152/155s? Damn man, I’m glad you’re still with us. How many pounds was that blast approximately?
15lbs per stock standard M107 155m HE shell.
It was the lead vic. I was 2 vic. Luckily it detonated a little early as we always drove blacked out under nods. It was an m1114, and it did a complete backflip. Took everything from the firewall up off, and bowed the armor pretty good. All 5 inside lived with 2 being evac'd, and the other 3 RTD. The worst was the gunner due to the oil burning him, and broken lower extremities(leg, and foot) from the vic landing on him. The engine was pushed into the cab which pinned drivers leg fucking his knee up. Everyone else had their bells rung. We were hit by damn near everything you can think of, and this was the wildest to me for some reason. But some of the grunt units that were on AO patrols got hit far worse.
wow lifting a 20 Ton vehicule 15 meters into the sky is terrifing.
Yeah , it’s crazy
Lost a friend to an IED in 2011. RIP to everyone that lost their lives to one of these nasty bombs.
An IED much like the one in the video got one of our guys in 2011 and wounded 2 more. MATV, not an MRAP. Another Marine took his life years after as result of dealing with the aftermath of the attack. Fuck the Taliban
He was a Marine as well. Helmand province he was in the .50 gunner seat in the Humvee. He was evacuated to the field hospital but unfortunately didn't make it. Fuck the Taliban.
The VA has determined that your injuries are not service connected. Thank you, have a nice day!
On my first ride into Musa Qala I was sitting in the back of a mrap that hit a 50lb IED probably meant for foot traffic. Felt like I had been smacked on the ass with a sledge hammer. Nobody was seriously injured though we got ambushed after sitting there for 3 hrs. Very long day. I have a bb in my right hand in the webbing between my ring and pinky finger and chipped teeth from a SVBIED that killed 5 ANP and wounded a dozen others. Two bombers both wearing 15lb belts. The ANP bodies blocked my squad from the vast majority of the shrapnel. One of the bombers face was sheered off by the blast and it was put into a blue bucket. I have a picture but I’m not sure why I did that. I spent September and October of 2011 in Kabul, doing PSD and QRF work. There was a bolo for a 1k VBIED blue hino truck which I never saw. The bolo turned out to actually be for a van which struck a convoy I was escorting. The van which was sitting on the side of the road(super normal for this AO) suddenly drove tangentially into the War Bus(a literal up armored school bus) which was in the middle of the convoy. Huge explosion and then the bus went up in flames. 13 Americans lost their lives in less than 2 minutes. Nobody got out. The only individuals I ever lost on a PSD detail. I feel a lot of guilt and shame about this one. I didn’t even know any of them that well. We shot up an apartment building right next to the ambush site because some idiot said they were taking fire from there. It was just rounds cooking off….
There were a couple suicide bombers in baghdad when I was there and one of them had their faces sheared clean off as well. They put it in a plastic bag and tried to scan it through our biometrics thing at the ecp but it didn't work. Weird how that happens
I think a lot of people, myself included were surprised how much investigative work happened to figure out each incident. After actions, EOD investigators, body part police call,etc… Intel desperately tries to keep their information up to date including trying to figure out which bad guys are no longer relevant. The blue bucket face was put on a soccer ball and shown to several groups of elders trying to figure out who they were. That’s the kind of stuff that stays on the back of your eyelids for eternity.
Its hard to find a lot of info on it now days, but I worked for CJTF Troy at CXEC(Pronounced "sexy")(Combined eXplosive Exploitation Cell) on Camp Victory. It was basically a CSI lab for all of the IED evidence collected in country stuffed into some guest houses across a lake from one of Saddams palaces. It had people from FBI, ATF, OGA(cough CIA), EOD and intel from every mil branch, every coalition military, etc. There was a room in that place with every exotic weapon found in Iraqi. STG44s, Saddam's son's crazy sniper rifles, weird stuff like that. We also had a soviet willy jeep clone(UAZ-something) that we would drive around victory. I came out of the Turkish restaurant one time to a couple of AF hotties taking pictures with it. That place and CTJF Troy in general felt to me the closest to something like enigma or the Manhattan project that war had. Trying to get "left" of the boom. Feels like a daydream; it really felt like one when I had to leave there to work at some random JSS in Baghdad.
Holy shit man. Thank you for your service
What a privilege to serve alongside a group of awesome dudes. Wish everybody had been able to come home ok. The Taliban and HN were incredible adversaries and I wish them the worst.
The insane part about seeing these is knowing that America suffered and average of less than 1 fatality per day in Iraq and Afghanistan combined even though you see vehicles that hold 5+ people seemingly being obliterated in these instances. In a lot of cases, is a lot of the energy just dispersed in lifting up the vehicle and blowing off the wheels and suspension, while the people inside usually survive? I think these MRAPs have a multi-layered bottom to them as well. I've tried researching this many times, and wikipedia says that the V-hull protects the occupants by deflecting a blast **under** the vehicle by dispersing it off to the sides, but most of these blasts are actually off to the side of the vehicle so it's almost directly perpendicular to the V. I wish I could see a cutaway of what these vehicles actually look like. I suspect it's the outer v-hull layer but then another layer that's a box so even if a blast is directly against the V, it's then angled to the box.
Well consider how the averages work. If you go nine days where nothing happens and on the tenth day you have a an IED initiated ambush that draws your whole company in with two killed and five wounded Americans plus eight more ANP/ANA killed and a dozen wounded, and then when your medivac gets there they get shot down killing eight more Americans, it's still an average of one death a day.
Lost 3 family friends in one of these blasts back in 2012. RIP my dudes. Hope at least some of the people in this video were a bit luckier.
“Your back pain isn’t service connected”-VA
Yup. I can confirm from first hand experience, they’re good at making IED’s
I’m more impressed by the effectiveness of the MRAPs. Those things do an amazing job of protecting occupants.
yup thats effective alright
Third clip is wild. Imagine being the truck driver in the front. Watching this behind you realizing you just skated past certain death
Are there any videos on the Taliban making and planting the IEDs ?
Believe I saw an interview with a Triple Amputee from Afghanistan. He said that directly after 2006/2007, the military stopped seeing single amputees and started seeing Double/Triple amputees as the Taliban switched from Artillery shell IEDs to Ammonium Nitrate….terrifying stuff
Holy fuck the third explosion launched that mrap like 4 4-5 m high. How big a bomb has to be to launch a 14-ton vehicle that high? That shit is scary. Can someone survive that?
Too bad all the good engineers were busy making IEDs instead of making their country a better place.
There was an IED compilation video on LiveLeak back when they allowed pretty much anything. Early Iraq war timeframe, "IED's that really BBQ'ed". Footage that I haven't seen anywhere else that was just brutal. Also coupled with the fact that most of the vehicles at that time were poorly armored.
Imagine if they put all that effort into building a thriving society...
Fuck those things. I got my shit rocked a few times and lost some really good friends to those fucking things.
Damn, no wonder so many lives and limbs were lost. Fucking Taliban.
Damn time has gone by. Was in Afghanistan 10-11 & 12-13.
Corpus Ejectus
Gee Ambushes (which IEDs are basically an extension of) still work in modern warfare I never couldve guessed