Can Cops Help Stop IED Drops?

L-3 MPRI, Inc. in Alexandria, VA recently received a $156.1 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to embed former law-enforcement professionals into corps, division, brigade, regimental and battalion headquarters. Their mission will involve helping battlefield commanders penetrate and suppress criminal networks involved in IED land mine production, distribution, and use throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, and other overseas operations. The contract will run to Dec 10/11, and 1 bid was solicited with 1 bid received by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command Contracting Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (W91CRB-08-D-0049). Most people aren’t aware of the human networks behind the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. International terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are definitely part of that fight, but they often rely on and leverage local criminal networks for information, smuggling, and even recruiting. The person who sets a land mine, for instance, is often just a local who is paid/ threatened into doing it, while the bomb-makers remain in the background. Understanding the full network in play, and targeting its leadership, demands both a military presence on the ground, and law enforcement type expertise. While breakthroughs do happen, it’s mostly slow work that builds a picture over multiple operations from the “small […]