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Resourceful, desperate militants turning to household materials

Nov-25-2007 » Filed Under: 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment

By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes

BAGHDAD — U.S. soldiers are reporting finding more and more roadside bombs packed with homemade explosives instead of artillery rounds, indicating that Iraqi insurgents may be be running out of military-grade ammunition.

“All the good stuff is gone or getting close to being gone,” said 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment intelligence officer Capt. David Dehart, whose unit has secured a large swath of southern Baghdad since September.

“There are not these large 152 mm or 130 mm [artillery rounds] lying around anymore. No anti-tank mines have been found in our area. There are no [rocket-propelled grenades] these days.”

The homemade explosives are not nearly as effective, the 30-year-old Raleigh, N.C., native said. “That has led to a reduced ability for the enemy with IEDs,” he said.

Insurgents appeared to have a plentiful supply of military ordnance looted from unsecured Iraqi ammunition dumps and hidden in caches throughout the country. But according to 2nd Squadron commander Lt. Col. Myron Reineke, many of the artillery rounds recovered from caches by his unit in the last three months were corroded.

“That leads me to believe there is not a lot of restocking. My opinion is that [the enemy] has a supply problem,” he said.

Dehart said caches discovered recently are smaller than those he saw on a previous tour two years ago in Mosul. That could be a sign that there isn’t as much ammunition available to insurgents, or that they’ve decided it’s better to split up their stash, he said.

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