Delta Force copied insurgents’ use of IEDs with ‘XBox’

Logan Nye
Mar 31, 2018 2:42 AM PDT
1 minute read
Weapons photo

Photo: US Army

In Iraq, IEDs quickly became the deadliest weapon U.S. troops faced. But not all IEDs were created equal. In 2006, Iranian collaborators from the Quds force were accused of providing devices and knowledge to Iraqi insurgents to make the bombs even more deadly.

Sean Naylor, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, writes in a new book that Army Delta Force operators countered by creating a bomb of their own, dubbed "XBox," to take out the top Iraqi bomb makers and possibly their Iranian collaborators.

The IEDs were carefully crafted to look and perform exactly like the bombs used by insurgents — except they were triggered by Delta Force operators instead of the bad guys.

According to Naylor, the operators would stake out a target for days to learn the bomb maker's patterns and then plant an IED in the target's vehicle, detonating it when the target was in an isolated area away from civilians and U.S. personnel.

For more, check out this article at Bloomberg or read Naylor's book, "Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command."

NOW: These 4 books show the inner workings of Delta Force

NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Sign up for We Are The Mighty's newsletter and receive the mighty updates!

By signing up you agree to our We Are The Mighty's Terms of Use and We Are The Mighty's Privacy Policy.

SHARE