ONE THOUSAND personnel in this organization, are you kidding me???? I know that JIEDDO has a critical mission focus and probably does some great things, but does it take that many people? Does anyone out there have more info about what this organization truly brings to the fight? Thanks!

What about the 10 billion dollars? We're not building a boat or airplane or a vehicle. Course 1000 people need to build resume's off this too.

If their black boxes work then it was money well spent.

I worked with a guy who was on a task team during the Vietnam war to figure out how to prevent all the radars on A-6 Intruder's from interfering with each other. 3 weeks after they were tasked they were in Vietnam modifying airplanes with the fix.

I guess things are different today.

Try this:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08342.pdf

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=57894&archive=true

JIEDDO will soon run out of money to combat IEDs
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, November 20, 2007

ARLINGTON, Va. — The outgoing head of the organization tasked with combating roadside bombs said Monday that it will run out of money by Dec. 1.

The Joint IED Defeat Organization currently has about $413 million, said retired Gen. Montgomery Meigs.

Unless JIEDDO gets more money from Congress, it will not have enough money to fund new initiatives to beat roadside bombs, said Meigs, who leaves Nov. 30.

Congress had allocated about $1.6 billion for JIEDDO but the bill failed to come to a vote in the Senate after the House passed a version that called for a “limited presence” of U.S. troops in Iraq by December 2008.

Meigs said JIEDDO has asked Congress for temporary funding, but he doesn’t know when the group will get the money, or how much it can expect.

For JIEDDO, the issue of funding has been a recurring problem.

In summer 2006, a Defense Department spokesman warned that the delay in passing the fiscal 2006 supplemental budget would have the same results, but Congress gave the organization temporary funding.

And in May, Meigs said JIEDDO was down to about $50 million, but it eventually got the money it requested, said JIEDDO spokeswoman Christine DeVries.

What makes this time different is that in previous fiscal years, JIEDDO received money in the first quarter from budget supplementals, but there has been no supplemental this year, Meigs said.

JIEDDO can draw funds from the $459 billion fiscal 2008 Defense Department Appropriations Budget, said Jesse Jacobs, director of communications for the Senate Appropriations Committee.

However, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently noted that the Defense Department can only transfer a fraction of the budget to cover funding shortfalls.

“We can only move a total of $3.7 billion under general transfer authority, which only amounts to a little over one week’s worth of war expenses,” Gates said Thursday.

Also, any such reprogramming has to be approved by Congress, said Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Brian Maka.

There is little lawmakers can do while Congress is in recess until Dec. 4.

“If were out of session until the 4th, we cannot reprogram the funds, nor can be pass an emergency supplemental bill,” Jacobs said.

I served under GEN (Ret.) Monty Meigs and if he say we need the funding then belive me we need then.

5105868 and rwfields3,

I can answer your questions as to how their money has been spent. Electronic countermeasures to defeat the remote control IED threat is one. Jammers aren't cheap, and they save lives. Also, there's the equipment that can cause premature detonation.

Then there's the IED's that we send back to the States after we've recovered them from a cache. They undergo all kinds of reverse engineering and testing, see how they affect our vehicles, what kind of explosives are being used (commercial/military vs homemade and what they are making it out of). With their results, the armor on our vehicles gets a tweak here, a mod there, just to improve the odds of surviving an IED strike.

On top of that, JIEDDO's research has allowed the EOD community to adapt and overcome the threat posed by IED's in theater. Some of the tools that we have now are as a result of JIEDDO's work, and there are several EOD techs that are alive today thanks to the work that JIEDDO does.

I wish that I could go into more specifics, but to do that would be a huge OPSEC issue. Many of the greatest examples that I could give are classified. Whether JIEDDO needs a thousand people in its ranks, I don't know. I can tell you, though, I'm happy with their work, and believe that in this instance their funding is well spent.


Just my two cents,

Helen
"Initial Success or Total Failure"

Thanks for the input, Helen. I understand JIEDDO's mission, but I guess my biggest concern is a large duplication of effort and a possible lack of interagency coordination. The National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) has been responsible for looking at enemy capabilities for years, so I hope they are plugged into JIEDDO and we don't have two agencies trying to trump each other for the biggest "atta-boy". My view is painted with an intelligence brush, so I am familiar with the ECM/jamming side of this issue. The lack of interagency coordination was a huge problem in the intelligence community prior to 9/11, and some of those problems still exist. The Joint publication on Electronic Warfare published in January 2007 doesn't even mention JIEDDO, which was established a year earlier.

I always cringe when DOD stands up a new organization to address the various challenges that come and go, whether during peacetime or in times like these. I am sure JIEDDO's mission would suck in personnel with MOSs in the fields of EOD, Intelligence, Signal Corps, and maybe a few others. Those folks always come out of hide, so we are losing Soldiers in the field or instructors in the training schools that are preparing our new Soldiers. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in US history that an organization of this magnitude was created to combat one specific type of weapon system or threat (IEDs)

You're right, it is the first time an organization has been put together for a specific threat. JIEDDO works quite well with NGIC. There's no chronic butting of the heads with those organizations, at least none that I've seen on this level. It's nowhere near as bureaucratic as many other organizations, either. Quite a rarity. Glad I was able to help shed a little light on it for you.


Helen
"Initial Success or Total Failure"

quote:

Originally posted by 89Dgirl:
You're right, it is the first time an organization has been put together for a specific threat. JIEDDO works quite well with NGIC. There's no chronic butting of the heads with those organizations, at least none that I've seen on this level. It's nowhere near as bureaucratic as many other organizations, either. Quite a rarity. Glad I was able to help shed a little light on it for you.


Helen
"Initial Success or Total Failure"

I'm not an expert in anything other than I've used some of the equipment and have been "blown up" a few times. The IED defeat program is one place where I never sniffed a hint of inter-service rivalry. We were Army. All our EWOs were Naval officers.
I was impressed and taken somewhat aback by how determined, fast and efficient all aspects of the program were/are being implented, altered or discarded as needed. It's truly a mission with a single purpose and Americans are carrying it out with a vengeance.

You'll never stop IEDs, but you can force the enemy to keep changing, make it increasingly difficult for him. And if anyone thinks this is a conflict specific issue, think on this. IEDs had initially been proven very successful, especially in the pyschological/propaganda realm. This is not the last time we will see them employed. Better to get the jump on the next war too while we're at it.
I think the money is well spent.

Oh, and the stuff works.

If folks realized how many IEDs the enemy has to set before one actually causes a casualty they'd be surprised.

Thanks for the input, Helen and Bill_deC. It is refreshing to hear about DOD entities that function well and benefit the folks with boots on the ground.

I was optomistic about JIEDDO when I first heard about GEN (Ret) Miegs being appointed to run the show. I wrote intelligence assessments for GEN Miegs in 1999 in Sarajevo, and he is one of the smartest men I've ever encountered.