news 40 car pile up image
scubber1
subs have asdic .planes and ships have radar,if a laser bomb can go through windows .do something to protect our boys
Answer
I use to work in IRAQ as a Contractor Engineer for Haliburton and have seen the destruction and loss of life because of roadside bombs first hand. This is a very good question. However, there are multiple answers primarily because there are many types of IED's (Imprevised Explosive Devices) being used for roadside bombs.
Each type of bomb can be made of different explosive material (dynamite, C-4, fertiiizer, gasoline, etc.). the explosive material is covered with nails, metal shavings, BB's, bits of broken glass, and anything else they can scavange to cause death. In addition, there are many types of triggering devices used to detonate the bombs (electronic, mechanical clocks, fuse, impact/contact, etc.)
Now to answer your question a scanning camera can be used but it is just that - a scanning camera. These cameras only give you a visual of an object. While on a convoy to transport food, water, medicine, fuel, war materials or people, the roads from the green zone (safe area) to the red zones (anywhere outside the green zone) are very long and are used by regular Iraqi citizens. You can't tell whou is a friendly and who is an insurgent. You don't know if a person is bending over to tighten the foot strap on his sandal or placing a bomb. A bomb can be placed there one day and removed the next. They (the insurgents) don't know when our convoy's are going to run, but they do know the major raods we use.
During the war we bombed the hell out of towns and roads. These roads are littered with all kinds of debris, large stones, metal objects, tires, used water cans, wooden crates, abandoned cars, trash piles, and thousands upon thousands of tiny sand mounds. If we were to use a scanning camera we would get just a visual of the object. In order to detect the material within the object requires a special camera with special equpiment to find the explosive material. The problem here is that different cameras are needed for different types of explosve material.
To find IED's a humvey would have to loaded with thirty different types of cameras and detection equipment, each with their own power source. Each vehicle of this type woud cost about a million dollars per vehicle. Even then the success rate would only be about 20 - 40 percent accurate. Sand storms happen all the time (day and night) and come up out of nowhere. These storms impair the vision of the cameras making them even less effective. Using infra red doesn't work because most of the IED's used don't have a heat pattern, and the heat generated by the triggering device is the same size as sand bugs or beatles commonly found in the desert. There are millions and millions of these.
IRAQ has thousands of roads we use and the cost would be prohibitive. In addition, this vehicle would inevatibly have to be the point vehicle in the convoy, and searching for IED's is a very, very, very slow process. This makes this vehicle a prime target for a low tech bomb (fertilizer and ammonia), a RPG, or snipper attack. Once this vehicle was taken out by the insurgents the rest of the convoy would be sitting ducks. This is why you see on the news that convoys are driving down roads at an accelerated speed hopping to drive past the IED's before they explode.
For the remote controlled IED's some (not all)our vehicles do have RF (radio frequencey) jamming devices to scramble the signal used by the insurgents to remotely trigger the device. But because these are typical garage door type triggers, there are thousands of frequencies and sub-frequencies that can be used. On a daily basis the Army Corp of Engineers does a RF signal sweep using a specrtun analyzer to determine which frequencies are in use, and we tune our jamming equipment to those range of frequencies. This kind of works but it doesn't work against triggers that use cell phones, fuses, or impact triggers.
To make things more complicated Iraq is a very large country with lots of splintered factions of insurgents. The insurgets that make bombs in one city use different frequencies in different cities. Depending on who provides the insurgents with equipment (IRAN, Afganistan, Saudai Arabia, etc.), they may only have very low tech IED's that can't be detected until a hummer drives close enough causing the vibration to triger the device. When I was there they found that insurgents would place multiple types of bombs (high and low tech) on the road each with a different frequency. This way they can set them off at different times during the day, week, or month. Unfortunately, because of the harsh environment the Army's equipment does suffer from malfunctions and sometimes our troops aren't trained properly to use them.
These are some of the reason we can't use scanning cameras to find bombs. It's like searching for a single grain of light gray sand on a ten thousnand mile light gray beach. It would slow us down making us a easy target for hit and run attacks and that is what they want. Hope this answer helps.
I use to work in IRAQ as a Contractor Engineer for Haliburton and have seen the destruction and loss of life because of roadside bombs first hand. This is a very good question. However, there are multiple answers primarily because there are many types of IED's (Imprevised Explosive Devices) being used for roadside bombs.
Each type of bomb can be made of different explosive material (dynamite, C-4, fertiiizer, gasoline, etc.). the explosive material is covered with nails, metal shavings, BB's, bits of broken glass, and anything else they can scavange to cause death. In addition, there are many types of triggering devices used to detonate the bombs (electronic, mechanical clocks, fuse, impact/contact, etc.)
Now to answer your question a scanning camera can be used but it is just that - a scanning camera. These cameras only give you a visual of an object. While on a convoy to transport food, water, medicine, fuel, war materials or people, the roads from the green zone (safe area) to the red zones (anywhere outside the green zone) are very long and are used by regular Iraqi citizens. You can't tell whou is a friendly and who is an insurgent. You don't know if a person is bending over to tighten the foot strap on his sandal or placing a bomb. A bomb can be placed there one day and removed the next. They (the insurgents) don't know when our convoy's are going to run, but they do know the major raods we use.
During the war we bombed the hell out of towns and roads. These roads are littered with all kinds of debris, large stones, metal objects, tires, used water cans, wooden crates, abandoned cars, trash piles, and thousands upon thousands of tiny sand mounds. If we were to use a scanning camera we would get just a visual of the object. In order to detect the material within the object requires a special camera with special equpiment to find the explosive material. The problem here is that different cameras are needed for different types of explosve material.
To find IED's a humvey would have to loaded with thirty different types of cameras and detection equipment, each with their own power source. Each vehicle of this type woud cost about a million dollars per vehicle. Even then the success rate would only be about 20 - 40 percent accurate. Sand storms happen all the time (day and night) and come up out of nowhere. These storms impair the vision of the cameras making them even less effective. Using infra red doesn't work because most of the IED's used don't have a heat pattern, and the heat generated by the triggering device is the same size as sand bugs or beatles commonly found in the desert. There are millions and millions of these.
IRAQ has thousands of roads we use and the cost would be prohibitive. In addition, this vehicle would inevatibly have to be the point vehicle in the convoy, and searching for IED's is a very, very, very slow process. This makes this vehicle a prime target for a low tech bomb (fertilizer and ammonia), a RPG, or snipper attack. Once this vehicle was taken out by the insurgents the rest of the convoy would be sitting ducks. This is why you see on the news that convoys are driving down roads at an accelerated speed hopping to drive past the IED's before they explode.
For the remote controlled IED's some (not all)our vehicles do have RF (radio frequencey) jamming devices to scramble the signal used by the insurgents to remotely trigger the device. But because these are typical garage door type triggers, there are thousands of frequencies and sub-frequencies that can be used. On a daily basis the Army Corp of Engineers does a RF signal sweep using a specrtun analyzer to determine which frequencies are in use, and we tune our jamming equipment to those range of frequencies. This kind of works but it doesn't work against triggers that use cell phones, fuses, or impact triggers.
To make things more complicated Iraq is a very large country with lots of splintered factions of insurgents. The insurgets that make bombs in one city use different frequencies in different cities. Depending on who provides the insurgents with equipment (IRAN, Afganistan, Saudai Arabia, etc.), they may only have very low tech IED's that can't be detected until a hummer drives close enough causing the vibration to triger the device. When I was there they found that insurgents would place multiple types of bombs (high and low tech) on the road each with a different frequency. This way they can set them off at different times during the day, week, or month. Unfortunately, because of the harsh environment the Army's equipment does suffer from malfunctions and sometimes our troops aren't trained properly to use them.
These are some of the reason we can't use scanning cameras to find bombs. It's like searching for a single grain of light gray sand on a ten thousnand mile light gray beach. It would slow us down making us a easy target for hit and run attacks and that is what they want. Hope this answer helps.
Pictures of fiery crash on Pennsylvania Turnpike?
Craig N
I remember coming across a webpage once that had pictures of the aftermath of the multi-vehicle pile up that ocurred on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in April of 2003. This was the wreck that involved some 40 cars and left 25 injured and 4 dead just west of the McConnellsburg exit. The wreck was caused by poor visibility due to heavy fog, and prompted the PTC to install the fog warning system that is now in place. The webpage was either a news site of some kind or the website of a volunteer fire department, I think. I would like to find the pictures again for a presentation I am making. Any assistance would be tremendously appreciated.
Answer
I have not been able to find anything on the net, however the local, and most major newspapers would have carried it, and you might find what you are looking for in their archives on microfiche.
Good luck.
I have not been able to find anything on the net, however the local, and most major newspapers would have carried it, and you might find what you are looking for in their archives on microfiche.
Good luck.
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