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Bomb is threat to U.S. in Iraq
Airborne version of roadside bomb has killed 3 so far
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Published: July 20, 2008
FORT BRAGG - Sgt. Dominic Latchu was just drifting off to sleep in Iraq about a year ago when he heard a "lob bomb" for the first time.
"I heard that first boom and the whole building was shaking," said Latchu, an intelligence specialist with the Army's 82nd Airborne.
The first explosion was followed by at least five more, each thundering throughout Coalition Outpost Callahan in November. The attack is believed to be the one of the first times that Iraqi insurgents used a so-called "lob bomb" -- an airborne version of the roadside bombs, the leading killer of American forces in Iraq.
So far, the bombs officially known as an "improvised rocket-assisted mortar" have killed just three U.S. soldiers in 11 attacks. But in a recent interview, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, said that the weapon is "the greatest threat right now that we face."
Latchu is one of several paratroopers who witnessed the November attack and one of several who spoke with The Associated Press.
Sgt. Noah Ash said he was just finishing his shift in the outpost's operations center when he felt the first explosion: a deep, throaty boom. He raced outside dressed only in his body armor, shorts and a Wisconsin Badgers hooded sweat shirt, and said what he saw around the outpost's main building looked like an apocalypse.
None of the more than 700 paratroopers at the base were killed or seriously injured, but the unit's vehicles were destroyed. The bombs dug huge pock marks in the concrete.
"There was a possibility for great damage," Ash said. "We were lucky."
The lob bombs, which look like propane tanks with rocket boosters attached, are often launched from small trucks and detonated by cell phone or with a washing-machine timer. The paratroopers said that the November attack was launched from a dump truck, which they found hidden in a parking lot about 300 yards from the base.
Latchu and Ash are paratroopers with the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, a unit that was among the first to move into Iraq as part of the "surge" strategy that boosted the number of American troops in Iraq by five combat brigades. They quickly occupied a gutted five-story shopping center in Baghdad's Sha'ab district, on the outskirts of Sadr City.
Hammond, the commanding officer of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, said that those firing the lob bombs are so skilled that he has compared them to the U.S. military's elite Delta Force -- a clandestine counterterrorism Special Forces unit.
"This kind of attack is planned and managed to a T," Ash said. "It is definitely guys with a high level of training and funding."
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