Evaluating counter-IED strategies

Improvised explosive devices (IED) are one of the largest threats facing coalition forces in current military conflicts. The United States and other nations are greatly invested in mitigating these deadly devices. By integrating behavioral aspects of adversarial activities with computational methods, a greater understanding of these activities can be attained; simultaneously, potentially effective intervention points can be ascertained. The specific modeling approach discussed in this article is the result of a coupling between computational and social science research that has led to an improved capability to predict large-scale activities and behaviors of potential IED developers before they have successfully deployed IEDs. System dynamics models were applied to evaluate IED processes as a comprehensive system with various interacting influences. A system dynamics model is an executable model used to represent and understand the dynamic behavior of a complex system over time.