In the early spring of 2006, perhaps the most important document in Baghdad was known as the MOASS -- the Mother of All Spreadsheets-- a vast compilation of radio frequencies that insurgents used to trigger roadside bombs.
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Eventually, 18 weapons intelligence teams, drawn largely from the Air Force, began collecting evidence both from bombs that detonated and from those that did not. At Task Force Troy in Baghdad, four cyanoacrylate fuming chambers now use a concoction of Super Glue and high humidity to tease latent fingerprints from electrical tape or IED components. One million known Iraqi fingerprints are stored at a Pentagon biometrics center in West Virginia. In the first seven months of this year, technicians examined 112,000 items and recovered an average of 600 latent prints each month.
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To anticipate future bomb designs, scientific "red teams" last year began building IEDs that insurgents might build, while "blue teams" calculated how best to defeat them. Other red teams include 100 cadets and midshipmen from the nation's military academies, who have also been recruited as surrogate bombmakers. "Show me how many different ways you can flip a switch at a distance," the students were told. "Be conceptually sophisticated, but use the most simple, cheap and available material that you can."