Thread by @SpencerGuard

It looks like among the many challenges the @IDF will face in a ground campaign into Gaza is one we feared on a daily basis in Iraq - the Iranian engineering Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) IED 🧵

When I saw the pictures of captured equipment from the Hamas terrorist massacre on October 7th I saw the distinctive concave disked improvised explosive device...

I was immediately taken back to Sadr City, Iraq 2008 where my unit and fellow soldiers faced and suffered EPF strikes everyday.

EFP were road-side improvised explosive devices but more deadly than anything U.S. forces faced in Iraq until Iranian Quds Force provided them to Iranian-backed Shiite militias across Iraq.

EFPs are made of machined cooper plates placed into everything from coffee cans to large pots, backed by plastic explosives then once exploded turn the copper plate into a molten slug that can rip through several inches of armor pulling fire and death into any space.

EFPs killed at least 196 U.S. troops and wounded nearly 900 between 2005 and 2011. washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Counter-measures were fielded to protect U.S. soldiers from the horrible, faceless enemy devices. New vehicles like MRAPS were field, new tactics put in place, and new innovations spread. The vehicles helped, but really a tank was the best protector.

New innovations included a spark plug (heat source) on a stick called rhino to fool some of the devices were a low tech counter. Now on display in the US Army museum for the lives they saved.

The @IDF will face this threat and other IEDs with years of their own lessons learned/countermeasures (to included from EFPs used against IDF by Hezbollah in late 1990s in South Lebanon) and Coalition forces in Iraq/Afghanistan. But I still hate seeing them..