Beyond the Device: Rethinking C-IED for Contemporary Threat Environments
Since the early 2000s, counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) doctrine has been organized around three complementary functions: ‘Defeat the device, prepare the force, and attack the network’. These remain central to C-IED measures today. However, experience over the past two decades has highlighted the importance of looking beyond individual devices and attacks to understand the wider conditions in which IED threats emerge, persist, and evolve.
Effective C-IED responses require more than technical and operational capabilities. They also depend on a comprehensive understanding of the threat, coherent national policies and institutional arrangements, effective inter-agency and regional cooperation, and attention to the risks and harm experienced by affected populations.
Beyond the Device: Rethinking C-IED for Contemporary Threat Environments—a new Situation Update from the Small Arms Survey—draws on the Survey’s research, national assessments, and capacity support experience to examine how states and international partners can develop threat-informed, context specific, and adaptable C-IED responses. It also explores how C-IED responses can connect appropriately with wider efforts to reduce IED-related risks and harm, while respecting distinct mandates and principles.
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Context: Adapting C-IED to today’s threat environments
Understanding IED threats in their wider context
Translating threat understanding into context-specific responses
Organizing and sustaining national C-IED responses
Putting People at the Centre of C-IED
Connecting C-IED across the humanitarian–development– peace nexus
Conclusion: Towards a contemporary understanding of C-IED
The production of this Situation Update was kindly supported by the Government of Ireland. The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government of Ireland.