The widespread use of IEDs in conflicts during the early 2000s prompted significant investment in C-IED capabilities and the development of more systematic approaches to addressing the threat.[1] The C-IED doctrine that emerged during this period became organized around three complementary lines of effort: ‘defeat the device, prepare the force, and attack the network’ (Joly and Amoroso, 2025). Together, these efforts sought to detect and neutralize devices, prepare security forces to operate in IED-affected environments, and identify, disrupt, degrade, and ultimately dismantle the IED system—understood to comprise the actors, processes, resources, and relationships directly involved in producing and using IEDs.
These three functions remain central to C-IED measures. Experience over the past two decades has, however, shown that applying these functions effectively requires a common understanding of how IED threats emerge and evolve, and of the environments in which they occur (UNSG, 2024, pp. 8–9). IED threats do not develop in isolation. Materials, knowledge, financing, and technologies move between actors and across borders, while growing access to dual-use materials and technical knowledge creates new opportunities for adaptation. Wider political, social, economic, institutional, and security conditions play an instrumental role in shaping IED threats (Blancafort and Amoroso, 2026). Looking beyond individual devices, incidents, and networks is therefore key to understanding how perpetrators, motivations, resources, and enabling conditions interact with the broader operating environment.
This wider understanding of C-IED threats has direct implications for the coherence of national responses. The Small Arms Survey’s work in West Africa suggests that an effective C-IED response involves more than acquiring a predetermined set of technical capabilities (Small Arms Survey, 2024b). Instead, the appropriate combination of prevention, preparedness, and response measures varies according to the nature and level of the threat, while the effectiveness of these measures depends on the governance arrangements through which they are organized and coordinated.
Efforts to measure the effectiveness of the response should take into account the harm it seeks to prevent and reduce. IEDs affect civilians and communities through death and injury, displacement, restrictions on mobility and humanitarian access, damage to infrastructure, disruption of livelihoods and services, and longer-term effects on recovery (UNSG, 2024, p. 2). Taking into account these wider consequences makes it clear that they cannot all be addressed through C-IED measures alone. Some factors that enable IED use, as well as many of its consequences, extend beyond the remit of security institutions. Efforts to reduce IED risks should therefore involve complementary contributions from other relevant stakeholders, although this does not imply making these interventions part of C-IED.
The Survey’s research and support in several contexts suggests that C-IED approaches continue to rely on the established three-functions doctrine while increasingly considering the wider factors that shape IED threats and the effectiveness of responses. Drawing on the Survey’s research and policy support, this Situation Update examines what C-IED responses require to be effective in today’s threat environments, nearly two decades after the emergence of the established C-IED doctrine. It explores how understanding the threat can inform comprehensive and context-specific national responses; how effective governance and institutional arrangements can underpin those responses; and how C-IED responses can connect appropriately with wider efforts to reduce IEDrelated risks and harm. Published ahead of the forthcoming 2026 UN General Assembly resolution on countering the threat posed by IEDs, the Situation Update is also intended to contribute to ongoing international policy discussions on responses to evolving IED threats.
[1] In this Situation Update, C-IED is used as an overarching term to refer to the broader field or approach; more specific terms, including C-IED measures, capabilities, and responses, are used where relevant.
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