Gates stepping up fight against roadside bombs

OSHKOSH, Wis. -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday announced that he is creating a departmentwide task force aimed at combating the growing threat of roadside bombs in Afghanistan.

Speaking en route to Wisconsin, Gates said countering the proliferation of improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan will be one of his highest priorities for the next six months.

The task force will be led by Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter and Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John (Jay) Paxton Jr., director of operations for the Joint Staff, who will report directly to Gates on a monthly basis. Gates added that the task force will work with Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his team to devise solutions to the IED problem.

Current efforts to deal with the greatest cause of civilian and military casualties in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been led by the Joint IED Defeat Organization, which emerged in 2006 to leverage the experience and expertise across the military services into a concerted effort to get ahead of the rapidly changing threat. The new task force would operate at a higher level of the Pentagon bureaucracy and report directly to Gates.

"I just want to make sure that all of these different organizations in the department are moving together and cooperating and breaking down the stovepipes so that we have the maximum possible effort," Gates said.

Gates, who is touring the Oshkosh Corp. facility that is producing mine-resistant all-terrain vehicles, or M-ATVs, now being deployed to Afghanistan, estimated that IEDs cause roughly 80 percent of the casualties in Afghanistan.

The department, he said, needs better offensive capabilities to take down the networks that support the creation and proliferation of IEDs, as well as defensive capabilities to protect deployed troops.

"My principal concern over the last few weeks has been whether all of this is properly integrated and prioritized and aligned, and whether we are adaptable and agile enough," he said. "So I decided I needed to focus my attention on this problem as one of my top priorities."

Gates lauded the department and industry's efforts to build the M-ATVs quickly and send them to theater. Oshkosh produced just 46 of the vehicles in July but will roll 660 off assembly lines this month and 1,000 next month, he said.

Gates left open the possibility of purchasing hundreds more of the M-ATVs, which are considerably more agile than the heavier Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, and better suited for the Afghan terrain. But he added that any decision to buy more of the vehicles would be tied to President Obama's decision on Afghan strategy and troop levels.

Also on Thursday, Gates criticized leaks from the Obama administration about the deliberations on the strategy for Afghanistan.

"I have been appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on in this process," he said. "I think a lot of different places are leaking. I'm confident the Department of Defense is one of them."

Should he learn the identities of the leakers, "that would probably be a career-ender" for them, Gates said.