Pentagon agency set up to detect roadside bombs blows billions: "A Pentagon agency formed five years ago to defeat the threat of roadside bombs killing more and more US soldiers in Iraq has ballooned into a 1900-employee behemoth and has spent nearly $17 billion on hundreds of initiatives.
Yet the technologies it has developed have failed to improve significantly the ability of soldiers to detect roadside bombs and have never been able to find them at long distances.
The best detectors remain the low-tech methods: trained dogs, local handlers and the soldiers themselves.
Advertisement: Story continues below A review by the Centre for Public Integrity and McClatchy Newspapers of government reports and interviews with auditors, investigators and congressional staffers show that the agency - the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organisation (JIEDDO) - also violated its own accounting rules and has not properly evaluated its initiatives to keep mistakes from being repeated.
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