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A lob bomb (known officially as an improvised rocket-assisted mortar, improvised rocket-assisted munition, VOA News – Insurgents Using New Homemade Rocket Weapon in Iraq or IRAM) is a rocket-fired improvised explosive device made from a large metal canister (often a propane gas tank that has been drained of its contents and filled with explosives, scrap metal, and ), Democracy Now! | Stop-Loss: A Look at the US Military Policy that Creates a "Backdoor Draft" to Force Soldiers to Continue Service which has been used by insurgents as well as the Iraqi military and police during the Iraq War since late 2007, as well as by various forces in other conflicts. The weapon is essentially an airborne version of an improvised explosive device.
Lob bombs were used during the Vietnam War by the VC/NVA, specifically in Operation Oklahoma Hills, 1 March to 29 May 1969. Below is a part of the After Action Report by the Col. R.L Nichols, Regt CO, 7th Marines that describes this device and how it was used:
According to U.S. military officials, lob bombs are designed to cause "catastrophic damage," and have the ability to kill "scores of soldiers" at once, more than conventional improvised explosive devices. the use of such devices in Iraq were first described in the international media in July 2008, when General Jeffery Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division and of U.S. forces in Baghdad, called the lob bomb "the greatest threat right now that we face." By July 12, 2008, in 11 lob bomb attacks on American bases, three U.S. soldiers had been killed and 15 had been wounded, all three deaths occurring in an April 28, 2008 attack on the U.S. Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. By then, the weapon has only been encountered in Baghdad, where it was used by Shiite insurgents, whose superior ability to conceal forensic evidence about their identity has been acknowledged by the U.S. military. The U.S. military has found that the rockets used to propel the lob bombs have been produced in Iran, Russia, and China.
By 2011, it had been used as far out as the Iraq-Iran border by Iranian-backed militias to attack U.S. military installations in Iraq. These bombs have been used in Afghanistan and several other locations around the world, and some have been found in terror cell bombmaking facilities in the United States by the FBI and ATF. One media report indicates such a munition may have been used by the Taliban to bring down a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011.
New types of IRAMs including Volcano rockets and Elephant rockets, have been used during the Syrian Civil War by both the government and the rebels as well as by the IS forces in Syria and elsewhere. In the 2016–2017 Battle of Mosul, the Iraqi interior ministry's Rapid Response Division utilized IRAMs mounted on against IS.
Texas Tech University The Vietnam Center and Archive, Item Number: 1201051002
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