February 22, 2016
The members of ISIS have more in common with the war boys of Mad Max: Fury Road than ruthless violence, desert surroundings, and a yearning to die in combat ("I live, I die, I live again!"). Robert Bunker, a counterterrorism expert at TRENDS Research & Advisory, warns that the latest ISIS tactic is to field car bombs fitted with Mad Max-style improvised armor to carry out suicide attacks on protected targets, and that such tactics might spread to the U.S. and Europe.
The Evolution of the Car Bomb
This new development represents a third wave of vehicle-borne bombs. The first wave consisted of stationary vehicles. That goes all the way back to "Buda's Wagon," a horse-drawn wagon packed with explosives and metal, which anarchist Mario Buda used for an attack on Wall Street that killed 40 people in 1920. Notorious "Type 1" attacks also include the World Trade Towers bombing in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I was in London during the Staples Corner bombing carried out by the IRA, and like thousands of people I had my commute disrupted by a white van left on the road by an overpass. Several hours later the van exploded.
