BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN — I.E.D. or Improvised Explosive Device: The U.S. military calls it the Taliban’s weapon of choice and one look at the statistics and you know why.

Components for the construction of improvised explosive devices found by Afghan Border Police and Coalition Forces in Khowst Province.

The crude but lethal weapon is responsible for more than three quarters of all casualties in Afghanistan, says the U.S. Army, and I.E.D. attacks have tripled so far this year compared to last.

“It is a fact of modern warfare, this is the type of asymmetric attack they will use against us … and we have to be prepared to deal with that and this is a fight that’s worth fighting,” says Colonel Jeffrey Jarkowsky, Task Force Commander of JTF Paladin, a multi-disciplinary team trying to combat the most likely killer of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

And while armoured vehicles and constant training does save lives, intelligence plays a key role.

“It is critical, intelligence drives the fight overall in every aspect and for us it’s critical to use intelligence to determine who are the cells and the networks who are implacing the I.E.D.s,” says Colonel Jarkowsky.

With I.E.D. attacks literally everyday in Afghanistan now, the Taliban is adapting and learning. Like a virus mutating, the Taliban is learning from mistakes and adapting with new techniques.

“And so you’ve got this constant, constant, battle for wits really, it’s a battle for wits, it’s not a battle about armies or mass or weapons, it’s a battle about clever-nous” says Paul Cornish, a military analyst with London-based Chatham House. He adds that coalition forces know they must be smarter and more agile than the Taliban.

“The coalition are using more and more advanced technology, equipment and assets and so on and we’re beginning to see unmanned aerial vehicles being used in missiles attacks on very very local targets” says Cornish.

But I.E.D.s of all types kill more Afghan civilians than soldiers. In a security camera video released to the media by the Coalition forces, a 4×4 truck is seen navigating a check-point in Khost province. To the left of the truck, there is a steady stream of school children returning home from their last day of school. The video shows the 4×4 explode into a ball of fire. Fourteen children died in the explosion and scores were injured.

Back on base at Bagram, the trainer is yelling out orders: “Don’t pick anything up!” “Get on your knees to check the vehicle!” “Anything obvious could be a decoy!”. The soldiers know the drill already but the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25Th Infantry Division from Alaska, is getting a refresher course. They are retracing the grim monotony of how to find I.E.D.s and dodge them, a task that has gone from Iraq to the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Here too now, as in Iraq, the hunt is on to find that that crude but effective weapon of war soldiers know all too well.

Click here to watch my report in video