By late morning, as the temperature soared above 100 degrees, members of the Army's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, paused in a small, stuffy house. An airstrike had been called in to destroy a suspected car bomb in their path. The home's residents waited anxiously under U.S. guard.

A thunderous explosion rocked the house.

"That was the VBIED," said Spc. Chris Martin, 23, using the military abbreviation for a car bomb.

Across the river in the predominantly Sunni district along Haifa Street, Col. Bryan Roberts, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade, said an increase in vehicle bombs had led him to introduce a plan to barricade five markets in the district. "My biggest concerns security-wise are the current attack methods, the VBIEDs, suicide vests," he said. …

The government should take measures "at the national level to help the poor guy in the end zone who's trying to stop VBIEDs," Bannister said.

Regardless of what form the attack takes, be it a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) detonated in a suicide attack or a direct assault against a "soft" target carried out by a small team armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades, there will be some attack-related activity in and around the target prior to the actual launching of the attack. …
An analysis of the 1998 attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania shows that the weapon of choice was a VBIED.