"...died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device" goes the
mil obit.

Why don't they just say "when he drove over a mine"?

No, its gotta be "enemy forces" "attacking". With some multisyllablic weaseling for a homemade mine.

I'm reading about the IRA. The "enemy forces" are "volunteers" aka freedom fighters (tm). The IRA needed to improvise more
than the folks the US is invading.