In the lull before the storm, U.S. military planners are looking at everything from precision-guided munitions to special-operations forces armed with the lowest of low-tech weapons — sniper rifles — to take out terror networks and their state sponsors.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld promised one week after the terror attacks at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center to "use the full spectrum of our capabilities" in a campaign believed to be targeted at Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. Signaling a sea change in U.S. strategy, Rumsfeld said the anti-terrorist planning will require a "new vocabulary."

Precisely what the war plan will include is a closely held secret, but military analysts said that technology could take a back seat to intelligence gathering and dissemination, at least at the beginning of the anti-terrorist campaign.

"It is a war in which information may be the most important asset that we have," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday (Sept. 19) as U.S. soldiers and sailors embarked for the Middle East and southern Asia. "And so we're asking a lot of countries to help us with information."

The transformation of U.S. military strategy, a framework that has long depended on "force multipliers" that overcame numerical inferiority with technological superiority, has been turned on its head by the worst terror attack in U.S. history, experts said. The current rethinking of U.S. military strategy now revolves around themes like "asymmetrical warfare," in which shadowy terrorists befuddle traditional military operations, and "homeland defense."

The problem of fighting terrorists using conventional means was illustrated by a former military planner in the Clinton administration, who told The New York Times that in selecting targets in Afghanistan, "the sense was we were going to bomb them up to the Stone Age."

Adapting intelligence

A major challenge for U.S. military planners is adapting existing intelligence assets to an anti-terror war. The current system relies heavily on intelligence intercepts by the National Security Agency, photo interpretation by agencies like the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and "all-source" analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency and military intelligence.

A key problem, experts said, is the lack of information and intelligence in central Asia and the ability to share it. "What is missing is any kind of a network on the ground," said retired Army Col. Daniel Smith, an intelligence veteran and chief of research at the Washington-based Center for Defense Information.

Until the United States can redirect its intelligence assets, Smith said, it will be forced to rely on key allies in the region, especially Pakistan's military intelligence service. Since control of that network by the military government there is shaky, "That's where it starts to get dicey," Smith said.

Since the 1980s, the U.S. military has been struggling to develop and deploy an "all-source analysis system" to automate the processing and analysis of data ranging from signals intelligence to artillery spotters' reports. The effort came in response to the avalanche of raw data being collected by satellites and other sensors.

The long-running effort to emphasize not just collection but also analysis and dissemination of battlefield intelligence resulted in moves to rebalance military funding between collection and processing of intelligence, said former Pentagon comptroller William Lynn. The challenge was "how to integrate all sources of information in a timely way," Lynn said.

For several years, military planners have sought to apply emerging networking technology to this approach to develop "network-centric architectures."

"To me that means anybody can get any information at any time, and that means it's no longer a push system, it's a pull system," John Stenbit, assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, said during a Pentagon briefing just days before the Sept. 11 attacks. "So anybody in the world who's got a gun at any moment can be solving the problem of what are his 10 best targets, and it's not somebody waiting for somebody else to tell him."

Added Stenbit, "Network-centric allows us to go anywhere we want, in very small groups, talk to each other and get everything to get up there at exactly the same instant."

Timely analysis

With few intelligence assets in central Asia and fewer allies, the United States may find it difficult to realize such a system in the anti-terror war, experts said. Along with a reinvigorated human intelligence network, the U.S. military also will have to beef up its own analytical capabilities, work more closely with allied intelligence services and share information with them.

"The intelligence problem [is one] of analysis and dissemination in a timely fashion," said Smith at the Center for Defense Information. "It's going to be a battle of intelligence against counterintelligence. It's essentially going to be down and dirty, and it's going to take a helluva long time."

Along with networking technologies and precision weapons, observers said the military is also likely to speed deployment of largely untested unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), much as it deployed an airborne battlefield-management system, the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System, in the Gulf War.

The Predator unmanned aerial vehicle has been flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq. Other tactical UAVs include the Global Hawk, Pioneer and Hunter. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency also has "micro-UAV" technology on the drawing board, and military experts said that technology could play a role in future special-forces operations.

However, intelligence experts warned that control stations would have to be close to the front lines, probably in nuclear-armed Pakistan, to guide the UAVs over mountainous regions and return them to their bases.

Sources said 35,000 U.S. special-forces troops have been placed on a war footing and some could already be operating around the world. One possible mission could be capturing known terrorists and returning them to the United States. Liaison with allies on special operations is said to be "intense."

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