Time senitive targeting in the long war

NY Times:

THE Pentagon has cast its struggle with terrorists, insurgents and extremists as the "long war." The designation is intended to suggest a decades-long test of wills against a fanatical enemy that will likely continue well after the United States reduces its forces in Iraq.

But the Pentagon's long war has been punctuated by short, though intense, episodes in which American commanders have been forced to make snap decisions on whether to bomb vital but fleeting targets.

The airstrike that turned Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's safe house into a pile of rubble was the latest example of intelligence that was rapidly processed, turned into targeting coordinates, approved for attack and communicated to an aircraft equipped with precision-guided bombs. But it was hardly the only one, and as Mr. Zarqawi's successor — believed to be an Egyptian named Abu Ayyub al-Masri — seeks to carry out his jihad against the Americans there will undoubtedly be more.

The acronym-happy military, in fact, has already given the process a name: T.S.T. or "time-sensitive targeting." The question is how the United States can replicate the extraordinary success it had with the strike on Mr. Zarqawi and avoid the frustrating breakdowns from the early days of the war.

The issue is not technical capability. The critical limitation is intelligence. "We can do the 'how,' " said a senior Air Force officer, who insisted on remaining anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on this issue. "It is getting the 'what' and 'where' that is the challenge."

During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the United States' ability to carry out time-sensitive attacks was embryonic. Over the next decade or so, however, a new generation of military technology entered the American arsenal. The military acquired satellite-guided bombs, an important complement to laser-guided bombs, which can be impaired by clouds or bad weather. It fielded Predator drones. It also institutionalized the procedures at its command centers for rapidly carrying out airstrikes.

"We train to it in exercises," said Charles R. Heflebower, a retired lieutenant general, who served as the top Air Force commander in Korea. "For example, almost every Red Flag has a T.S.T. element to it," he added, referring to the exercises carried out at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Carrying out timely airstrikes to kill enemy commanders and destroy other vital targets remains a complex undertaking against adversaries who, unlike Iraq, have formidable air defenses.

That recognition, and the calculation that there may be some terrorist targets that are beyond the immediate reach of American aircraft, had led the Pentagon to propose the development of an ultimate T.S.T. system: submarine-launched Trident II missiles that would be equipped with a non-nuclear warhead. The Pentagon argues that the system would give it a global capability to take out a target within an hour.

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Zarqawi as a time sensitive target appears to be wholly uncontroversial, even though collateral damage from the strike killed a woman and a child. There appears to be no controversy that the value of the target was such that killing Zarqawi probably saved the lives of countless women and children. This is progress for liberals. Maybe someday they will understand other aspects of warfare.