Help wanted: today's fights expose technological weak spots.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Technology Gaps - Cover story

The military calls them "disruptive challenges." It's Pentagon-speak for vulnerabilities that enemies have exploited to their advantage. Disruptive challenges--roadside bombs, combatants camouflaged as civilians, insurgent camps that are undetectable by electronic sensors--have forced U.S. military leaders to search for new tactics and technologies.

Long-held beliefs about what technological superiority really means have been thrown into question. Military officials have called on the defense industry to help come up with solutions, even though it's become clear that, in the fight against insurgents or terrorists, technology alone is not enough.

"We've celebrated the notion that we can make war a pristine surgical operation," says retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Wilkerson. But enemies have seen the capabilities of U.S. armed forces and have taken action to counter them. In the wars that the United States is fighting today--against the Taliban, al-Qaida and any number of shadowy terrorist networks--the technological weak spots have become evident. The world's most scientifically advanced force still has trouble identifying the enemy combatant, both on the ground and at sea; providing troops with reliable communications devices; mining and sharing intelligence; and locating roadside bombs.

The military needs help bridging these "technology gaps."

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FINDING THE ENEMY

* The war in Afghanistan has exposed serious weaknesses in the Defense Department's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology. ISR is an area where the Pentagon is used to having a major advantage over the enemy. But despite an abundance of overhead collectors of electronic intelligence--including both piloted and unmanned aircraft--the physical environment and the nature of the conflict make it difficult, if not impossible, to identify enemy combatants on the ground without human intelligence that is gathered via interpersonal contact, says Army Brig. Gen. H R McMaster, director of concept development and experimentation at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command.

"There's been an assumption that technology can lift the fog of war," he says in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "But situational understanding cannot be delivered on a computer screen. It's something you have to fight hard to achieve."

The challenge has been especially tough in Iraq and Afghanistan, says retired Army Special Forces Lt. Col. James Gavrilis. "They don't wear uniforms, they are not in formation, they look just like any civilian ."

In a counterinsurgency, the identity of the enemy often is known only to civilians in the area. Even simple visual cues don't work, he says. "If you say that anyone who has a rifle is a combatant, you could end up hurting the guy who's defending his block ... You won't be able to look at a crowd and pick out the bomb makers."

Most U.S. aerial sensors and surveillance systems were developed for flat ground, he says. The mountainous terrain punctuated by deep valleys creates nightmare scenarios for sensors that have limited range.

Some of the most valuable electronic intelligence comes from eavesdropping, Gavrilis says, such as "bugging the campfire where insurgent planning is taking place." As with visual ISR, eavesdropping systems are hampered by the terrain.

"We have to really start developing capabilities" in this area, he says. Promising technologies exist in the civilian IT and telecom industries. "We have to figure out how to use the technology that's already there and figure out how to get intelligence."

The Pentagon's Defense Science Board advisory panel notes in a recent study that shortcomings in sensor technology have dogged the U.S. military for a long time. "Today's stressing ISR missions are challenged by the hard sensor problems the Defense Department has faced for decades," the study says. "They range from the detection, surveillance, tracking and identification of moving vehicles in various clutter environments to the surveillance of individuals moving in normal, everyday urban environments."

Because of size, power and sensor phenomenology, most U.S. systems are inherently short range, which limits their use to choke points and fixed areas of interest, according to the DSB study. "As a result the number of units required can be large even to cover modest (few square kilometer) areas. Once deployed, little or no flexibility is available to correct pointing and deployment configuration problems." The need for local infrastructure to support data processing complicates the logistics for employment of ISR systems, the DSB report notes. "And the low bandwidth output limits ability to integrate these sensors with other remote sensors." Improved technology is needed to "extend duration and reduce the number of sensors required."

Assessments such as the DSB report, however, ignore the fundamental reality of current wars, where the enemy has found ways to circumvent U.S. advanced systems. "There is no magic wand of technology that is going to make these things easier," says retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Thomas L. Wilkerson, who is currently the chief executive of the U.S. Naval Institute. "Technology is not the answer. People have to grit their teeth and accept it."

The U.S. military has "remarkable capacity for tracking people," says Wilkerson. But the same ISR problems now witnessed in Afghanistan were seen before, such as during the ill-fated 1993...