To prevail against today’s terrorism we need not only good tools and procedures (more below), we also need to understand and take strategic lessons from the wide spectrum of scenarios -- now and in the past -- across which terror can and has revealed itself in action:

A. Terror as a tool of combat can sometimes be wielded successfully by the materially and technically weaker side, driven by nationalist feelings that are always very difficult to suppress. (In Vietnam, the North’s use of booby traps and hit-and-run and other guerrilla tactics -- against Japan and then the French and finally the U.S. -- is arguably an example of relentless nationalism achieving its goal at any sacrifice.)

B. Terror can be a sign of weakness and command desperation, and suicide bombers a proof of impending military collapse. (The human torpedoes and Kamikaze pilots of Imperial Japan in World War II illustrate this “Third Generation” failed use of terror.)

C: Terror as vicious nihilism -- the blind impulse to destroy all constructive order in society -- is perhaps the ultimate indication of an ideology’s bankruptcy, or of a movement’s lack of any agenda at all beyond sheer despotism. (Bin Laden and Saddam and their minions would fall in this ugly “color” of the spectrum.)

The real problem for the U.S. and our Allies, both in Iraq and globally, is that some of the terrorism we’re facing is, in the minds of the opposition and their leadership, driven by a form of nationalism with an ideology that sees its own moral standards as very high: fundamentalists whose schools create the next wave of combatants. The viewpoint, and not just the tactics, in this struggle is thus asymmetric: Those who seek to kill Americans do not see themselves as we see them. The mixing of “A” and “C” type terrorism in the same geographic areas makes the problem even more complex. To succeed in supporting democracy, and keeping the costs and body counts down, the U.S. needs a multi-spectral response.

And this is indeed exactly what we’re doing. Methods of counter-terror have evolved over the years along a continuum, depending on the nature of the threat and of our then-current technological capabilities. In World War II, forward-deployed radar picket ships and submarines gave advance warning of a Kamikaze attack, and ever-heavier anti-aircraft defenses on other ships provided close-in defense. In Vietnam, miniaturized remote sensors, dropped in the jungles, sniffed for human urea or felt for surface vibrations from footfalls and trucks, and transmitted reports via radio for mass interpretation at headquarters.

With this prior context established, let’s fast-forward back to the present.

The Defense Department just announced Project Eyes -- led in part by the Air Force’s strategic and operational planning group, Checkmate -- with advice from Army experts in Washington and various field units. The goal is to develop and deploy new sensor and surveillance equipment, to assist our troops in defeating enemy terrorist cells.

Just like a biological cell in any living organism, a terrorist cell must perform certain “bodily functions” to survive. These functions include obtaining weapons and arms, training new members, and transporting munitions to sites of ambushes, bombings, and other attacks. The objective of Project Eyes is twofold: first, detect all such forms of movement so that the links in the chain of lethality can be broken, and second, detect the munitions from a safe distance both in their covert dumps and caches and also at their places of final employment -- alongside roads or under clothing or in shopping bags or in vehicles.

The technology for doing this is truly multi-spectral, and designed to work in the real three-dimensional world. Some details of individual systems were discussed elsewhere, including in the News and Intel & Rumors archives of Military.com. Some of the new approaches, in contrast, are classified. But items in the open press the past few years (or recently) permit some educated speculation without providing insights to our enemies. The following is a sample of these next-generation tools that belong under (or near) the sponsoring umbrella of Project Eyes.

Short-range ground penetrating radars, mounted on vehicles, can be used to locate booby traps from far enough away to not set them off. The radars have modes that detect voids (empty spaces) as well as buried metal, and other modes that find discontinuities in soil density, to reveal even mines made solely from plastic.

Man-packed or vehicle-mounted non-lethal lasers now exist in the final R&D stage, to illuminate a local portion of the sky, and detect certain types of ultra-fast movement by molecules and dust low in the atmosphere. This will allow computer-assisted triangulation on the origin of gunfire -- including the location of a sniper before the sniper has a chance to escape. This type of laser will be tested soon at Camp Pendleton, CA.

The Georgia Tech Research Institute has announced an effort developing a “reconnaissance round,” a device to be fired from a conventional mortar or artillery piece, that would download ground imagery as it flew through the air. These rounds could provide small units with inexpensive, integral tools for gaining instant overhead views to their front or in other potentially dangerous directions. Such recon info would plug into a broader network-centric warfare database, supplementing the capabilities of uninhabited or autonomous drones such as Predator and Global Hawk, and instrumented tethered blimps sometimes known as aerostats.

Non-lethal directed-energy devices can also come more and more into play. These systems would recreate at short but effective tactical ranges the equivalent of the remote chemical analyses now performed by robotic space exploration probes over vast reaches in the vacuum of space. Different substances have different signature reactions to bombardment by atomic particles or photons. This can be exploited to find explosives on the ground in desert or city settings where explosives shouldn’t be.

The key to triumph in any battle is to fight on your own terms and on terrain of your own choosing. In the context of modern terrorism, “terrain” is being extended underground and into the air, as well as into cyberspace, telecoms, and financial transactions surveillance and interdiction. “Terms” can mean technology developed and adapted to the peculiar human, political, and logistical conditions of terrorist battlefields including Iraq and Afghanistan. In this way it becomes possible to paralyze and overwhelm or undermine the enemy, despite how numerous and dedicated their actors and sympathizers might be.

There’s no reason why the U.S. can’t re-focus part of its Third Generation industrial strength to become a Fourth Generation winning player. One can easily make a case that this vital transformation is already under way. Inventing gadgets and training good troops for active duty is what we’re best at. Do it right, and we can triumph over sub-state or trans-state aggressor factions, by robbing them of their stealth, mobility, and striking power. Do it fast, and maybe we can turn our attention and funding to things we need to be much better at than we are, especially veterans benefits and health care, and “rightsizing” of our properly re-organized armed forces.

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com