Aggressive ISR in the War on Terrorism

Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States (US) found itself in a new type of war, one for which existing military doctrine was ill suited. The US now faces a dispersed, loosely organized, non-state threat. This paper addresses the problem of how to employ existing military tools to counter global terrorist groups. This paper presents a Terrorist Group Model of a notional group, then proposes a counterterrorism strategy to deny terrorist groups sanctuary, one of the key requirements for these non-state threats. This paper then presents several ways in which this objective may be achieved using existing military assets in a new way. The final proposals build upon a 2003 RAND study entitled "Military Operations Against Terrorist Groups Abroad: Implications for the United States Air Force", authored by David Ochmanek.