Air Force Col. Gail Wojtowicz told attendees at an American Enterprise Institute conference that the US military must improve its capability to “find” the target in the war against terrorists. (DR, 10/13/05) The Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson cites the same problem in a new white paper. Thompson argues that some Pentagon programs will fall to a QDR axe, not from a Katrina-based budget cutting drill, but from a desire by Donald Rumsfeld to change spending priorities. According to Thompson, “The biggest beneficiary of that determination in the QDR will be a program to find and target elusive enemies.” He goes on to say that the system envisioned by Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld’s right hand on intelligence matters, “is a global network of pervasive, persistent sensors that can collect and process all of the electromagnetic signatures generated by adversaries into a composite picture of threats that is continuously updated.” It’s a tall order, but the Air Force “has a lock on most of the relevant technologies,” says Thompson. He cites as “must-haves”: Space Radar, the Global Hawk UAV, and a joint electronic aircraft.
The cost of the nuclear AGM-181 Long-Range Stand Off missile has come down slightly and the program is on track, but several technologies it relies on are still considered immature, the Government Accountability Office found in a report. Meanwhile, the GAO also assessed the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile as…