Marzolf, Lieutenant Colonel Usaf, Grego

Time-critical Targeting: Predictive Versus Reactionary Methods: an Analysis for the Future: Cadre Paper No. 19 Marzolf, Lieutenant Colonel Usaf, Grego

Publisher Marketing: Targeting has long been a primary concern for our air forces; it took a thousand plane raids in World War II to destroy a factory. The revolutionary gains in precision weapons of the last dozen years have eliminated the requirement for the air force armada and highlighted new areas of improvement, particularly a desire to destroy more difficult, fleeting targets of opportunity. As Lt. Col. Gregory S. Marzolf points out in this study of new targeting parameters, the Air Force became aware during Operations desert Storm and Allied Force of its inability to find and destroy emerging targets before they disappeared. Marzolf sees the Air Force moving towards solutions, particularly with the concept of reactive methods, wherein identified targets are attacked by loitering aircraft. The Air Force is working to improve its persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms to identify the targets, its communications network to get the information to a shooter, and it weapons to quickly engage the target. On the other hand, work in this area suggests some 15-20 years for implementation, and Colonel Marzolf advocates a temporary solution for engaging time-critical targets and suggests a methodology he calls a preemptive or predictive approach. He bases his idea on the need for an analysis of enemy activity to the point of accurate prediction and employment of a flying platform that has long-loiter capability and incorporates sensors to detect, locate, and identify targets that will be destroyed by miniature munitions that it carries. He identifies the low-cost persistent area dominance (LOCPAD) system, now under development, as the one that will tie intelligence with a kinetic mechanism to finalize the time-critical targeting. The author outlines the issue in an introduction and has a background chapter that explains the current system, which provides a useful description of sensors, fusion of information, shooters, and weapons. He explains the current reactive method and identifies various system weaknesses and strengths. His main theme of a preemptive approach describes in great detail the projected employment of LOCPADs as a very effective system for time-critical targeting. Marzolf insists that persistence of surveillance is crucial, especially when Airmen directing the air war in Iraq used persistence surveillance to identify and effectively target the illusive Iraqi insurgents. Contributor Bio:  Air University Press Walter Gary Sharp Sr. serves as a senior associate deputy general counsel for intelligence at the US Department of Defense, where he advises on legal issues related to intelligence, covert action, intelligence and counterintelligence policy, intelligence oversight, information security, information sharing, security classification policy, information operations, and computer network operations. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sharp served as an associate deputy general counsel for international affairs at the Department of Defense; the director of legal research for international, comparative, and foreign law at the Law Library of Congress; the director of global and functional affairs within the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the State Department; and a principal information security engineer at The MITRE Corporation. A veteran with 25 years of service, Dr. Sharp retired as a decorated US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with prior enlisted service. His military assignments include commanding officer of a field artillery battery, senior prosecutor, deputy legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and international law adviser for the commanding general of the Unified Task Force in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. Dr. Sharp's military decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, and his many awards for writing excellence and academic achievement include the Judge Advocate General's School Alumni Association Annual Professional Writing Award and an American Bar Association Award for Professional Merit. Dr. Sharp is the author of numerous articles and three books: UN Peace Operations (1995), CyberSpace and the Use of Force (1999), and Jus Paciarii (1999). He serves as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center where he currently teaches a counterterrorism course, The Law of 24. He has also taught graduate-level seminars on United Nations peace operations and international peace and security. He lectures internationally in universities and other diverse public forums on wide-ranging topics of international law and national security law, such as international peace and security, conflict management, and peacekeeping operations.