The role of the US Air Force in fighting terrorism at home

Aerospace Power Journal, Spring, 2002 by Michael Champness

To achieve this end, we need to fuse data from many different sources, including law-enforcement databases, financial records, and human intelligence (which should prove easier here than overseas), perhaps along with existing Air Force and national ISR assets periodically turned inward. Although it is not clear that the American people are quite ready for unmanned aerial vehicles flying overhead, we have a host of data-gathering techniques that are much less obtrusive. Ultimately, we can translate each of these sources into electronic formats that we can share horizontally without human intervention or interpretation.

The goal of this horizontal integration is the same as that desired by our airborne combat forces: predictive battle-space awareness. To paraphrase Gen John P. Jumper, Air Force chief of staff; when you know your universe of potential targets, you are able to more quickly categorize the specific intelligence you receive. Imagine that a Combined Federal Campaign thermometer (his analogy) represents your confidence level; you keep adding information--indications and warnings--to what you already know until you reach the requisite confidence level to act. This is exactly the same procedure we would use to ascertain whether a subject represented a terrorist threat, and it would also apply conceptually in the response to a cyber attack. (2)

The difference between an AOC used in this manner and the way we use it to support our expeditionary forces is that overseas, we would send a strike package to destroy the target; domestically, we would very likely forward our information to the FBI, which would then send an agent (or a team) to arrest the suspect. Although we might have difficulty visualizing an AOC feeding its results into anything other than a typical expeditionary strike package, it is even more difficult to imagine the president and secretary of defense authorizing the Air Force to apply deadly force domestically in any but the direst circumstances, and only when all other techniques have failed--as on 11 September.

As reliance upon a domestic AOC grows, its design would begin to diverge from that of an expeditionary AOC because of its need to integrate with so many different entities. Over time, our AOC could evolve to provide the foundation for the system used by the entire federal government and the president and secretary of defense. In the end, once a national system is fully established, our involvement could end. Even though every federal agency has crisis-response capabilities, a system does not currently exist to provide national-level, predictive battle-space awareness and crisis-decision support.

There is general consensus that the United States must make it as difficult as possible for terrorists to move freely about our country, yet we still must preserve as many of our civil liberties as possible. To that end, the challenge becomes separating the minute number of terrorists from the millions of law-abiding citizens and residents of this country. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally limits federal military forces from acting in a domestic law-enforcement role, but, more than likely, the new security environment will cause our elected leaders to update the balance between freedom and security, just as America has always done during times of war. This does not mean that military surveillance assets will soon find wide use domestically; nor is it conceivable that the Defense Department would be granted expanded arresting authority. It does make it more likely that, with our expertise in battle-space decision procedures, civilian authorities would welcome our help--on perhaps a permanent, but at le ast a temporary, basis.