COUNTERFORCE TARGETING CAPABILITIES 

AND CHALLENGES

by 

Barry R. Schneider 

The Counterproliferation Papers 

Future Warfare Series No. 22 

USAF Counterproliferation Center

Air University 

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

Counterforce Targeting Capabilities and Challenges 

Barry R. Schneider 

August 2004 

The Counterproliferation Papers Series was established by the USAF 

Counterproliferation Center to provide information and analysis to assist 

the understanding of the U.S. national security policy-makers and USAF 

officers to help them better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of 

mass destruction. Copies of No. 22 and previous papers in this series are 

available from the USAF Counterproliferation Center, 325 Chennault 

Circle, Maxwell AFB AL 36112-6427. The fax number is (334) 953-

7530; phone (334) 953-7538. 

Counterproliferation Paper No. 22 

USAF Counterproliferation Center

Air University 

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6427

The Internet address for the USAF Counterproliferation Center is: 

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm

Contents 

Page 

Disclaimer................................................................................................... ii

The Author................................................................................................. iii

I. Introduction.........................................................................................1 

II. The Ideal Counterforce Capability .....................................................2 

III. The Revolution in Accuracy...............................................................3 

IV. Implications of Stealth for Counterforce Targeting............................7 

V. Solving the Challenge of Hardened Deeply Buried Targets ..............7 

VI. Solving the Challenge of Targeting Mobile Missile Launchers.......13 

VII. U.S. Scud Hunt Needs and Shortfalls...............................................15 

VIII. Solving the Challenge of Targeting WMD Assets: 

 Thermobaric (TB) and Agent Defeat Weapons (ADWs) ..................24 

IX. Counterforce Science and Technology Support ...............................27 

X. Counterforce Targeting Planning Tools ...........................................29 

XI. Counterforce Employment and Preemption Decisions.....................30 

XII. Counterforce: The Way Ahead........................................................34 

Notes..........................................................................................................37 
Disclaimer 

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do 

not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government, 

Department of Defense, or the USAF Counterproliferation Center. 

ii 
The Author 

Dr. Barry R. Schneider is the Director of the USAF

Counterproliferation Center (CPC) at Maxwell AFB, and is also a 

Professor of International Relations at the Air War College. Dr. Schneider

specializes in WMD counterproliferation and nonproliferation issues. He 

is the author of Future War and Counterproliferation: U.S. Military 

Responses to NBC Proliferation Threats (Praeger, 1999); Editor, Middle 

East Security Issues, In the Shadow of Weapons of Mass Destruction 

Proliferation (CPC, 1999); and contributor to and co-editor of Know Thy 

Enemy: Profiles of Adversary Leaders and Their Strategic Cultures (CPC, 

2003), The Gathering Biological Warfare Storm (CPC, 2002), Pulling 

back from the Nuclear Brink: Reducing and Countering Nuclear Threats 

(Frank Cass Ltd., 1998), Battlefield of the Future: 21st Century Warfare 

Issues (Air University Press, 1998), Missiles for the Nineties: ICBMs and 

Strategic Policy (Westview, 1984), and Current Issues in U.S. Defense 

Policy (Praeger, 1976). He has served as a Foreign Affairs Officer (GS14) and Public Affairs Officer (GS-15) at the U.S. Arms Control and 

Disarmament Agency, as a Congressional staffer on arms control and 

defense issues, and was a Senior Defense Analyst at The Harris Group and

the National Institute for Public Policy. He has taught at the Air War 

College since 1993. As a faculty member he has taught Air War College 

core courses of instruction and elective courses such as International 

Rivals, Homeland Security Issues, International Flashpoints, 

Counterproliferation Issues, 21st Century Warfare Issues, and CBW Issues 

for the USAF. He has taught at six other colleges and universities, and has 

a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. 

iii 
iv 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 1 

Counterforce Targeting Capabilities and Challenges 

Barry R. Schneider 

I. Introduction 

Counterforce targeting is one of the important means of removing 

potential weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threats to the United States 

and its allies and is one of the multiple means available to thin out the 

weapons of mass destruction threat. 

To fully understand what progress the United States has made in

counterforce capability, as well as the continuing shortfalls and the way 

ahead, one has to search for answers to a few key questions, namely: 

• What would the ideal counterforce capability entail?

• How has weapons accuracy changed warfare?

• What are the implications of stealth technology for counterforce?

• How can the U.S. military neutralize deeply buried hardened

facilities and what challenges do these present to U.S. forces? 

• How can the U.S. military defeat the threat of adversary missiles 

fired from transporter-erector-launchers? How capable are we at 

present? What needs to be done to neutralize such future “Scud 

Hunt” threats? 

• How can the U.S. military eliminate enemy WMD assets without 

major collateral damage? How far have we come in creating 

thermobaric and agent defeat weapons for this purpose?

• What strides has the United States taken in Science and 

Technology to improve U.S. counterforce weapons capability?

• What advantages do new U.S. counterforce targeting planning 

tools such as the Counterproliferation Analysis and Planning 

System (CAPS) provide to commanders?
2 . . . Counterforce Targeting

• When should and should not the United States leadership elect to 

employ counterforce attacks in a preemptive or preventive war

mode?

• Finally, what future steps in organizing, training and equipping U.S. 

forces needs to be taken to make U.S. counterforce capabilities 

adequate to the challenges of finding, fixing, and destroying

adversary WMD and other military assets in a time of war? 

II. The Ideal Counterforce Capability 

If one wanted to construct the ideal U.S. counterforce capability 

against potential adversary WMD assets, what might be its attributes?

Clearly, one thing that would be essential to have is accurate target 

information. U.S. targeteers would need answers to such questions as: 

“Where, precisely are all the weapons, production facilities, storage 

facilities and launchers? What are the vulnerabilities of these assets? 

How could these assets be destroyed? Is a direct kill possible? If so, 

how? Or, must we be satisfied with inflicting a functional defeat? If so, 

how? In the case of attacking mobile or relocatable targets, how long do 

we have before they are likely to move again? If the target is a 

transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) about to launch a missile, how long is 

that launch cycle? If the target is a production or storage facility for 

WMD assets, what kinds of U.S. agent defeat weapons would be effective 

in either destroying it, disabling it, or denying access to it in such a way as 

to prevent collateral damage to adjacent civilians or friendly forces in the 

region?” Further, “How do we assess the results of strikes on known or

suspected WMD targets, especially strikes with standoff weapon systems?

Have these strikes released WMD agents into the atmosphere? What 

agent? How much? Where is it going?” These questions are very hard to

answer with current capabilities. Clearly, you can’t target enemy weapons 

of mass destruction if you don’t know where they are. Nor can you 

efficiently negate them if you are uncertain about target characteristics or 

the results of your own strikes against such targets. 

In addition to ascertaining precise target coordinates and characteristics, 

the ideal counterforce fighting force should be able to deliver their blows with 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 3 

great accuracy. Counterforce units will need precision guided munitions 

(PGMs) to hit the bull’s-eye when the balloon goes up. 

Also required, when striking at such important targets, is a force that

can apply discriminate lethality for tailored effects and minimal collateral 

damage. To get to targets before they are launched or moved, the ideal

counterforce strike should minimize the time-to-target. Counterforce

weapons should be able to penetrate unharmed to target, maintain allweather precision, operate from extended range if necessary, or to be 

present continuously over likely target sets to reduce the sensor-to-shooterto-target times. The counterforce weapon system used should match the 

appropriate weapon to each target to achieve the effects sought. Further, the 

ideal counterforce attack plan will minimize the dangers to air crews and 

ground units utilized in the attacks.1

Finally, for counterforce operations to be optimally employed, the

United States needs a strategy and military doctrine that guides when, 

where, and how such counterforce actions should be triggered by top U.S. 

decision-makers. Further, reasoned decisions will be improved if policymakers address some key questions before deciding on a particular course

of action. 

In the past dozen years since Desert Storm the United States military

has dramatically improved its counterforce capabilities. Several areas 

deserve particular emphasis such as the revolutions in accuracy, stealth,

penetrating warheads, other hard target defeat tools, various programs to 

track and destroy mobile missile launchers, agent defeat weapons, and 

analytic tools to assist the targeteer. Perhaps the single most significant

improvement to the U.S. capability to attack and destroy enemy weapons

of mass destruction targets in wartime is in the realm of accuracy. 

III. The Revolution in Accuracy 

There was a quantum leap in improvements in bombing accuracy 

from World War II to Desert Storm. A similar improvement in bombing 

accuracy and lethality occurred between Desert Storm (1991) and

Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), as U.S. forces employed far more

precision guided munitions than were used in the first Gulf War. 
4 . . . Counterforce Targeting

During World War II very few aerial bombs dropped by aircraft ever 

hit their target. As many as a thousand sorties might be needed to destroy 

a single target in the era of the “dumb” bomb. Indeed, according to the 

United States Strategic Bombing Survey, issued at the end of the conflict, 

only about one in five bombs ever landed within 1,000 feet of their 

intended targets.2

In WWII, targeteers talked in terms of numbers of sorties per target 

destroyed. Today, with the advent of smart weapons with great accuracy 

and lethality, targeting specialists speak of targets destroyed per sortie 

since a single aircraft may destroy multiple targets in a single flight. 

As Major General David A. Deptula, USAF, has noted, “even when

control of the air was wrested from the Luftwaffe in the spring of 1944 and 

allied aircraft were free to roam the Axis skies, the level of ‘precision’ 

bombing still required a thousand aircraft to succeed against one target.”3

During the last years of World War II, even with air superiority, allied 

bomber attacks against various German industrial sectors took months of

bombing to achieve even modest success against fixed targets. Massed air 

attacks and tons of bombs were required to eliminate targets like a bridge or

a factory.4

The progressive introduction of precision guided munitions into the 

inventory has allowed the U.S. military to substitute precision for sheer 

tonnage and has reduced the numbers of sorties required dramatically. 

Precision weapons have given a new meaning to the concept of mass. As 

Lieutenant General (Ret) Buster Glosson has noted, “what we historically 

achieved with volume we now can accomplish with precision.”5

 General

Deptula estimates that whereas 1,000 B-17 sorties dropping 2,000 pound 

bombs were required to destroy one target in WWII, only 20 F-4 sorties, 

dropping 176 of the first laser-guided bombs, were needed in Vietnam to

accomplish the same task.6

 By 1991, only one F-117 dropping two 

precision guided munitions could destroy two targets. By 1998, in the air 

war against Serbia, a B-2 bomber was capable of destroying 16 individual 

targets with bombs launched in a single sortie.7

The circular error of probability (CEP) of such weapons had shrunk 

from 3,200 feet in 1943 to 20 feet by 1998. This increased accuracy made

precision guided munitions the weapons of choice as they became

available. By the time of Desert Storm in 1991, as one commander noted, 

“of the 85,000 tons of bombs used in the Gulf War, only 8,000 tons...were 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 5 

PGMs, yet they accounted for nearly 75 percent of the damage.”8

 Note

the evolution of precision guided munitions use from Desert Storm to the 

Kosovo air war in Table 1 below. By the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom 

in 2003, precision guided munitions were used most of the time.

Table 1: U.S. Airpower in Recent Regional Conflicts9

Desert 

Storm

Serbia/ 

Kosovo Afghanistan

Precision Guided Bombs Delivered 20,450 8,050 12,500 

Percentage of total Munitions that are 

Precision Guided 7-8% 35% 56%

Percentage of Precision Guided 

Weapons delivered by the United 

States (versus others in coalition)

89% 80% 99%

Precision guided munitions make up the majority of the overall U.S. 

munitions budget. As one report states, “dozens of smart-munitions

programs are in development or production today by the Army, Navy, and 

Air Force. About 60 percent of the munitions budget is spent on precision 

guided weapons, and that 60-4010 breakdown is expected to continue in 

the foreseeable future.”11

Precision guided munitions can provide a number of battlefield 

advantages over less accurate arms. First, precision guided munitions can 

reduce collateral damage, allowing commanders to strike enemy targets

that are near the civilian population or near sensitive cultural assets such 

as churches, mosques, cultural symbols, hospitals, schools, and businesses, 

while minimizing noncombatant casualties and avoiding destruction of 

valued non-military facilities. 

Second, precision guided munitions can more rapidly quiet enemy 

firepower by employing more effective targeting and less ordnance. 

Precision guided munitions allow more stand-off target kills, responsive

kills, and one-shot kills. They also allow commanders to send missiles 
6 . . . Counterforce Targeting

and guided bombs rather than men and women aviators against targets,

thus reducing allied casualties while accelerating the engagement and

defeat of enemy forces. As General Glosson has written, “each (WWII)

Schweinfurt raid placed 3,000 airmen in harm’s way. Today, we can do 

the same job with just two airmen.”12

Third, the widespread use of precision guided munitions reduces the 

logistics tail of friendly forces. Accurate “smart” weapons can inflict 

damage equivalent to that of much larger numbers of “dumb” munitions. 

Smart bombs also reduce the inventory of bombs needed to destroy a 

given set of targets. General Glosson noted that, “according to the Gulf

War Air Power Survey Data Base, we used approximately 180 tons of 

precision munitions a day in Desert Storm. Our airlift capacity from the

continental United States to Southwest Asia was 6,500 tons a day. Nine 

C-141s (of the 234 available) a day could supply the daily precision 

guided munitions expenditures of Desert Storm.”

13 Precision guided

munitions provide orders of magnitude increases in per-weapon-lethality 

and far fewer weapons are needed to accomplish the same objectives. In 

summary, precision guided munitions reduce collateral damage, improve 

lethality, enhance survivability, reduce logistical demands, and accelerate 

enemy defeat. 

One such precision guided munition, the Joint Direct Attack Munition

(JDAM), has had a particularly dramatic impact on targeting effectiveness. 

As General Glosson summarizes, the JDAM “will allow a single B-2 to

precisely destroy 16 separate targets on a single pass.”14 The JDAM 

guidance kit converts existing unguided bombs (dumb bombs) in the 

inventory into precision guided “smart” munitions. The tail section of 

JDAMs contains GPS and inertial navigational systems that can guide 

either the 2,000-pound MK 84 or the 1,000-pound MK 83 warheads to 

target when air launched against ground targets by an F/A-18 aircraft. 

Testing of JDAMs indicates they have a 95 percent system reliability and 

are accurate to within nine meters in all kinds of weather.15

Between 1997 and 2003, the United States had acquired 87,000 

JDAMs in its inventory and it became a weapon of choice against many 

targets in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, dropped by B-52s, B1-Bs, 

B-2s, F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s. 

However, the JDAM is just one of a large family of new U.S. smart 

weapons or precision guided munitions employed in the U.S. inventory
Counterforce Targeting . . . 7

and improved in the past decade to provide greater accuracy and lethality 

with far fewer weapons employed.16 General Glosson noted that, “the 

Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), coupled with the Sensor-Fuzed Weapon 

(SFW), would leave destroyed the armor of the Iraqi Hammurabi and 

Medinah divisions, if they had been available in Desert Storm. This

would have prevented their use in quelling the Shiite rebellion after the 

1991 Gulf War.”17 These Iraqi Republican Guard Armor Divisions were

destroyed by such precision guided munitions in Operation Iraqi Freedom

12 years later. 

Further, in the past decade, the United States also has developed and 

acquired over 60,000 precision guided munitions.18

This PGM revolution, in sum, means that the U.S. and allied 

militaries will be able to achieve targeting objectives utilizing far fewer 

flights while achieving more targets killed per delivery. 

IV. Implications of Stealth for Counterforce Targeting 

This revolution in accuracy and accompanying lethality has also been 

coupled with a significant improvement in the ability of air forces to 

penetrate unscathed to target through the introduction of new stealth 

technology. As General Deptula has stated, stealthy aircraft like the F-117 

flew only two percent of the combat sorties in Desert Storm, yet accounted 

for forty-three percent of the targets stuck, since they were all but invisible 

to Iraqi air defense radars.19 Stealth allows full penetration to optimal

launch points and helps ensure survivability of the aircraft and crew 

during the mission. Thus, the combination of weapons lethality gained by 

accuracy, and bomber survivability gained by stealthiness, maximizes the 

counterforce capabilities of U.S. air forces, a revolution augmented by 

robust acquisition programs in the dozen years since Desert Storm (in 

1991). 

V. Solving the Challenge of Hardened Deeply Buried Targets 

As the United States improves its counterforce weapons by drastic 

improvements in stealth and accuracy, adversaries are countering U.S.
8 . . . Counterforce Targeting

capabilities by placing their own weapons, production facilities, storage 

facilities, and command and control assets inside hardened and, at times, 

deeply buried facilities. U.S. precision guided munitions and air 

superiority have sparked a “mole” response as adversaries have taken to 

tunnels, caverns, deep underground bunkers, and cut-and-cover facilities. 

These underground facilities are likely to be shielding high-value 

time-sensitive enemy assets like their: 

• leaders and top staff 

• command, control, and communications centers 

• weapons of mass destruction 

• nuclear enrichment assets 

• WMD munitions storage 

• Transporter-Erector-Launchers (TELs) 

• CBRN production facilities 

As one Department of Defense report states, “the limitations of

weapons capabilities during the (1991) Gulf War, as well as the increasing 

availability of advanced tunneling technologies, have brought about a 

clear world-wide trend in tunneling to protect facilities. Hardened cutand-cover facilities may be vulnerable to current air-to-surface 

conventional penetrations but remain a substantial challenge when 

standoff attack is desired. Some facilities housed in tunnels or deep

underground shelters, however, are nearly invulnerable to direct attack by 

conventional means.”20

Potential military adversaries such as North Korea have turned to

tunnels and hard and deeply buried facilities to shield their military forces

from the ever more lethal precision guided munitions of the United States. 

Reportedly, “more than 70 countries now use underground facilities 

(UGFs) for military purposes. In June 1998, the Defense Science Board

Task Force on Underground Facilities states that there are now over

10,000 underground facilities worldwide. Approximately 1,100 

underground facilities were known or suspected strategic (WMD, ballistic 

missile basing, leadership or top echelon command and control) sites. 

Updated estimates [from the] Defense Intelligence Agency reveal this
Counterforce Targeting . . . 9 

number has now grown to over 1,400. A majority of the strategic facilities 

are deep underground facilities.”21

During World War II, the German high command shielded itself from 

allied bombing by building a series of leadership bunkers. Indeed, Adolph 

Hitler died in his bunker as allied forces closed in around him in the

Spring of 1945. During the Vietnam War, the Viet Minh and Viet Cong 

made frequent use of tunnels to hide forces, weapons caches, and to 

provide secure transportation routes. During the Cold War, Soviet leaders

and forces attempted to protect themselves from possible attack by 

building thousands of hardened bunkers and underground facilities to try 

to place themselves in safe positions. Similarly, the U.S. leadership, 

beginning with the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, built a

network of leadership and critical asset shelters in a Federal Relocation 

Arc, around Washington, D.C., 50 or more miles outside the city, scattered 

throughout the countryside in an area including North Carolina, West 

Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, 

to protect against a possible Soviet attack.22

ICBM forces on both sides were placed in hardened silos in an

attempt to protect them against possible attacks, ranging all the way from 

those that could withstand a few hundred pounds per square inch (psi) of 

overpressure to some that would remain intact and withstand up to 

100,000 psi of overpressure. 

When the U.S. Peacekeeper (MX) missile was in development, over 

30 different basing modes were explored, most of which looked at some 

form of protected basing such as in hardened silos, tunnels drilled into 

hillsides, or deeply buried facilities inside a butte or mountain. 

Survivability, in many of the basing modes explored, used a combination 

of hardening, mobility, and location deception. 

Muammar Qadhafi in Libya has built a huge underground facility at 

Tarjunah and has since admitted that this was one of two chemical 

weapons manufacturing and storage sites. (Qadhafi has shown a 

willingness in 2004 to roll back his weapons of mass destruction 

programs, cooperating in their dismantlement.) North Korea has built 

many thousands of hardened tunnels and hardened underground shelters 

for its artillery, missiles, and leadership. Saddam Hussein’s regime also 

went underground into bunkers beneath buildings to escape the potential 

wrath of a U.S. adversary, and such facilities became important targets of 
10 . . . Counterforce Targeting

General Franks and his targeteers from U.S. Central Command in

Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

In the past decade, the U.S. Department of Defense has initiated the 

Hard and Deeply Buried Target Capability (HDBTC) program “to develop 

conventional (non-nuclear) weapons systems capable of denying access to, 

disrupting operations of, or destroying defended, hard and deeply buried 

facilities.”

23

One of the counterforce achievements of the past decade, since the 

inception of the U.S. Counterproliferation Initiative in late 1993, has been 

the initiation of the DoD Tunnel Defeat Demonstration Program that 

“seeks to develop, assess, and demonstrate end-to-end targeting 

capabilities (from detecting, identifying, and characterizing facilities to 

targeting, attacking, and performing damage assessment) across all 

warfighting options.”24

Detection of deeply buried hardened facilities can be done by access

to human intelligence, by remote sensors that record construction or 

operations, or by close-in inspections that uncover the presence of power 

lines, sewage systems, water pipes, camouflaged antennas, air vents, 

entrances, exits, and tell-tale heat, acoustical, electromagnetic, or other

emissions. Details of underground layouts might be acquired by getting 

blueprints from the foreign contractors originally involved in constructing 

the facility, or by educated guesses based on the standard layout done by 

the relevant contractor in previous projects. 

Hiding the existence of tunnels, cut-and-cover25 facilities, and deeply

buried bunkers can become a cat and mouse game as rival “hiders” are 

pitted against the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) 

“seekers” of the United States. Adversaries, for example, become aware 

of the times when U.S. reconnaissance and surveillance satellites will pass 

overhead and may do their construction work or operations only when 

they believe they will be unobserved. 

In this contest of hiders and seekers, U.S. intelligence, surveillance,

and reconnaissance technologies have improved significantly over the past 

decade since Secretary of Defense Aspin announced the U.S. 

Counterproliferation Initiative in December 1993. First, satellite sensors 

have been improved as multi-spectral sensors have been developed and 

deployed since 1993. The view from above high altitudes has come into 

increasingly sharp relief. 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 11 

The U.S. Department of Defense, over the past decade, has made 

improvements in the ability to measure hot spots (thermal sensors), 

gravitational fields, electrical fields, magnetic fields, seismic tremors, 

radioactive emissions, sonar pings, ground shock movements, biological 

and chemical agent presence, and other indicators. Moreover, ground 

penetrating radars can give indications of underground structures and 

voids, and multi-spectral sensors can detect an array of smells, emissions, 

noises, and vibrations that help to locate and characterize subsurface 

operations and structures. 

Further, the United States has now developed an improved and very 

capable group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as Predator and 

satellites like Global Hawk to loiter over suspect sites and provide 

constant coverage of activities on the surface and near entrances to 

underground facilities. This increased overhead presence on a 24/7/365 

basis makes it increasingly difficult for an adversary to build and operate 

from tunnels and underground facilities without detection. 

Characterizing the nature of the hidden site is still problematic for the 

seeker, although a mixture of technologies can help solve the puzzle, 

including improved seismometers, gravimeters, instruments that map the 

electromagnetic field of a site, and other remote types of sensors. In the

past decade, progress has been made in the technologies employed to 

characterize underground facilities from either the surface or the 

atmosphere, although this is far from an exact science and hiders have 

great advantages over seekers in this arena. Hiders can make the 

opponent’s (e.g., the United States) job even more difficult by use of 

masking, camouflage, decoys, deception, insulating hot areas, covering 

sharp edges, and painting surface equipment in earth hues.

Even if a hardened tunnel or underground facility has been 

identified, located, and accurately characterized, it may still be difficult 

to defeat. Any deeply buried facility with 2,000 feet or more of 

overburden may be invulnerable to a direct attack even if nuclear 

weapons were employed. 

The U.S. counterforce attack may attempt either a direct attack aimed 

at destroying the facility altogether or a functional defeat attack aimed at 

causing “a militarily significant reduction in its capacity to perform its

function for a militarily significant period of time.”26
12 . . . Counterforce Targeting

A functional defeat may be achieved by various means: closing 

ingress/egress portals, destroying external umbilicals such as electrical 

power lines, phone line and radio antennas, or by denying life-support 

systems relating to air and water supplies. Internal equipment might be 

caused to malfunction due to blast vibrations that were too weak to destroy 

the structure but which, nevertheless, can disable the technology within it. 

Also, entombment can inflict a functional defeat as effectively as crushing

the facility through blast overpressure. 

A good deal of original thought has gone into an analysis of ways to 

defeat buried hardened facilities in wartime. In addition to use of earth 

penetrators or other explosive means to penetrate the overburden and 

crack or shatter the structure, counterforce analysts have examined ways 

of sealing vents and exits, cutting off the power, water, air, and sewage 

flows and of entombing the complex. Thought has been given to the use of 

insulation foam to seal openings and tunnels. Fuel air explosives might be 

used to suck up the oxygen within a complex and mobile robotic probes 

and sensors could allow invaders to pre-explore tunnels and openings. 

Were it not prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention or the

Biological Weapons Convention, incapacitating agents, choking gas, 

narcotics, sleep agents, and other toxins might be forced deep into the 

underground voids via air vents. Other vent weapons might include use of 

acoustical arms, tear gas, smoke, molds, allergens, mildews, or fungi.

Further, the underground or tunnel facilities might be shorn of electrical 

power by use of electromagnetic pulses, cutting power lines, destroying 

electrical nodes, or by microwave attacks. Computer systems within the 

protected shelters could be neutralized by either destroying their antennas, 

cutting power, or introducing computer viruses. 

Unfortunately, once a hardened tunnel or underground complex has 

been struck, our battle damage assessment (BDA) is still relatively 

primitive and inadequate for discerning what the effect was inside the 

targeted tunnel or underground shelter. Yet, battle damage assessments 

need to be accurate if the U.S. and its allies are to continue to disable the 

enemy site through timely restrikes and stay ahead of the enemy by 

blocking his efforts to dig out after the facility’s portals have been closed. 

The longer the United States has had to identify, characterize, and plan 

either a functional or destructive strike on a given hardened buried target, in 

most cases the greater its probability of wartime success against it. The
Counterforce Targeting . . . 13 

past decade has seen an arms race of sorts between the moles in states of

concern and the growth of U.S. precision guided munition and 

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capacity. At this juncture it 

is not clear whether, in a net assessment, the defense or the offense has 

made a significant gain. Identifying, characterizing, and killing a hard 

target set, especially one drilled into the side of mountains or constructed 

deep underground is still a very difficult problem just as it was in 1993, 

and much counterforce research and development work still needs to be

done to change that fact. 

In short, while the United States has come a considerable distance in

the past decade in its ability to identify, locate, characterize, attack, and 

assess damage, it still has far to go since adversaries continue to respond 

asymmetrically to great U.S. advantages in airpower, intelligence, 

surveillance and reconnaissance, and to U.S. precision guided munitions 

by going underground and hardening their facilities to protect their 

weapons, leadership, and industry. 

VI. Solving the Challenge of Targeting Mobile Missile Launchers 

During Desert Storm the United States’ military capability to counter 

the Iraqi missile threat was very limited. Iraq launched 88 Scud-type

ballistic missiles, 42 of which were aimed at Israel. According to the Gulf 

War Air Power Survey (GWAPS), coalition forces directed 1,500 air 

sorties against Iraqi missile launchers. Despite these numerous air strikes,

GWAPS concluded that not a single Scud launcher kill could be 

confirmed.27 This finding was disputed by General Wayne Downing, 

commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) in Desert Storm, 

who asserts that SOF “took out six to eight Scuds, including a couple 

destroyed by anti-tank missiles launched by the teams.”28

Nevertheless, the Gulf War Air Power Survey indicated that: “The 

actual destruction of any Iraqi mobile launchers by fixed-wing coalition 

aircraft remains impossible to confirm. Coalition aircrews reported 

destroying about eighty mobile launchers. Special operations forces

claimed another score or so. Most of these reports undoubtedly stemmed 

from attacks that did destroy objects in the Scud launcher area. But most, 

if not all, of the objects involved now appear to have been decoys, 
14 . . . Counterforce Targeting

vehicles such as tanker trucks that had infrared and radar signatures 

impossible to distinguish from those of mobile launchers and their 

associated support vehicles, and other objects unfortunate enough to 

provide ‘Scud-like’ signatures.”29

The best that could be said about the intensive allied Scud Hunt of 

Desert Storm, even if it resulted in few or zero kills, is that the operation at 

least kept the Iraqi Scud-launch teams continually moving, hiding, and 

taking evasive actions. It almost surely reduced Iraq fire rates and the

number of salvos. 

During the 1991 war with Iraq, allied forces allocated about five 

percent of all aircraft sorties in the counter-Scud offensive. However, 

several factors accounted for the meager results. 

First, Iraq abandoned fixed-site Scud launchings and instead opted to 

adopt “shoot and scoot” tactics using mobile transporter-erector-launchers

(TELs) to fire their missiles. The Iraqi Scud-launching teams utilized 

decoys to draw coalition fire while shielding their TELs through constant

movement and camouflage, concealment, and deception techniques. 

Mobile TEL survival strategies thus include: 

• shoot and scoot tactics; 

• use of decoys and other camouflage, concealment, and deception 

techniques; 

• hide sites (under bridges, inside buildings, in tunnels); 

• use of fixed sites as target magnets to draw off enemy resources

otherwise devoted to destroying mobile missile launchers; 

• rapid launch sequences to limit “dwell time.” 

Second, the allied forces in Desert Storm hindered their own efforts 

by not taking the Scud threat seriously at the inception of the planning

process, by not deploying maximum Special Forces into the Iraqi desert at 

the beginning to ferret out Scud transporter-erector-launcher locations, and 

by a sensor-to-shooter time lag of 60 minutes. The present goal is to try to 

reduce this sensor-to-shooter time to 15 minutes or less in order to get 

within the enemy firing cycle and to destroy the mobile missile launchers

once pinpointed, before they can move and relocate. 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 15 

Third, the Scud hunt against mobile missile launchers in 1991 ignored 

the use of some of the available sensor/platform technology that had 

proven effective in tests but which had not yet been deployed. The officer

in charge of the 1991 Scud Hunt air campaign had never previously 

commanded or participated in exercises designed to destroy mobile 

missile launchers. 

During Desert Storm the primary mission for both the United States’ 

Delta Forces and the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service (SAS) was to 

locate and then designate targets for coalition aircraft such as U.S. Air 

Force A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, Air Force Special Operations Command 

(AFSOC) C-130 gunships, and MH-53J Pave Lows. Delta Forces on the 

ground were also equipped with 50-caliber sniper rifles to target Iraqi 

missiles, launchers, and their teams. Unfortunately, allied special forces 

could rarely get within rifle range and the aircraft response times averaged 

an hour, permitting the Iraqi mobile launch teams to fire and move away

before coalition land and air forces could close in and destroy them. 

VII. U.S. Scud Hunt Needs and Shortfalls 

Considerable technical progress can be reported in developing new 

U.S. technologies and concepts of operation to be successful in future 

engagements against an enemy operating with ballistic missiles launched 

by a mobile transporter-erector-launcher. 

To succeed against the mobile “Scud-type” threat the United States

needs to be able to: 

• improve its persistent and mission-dedicated intelligence,

surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to locate enemy

mobile missile launchers in a timely, targetable way; 

• preemptively destroy suspected enemy hide sites or potential hide 

sites in the expected launch zone; 

• shorten the sensor-to-shooter handoff time to 15 minutes or less; 

• prioritize Scud Hunt missions in the Air Tasking Order (ATO); and 
16 . . . Counterforce Targeting

• organize, train, and equip joint air assets, intelligence, surveillance,

and reconnaissance assets, and special operations forces (SOF) 

ground assets for this role. 

There are certain deficiencies in the Scud Hunt capabilities that need

to be developed to provide nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile

(NBC/M) counterforce against such time-sensitive, time-critical targets. 

As Lt Col Tim Lindemann has summarized in a study of U.S. counterforce 

capabilities, “Warfighting commands and service planners have done a

thorough job of identifying and analyzing capability gaps – or unfulfilled 

needs – of NBC/M mobile targeting. With regard to intelligence, 

reconnaissance, and surveillance these needs consistently include: 

• intelligence preparation that supports pre-launch operations; 

• wide area surveillance; 

• rapid sensor retasking; 

• precise target location;

• tracking, classification, and identification; 

• data exchange and cross-cueing between sensors; and 

• foliage penetration.”30

With regard to battle management and command, control, and 

communications, he indicates that the needs include: 

• “rapid data exchange between platforms; 

• automated battle management tools for data fusion; 

• target tracking; and 

• tasking (dynamic battle management); 

• a common view of the battlespace (i.e., a common operational/ 

tactical picture); and 

• integrated fire control of service platforms.”31
Counterforce Targeting . . . 17

Still a challenge is the job of finding and fixing the Scud transportererector-launcher targets or the infrastructure that supports such systems (e.g., 

roads, hide sites, command and control, maintenance, logistics, etc.). The

current buzzword to improve battle management and targeting is “horizontal 

fusion” or integration of all sources of data and from all sensor suites to 

facilitate the intelligence preparation of the battlespace, intelligence, 

surveillance, and reconnaissance collection planning, dynamic cueing, target 

data fusion, target data identification, and target data validation. This data

must be synthesized and made operational for the shooters. 

To provide more persistent overhead intelligence, surveillance, and

reconnaissance capabilities it is suggested that more airborne platforms, 

including attack aircraft and tankers, carry sensors. Likewise, some assets

designed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance purposes might be 

equipped as shooters as well (e.g., Predator). All airborne platforms would 

become multipurpose to facilitate the Scud Hunts of the future. 

The intelligence challenge will be to provide the warfighter with a

global situation awareness and persistent surveillance of the battlespace. 

Finally, as Lindemann has suggested regarding weapon systems, the needs 

consistently include: 

• “Having sufficient [and] numerous theater air assets assigned to 

the Scud Hunt mission; 

• ability to acquire, identify, and engage targets in an adverse 

weather environment; 

• having enough attack aircraft to cover all the “kill boxes” on the

map; 

• having enough intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets 

to discover the presence of Scud transporter-erector-launchers in 

“kill boxes” on a continuous basis; 

• having highly responsive shooters with available weapons 

accepting in-flight target updates; 

• employment of automatic target recognition capabilities; 

• having shooters in close proximity to targets when needed; and 
18 . . . Counterforce Targeting

• weapons must be capable of neutralizing nuclear, biological, and 

chemical agents without excessive collateral damage.”32

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. forces practiced against mobile 

transporter-erector-launcher targets at a CONUS airbase location to perfect 

teamwork and attack operations against possible Iraqi transporter-erectorlaunchers. This practice and certain practices led U.S. commanders to 

believe they would do significantly better in Scud Hunting in Operation 

Iraqi Freedom than was the case in Operation Desert Storm. The possible 

outcome will never be known because no Iraqi Scuds surfaced to fight in 

Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Nevertheless, unlike Operation Desert Storm, in Operation Iraqi 

Freedom numerous special operations forces teams were deployed forward 

at the outset of hostilities, U.S. attack aircraft were better trained to engage

mobile missile launchers, U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and 

reconnaissance assets were improved and more persistently in place over 

the target zones, and the intelligence team assembled before and during the 

operation better prepared the battlespace, fused the various collections of 

intelligence data, and better prepared the target characteristics for the Air

Tasking Orders that followed. 

During the Operation Iraqi Freedom Scud Hunt operation, the TimeSensitive Targeting cell of the Combined Air Operations Center did, 

indeed, become such a potential force multiplier that it could be considered

a weapons system in its own right. A tactical ballistic missile intelligence 

federation made up of fifteen different intelligence agencies and 

operational commands combined to do the intelligence preparation of the 

battlespace for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Potential launch areas or “Scud 

baskets” were identified. Geospatial data and analysis was generated to 

identify roads and paths Scud transporter-erector-launchers might traverse 

or potential hide sites. Intelligence on the potential Iraqi missile order of

battle were combined with named areas of interest, coordinates were 

assigned, and “kill boxes” were identified and plotted. Then, had an 

engagement with Iraqi Scud transporter-erector-launchers taken place in 

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the triad of intelligence, surveillance, and 

reconnaissance, special operations forces, and attack platforms would have 

combined to attempt to destroy the Scud threat. 

Despite some significant advances over the first Gulf War Scud Hunt 

operations, OIF success still would have been limited by such problems as: 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 19 

• night-time surveillance, 

• limited sensor capabilities, 

• great limits in the ability to deliver persistent 24/7 ISR coverage, 

and 

• the fact that the coalition lacked enough attack aircraft to cover all 

the “kill boxes” assigned to the counter-Scud mission.33

At present, the United States is making a number of upgrades to its Scud

hunting/mobile targeting capabilities. One such very recent program 

upgrade is the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with two Hellfire

Thermobaric Blast/Frag warhead upgrades to target and defeat highly mobile

or relocatable targets.34 Another such program is the USAF Low Cost 

Autonomous Attack System (LOCASS), an affordable precision-attack 

guided munitions capable of broad area search for transporter-erectorlaunchers and a system that can execute both the location and destruction 

missions. 

As currently envisioned, LOCASS is a turbojet powered, Global

Positioning System navigated, and Laser Detection and Ranging (LADAR) 

guided munition. It has a 90-100+

 nautical mile range and has 30 minutes of 

powered flight. It can be used as a standoff weapon, can be launched from 

an aircraft or missile, and can use its Automatic Target Recognition feature 

to engage in target search and close to destroy the targets located and 

identified.35

To improve the nation’s “Scud Hunting” capabilities, the United

States needs to improve in four operational areas of the so-called “kill 

chain”: target sensing, attack decisions, target engagement, and poststrike assessment. Note these elements in Figure 136 that go into the attack

operations (AO) “kill chain” steps to be taken when targeting an enemy

asset such as a mobile ballistic missile transporter-erector-launcher. 

Strengthening all is the path to real effectiveness. 
20 . . . Counterforce Targeting

Combat Assessment

Destroy Target

Engage

Acquisition, ID, Track

Transit

Respond

Receive Order and Data

Task and Direct Commit Decision

Detect and Locate

Report

Classify and ID

Data Management and Fusion

Sensor Search

Sensor Management

Intelligence Preparation

of the Battlespace

Sense

Decide

Engage

Assess

Figure 1. Attack Operations: Joint Operational Elements

As Dr. George W. Ullrich, Director, Weapons Systems Office in the 

Office of the Secretary Defense has stated, mobile targets demand a wideto-spot area search capability; rapid target cueing and fingerprinting; the 

presence of overhead weapons platforms, unmanned, mobile sensor 

platforms, and prompt sensor-to-shooter linkages, likely integrating both 

sensors and weapons delivery on platforms like the Predator that carries

two Hellfire AGM-114M enhanced lethality warheads.37 Persistence is 

one way to address the engagement portion of the kill chain. Another 

would be through development of high-speed weapons to reduce the time

of flight portion of the kill chain, especially in anti-access scenarios where

‘persistence’ solutions would be vulnerable to integrated air defenses. 

Some of the more important new technologies being developed to 

improve U.S. attack operations versus enemy mobile transporter-erectorlaunchers are the following:38
Counterforce Targeting . . . 21 

• Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) Technology in U.S. 

synthetic aperture radars combined with a wide-area search 

capability on U.S. overhead sensors, as may be placed on 

platforms like the U-2 aircraft, the JSTARS aircraft, or the Global 

Hawk satellite; 

• Semi-Automated Imagery Intelligence Processing (SAIP) System

to more rapidly assist image analysts in locating and identifying 

targets and help in transmitting targeting data to the tactical 

commander faster and more accurately; 

• Affordable Moving Surface Target Engagement (AMSTE) System

to integrate sensors with precision standoff weapons to attack 

moving targets in all weather scenarios without visual 

confirmation; and 

• Targets-Under-Trees (TUT) Program uses synthetic aperture radars 

to find, identify, and destroy enemy hide sites for ballistic missile 

launchers despite his use of camouflage foliage, or other deceptive 

and denial practices. 

This list is suggestive, not exhaustive. Interesting research and 

development projects that could improve future U.S. scud-hunting 

capabilities are: 

• Mobile Killer Units; 

• Improved Synthetic Aperture Radars; 

• Improved Technology for Measurement and Signature Intelligence 

(MASINT); 

• Multi-Spectral Scene Generation for Critical Mobile Missiles;

• Advanced Remote Unattended Ground Sensors; 

• National Imagery and Mapping Agency Support to Targeting; 

• Overhead Specific Emitter Identification;

• Counter-Camouflage, Concealment, and Deception (C-CC&D) 

projects; 
22 . . . Counterforce Targeting

• Polarimetric Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) 

Collection Capability; 

• Advanced Remote Ground Unattended Sensors (ARGUS); 

• Red Time Synthetic Aperture Radar Battle Damage Assessment; 

• Fusion of Electro-Optical and Radar Sensor Data; 

• Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace Support vis-à-vis

Critical Mobile Missile Targets. 

In order to take advantage of these developing new counterforce 

weapons, ISR and targeting decision technologies, the U.S. is going to 

have to increase its acquisition of low density/high demand assets like the 

U-2 and Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) 

aircraft and satellites like Global Hawk. The technologies to improve 

elements of the kill chain must be incorporated into one or all of these 

overhead platforms. 

Even with such improvements in place, the burden of proof will still 

be upon the U.S. military to prove it has solved the challenge of tracking, 

targeting, and destroying mobile missile launchers in combat. During 

1991’s Operation Desert Storm, the official tally was 0 for 88 in our 

confirmed ability to destroy Scuds and Scud-variants before launch. In the 

2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom no missiles appear to have been fired from 

mobile transporter-erector-launchers. It appears, that Iraqi forces relied on 

fixed launchers only, which should have been far easier to identify, locate, 

and destroy. However, 22 ballistic and cruise missiles were fired at U.S. 

and allied forces, without being detected before launch. 

Thus, no country, not even the United States, has yet demonstrated 

the capability to conduct successful attack operations against rival ballistic 

missile mobile launchers, and the jury is still out on our ability find and 

target all fixed missile launchers prior to launch. The United States is

gaining on the solution to this counterforce problem, but will have to lean

most heavily on its active and passive defenses until attack operations 

reach a much higher level of capability. 

Within the U.S. Government for some years there was no single office 

or agency exclusively dedicated and empowered to develop technology 

and concepts of operation to conduct a “Scud Hunt.” The effort now falls 

in numerous domains, including the individual U.S. armed services, the 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 23 

Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense Organization (JTAMDO), and the 

combatant commanders (e.g., such as the Special Operations Command, 

SOCOM). 

Prior to 1997, theater air and missile defense (TAMD) systems were 

developed by the individual services to satisfy the unique requirements of 

each, and this was not a joint coordinated program. Rather, each service 

went its own way. 

Finally, because theater air and missile defense was deemed 

increasingly important due to the proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction in the hands of potential adversaries and the wastefulness and 

inefficiency of parallel go-it-alone theater air and missile defense service

programs, JTAMDO was created to “define system interoperabilities and 

operational architectures and to validate the developing joint theater air

and missile defense capabilities.”39

There are three areas within theater air and missile defense that 

JTAMDO is responsible for developing requirements, including: 

• active defense; 

• passive defense; and 

• attack operations. 

Thus, if an enemy aircraft or missile threatens a U.S. or allied force or 

asset in wartime, it can either be destroyed on the ground prior to launch 

(attack ops), intercepted while in flight toward the target (active defense), 

or those in the targeted area can be protected from harm via passive 

defensive measures like dispersion, using shelters, wearing protective 

gear, and making advance medical preparations. JTAMDO was directed

to (1) develop joint U.S. theater and missile defense capabilities 

requirement for the armed services, (2) design the joint mission 

architecture, and (3) plan a joint theater air and missile defense capabilities

roadmap. The organization was to become the U.S. Defense Department’s 

operational proponent for theater air and missile defense (including attack 

operations) with oversight over Defense Department planning 

coordination, and oversight over theater air and missile defense 

operational requirements. In short, oversight over U.S. “Scud Hunt”

enabling programs is JTAMDO’s responsibility, a job that it has failed to 
24 . . . Counterforce Targeting

accomplish due to limited resources and a focus on other elements of its 

tasks. 

VIII. Solving the Challenge of Targeting WMD Assets: 

 Thermobaric (TB) and Agent Defeat Weapons (ADWs) 

The threat posed in Operation Desert Storm by Iraqi chemical and 

biological weapons brought home to U.S. defense officials the need to 

develop weapons that could destroy, disable, or deny such production 

facilities and stockpiles to remove that chemical and biological menace. 

At present, the United States military is mostly limited to 

conventional warheads as the tools to eliminate adversary chemical and 

biological weapons capabilities. Unfortunately, conventional explosives 

directed against an enemy bunker, storage facility, or production plant 

may cause the scattering of lethal agents over substantial adjacent areas 

that may be inhabited by civilians and friendly forces. This could also 

contaminate the local environment. If infectious diseases were released, 

such targeting could result in even more widespread infections. 

The U.S. Thermobaric and Agent Defeat Weapons programs were

accelerated and upgraded to meet special warfighting needs after the 

September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 

sparked the U.S. declaration of a global war on terrorism, including the 

state sponsors of terrorist groups. Two counterforce thermobaric 

programs were put on the fast track. One was the Bomb Live Unit (BLU)-

118B Thermobaric Penetrator which was rushed into the hands of the 

warfighter after a 90-day transition period of tunnel and open air tests of 

weapon effectiveness that preceded delivery of this agent defeat weapon 

complete with warheads, guidance kit, and fuzes to theater. The BLU118B Thermobaric Penetrator can be used for defeating hard and deeply 

buried targets housing chemical and biological weapons.40 

The second post - 9/11 thermobaric weapons delivery to the theater, 

Predator unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with Hellfire Thermobaric 

Blast and Fragmentary warheads (AGM-114M), took eleven months to get 

into the possession of relevant commands.41 Thermobaric weapons are 

optimized, or tailored, blast weapons. Generally speaking, less blast is 

better when detonating in the vicinity of weapons of mass destruction. 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 25 

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency sponsored two quick reaction 

programs: the AGM-86D Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile 

(CALCM) Penetrator and the BLU-119 Crash Prompt Agent Defeat 

(CrashPAD) gravity bomb. The CALCM-P was developed, demonstrated, 

and fielded as part of the DTRA-led Counterproliferation II Advanced 

Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). CrashPAD was sponsored 

by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in collaboration with the Air 

Force Research Laboratory, and was fielded in nine months as the first 

weapon designed specifically to defeat biological agents. 

In addition to these quick-reaction thermobaric and agent defeat

weapons (ADWs) programs, the U.S. Defense Department has in the last 

decade also begun work on a number of other new classes of ADWs that 

could be air-delivered to deny an adversary the use of its chemical and 

biological stockpiles and facilities with minimal collateral damage. 

Put another way, as Thomas A. Ricks reported in the Wall Street 

Journal, the agent defeat weapons program is unique. “Its mission is to 

produce the first truly new weapon of the post-Cold War era, a bomb 

whose effectiveness is to be measured by how many people it doesn’t kill–

while it destroys stockpiles of horror weapons.”42

While the details of such agent defeat weapons are classified, suffice 

it to say that at least eight agent defeat weapons programs are in progress

and are designed to neutralize enemy chemical and biological assets by: 

• high temperature incendiary (HIT) weapons attack utilizing socalled “thermobarics” to burn the enemy chemical or biological 

munitions and materials in place;43

• fragmentary weapons attacks designed to puncture chemical or 

biological containers within facilities without major explosions 

because major explosions might blow the agents outside the walls

of those bunkers or laboratories; 

• keep-out weapons attacks that so contaminate the chemical or 

biological assets that enemy personnel could not retrieve them in a 

timely manner; 

• blast weapons coupled with hard target smart fuzes and penetrating 

warheads that are designed to collapse or implode bunkers rather 

than explode them so that the structures struck collapse onto and 
26 . . . Counterforce Targeting

cover the chemical or biological munitions and agents, denying 

easy access to enemy personnel; 

• other means of sealing off or rendering hardened tunnels or deeply 

burial facilities non-functional, denying opponents entry or exit 

from such chemical or biological locations and destroying facility 

umbilicals. 

The agent defeat weapons coming into the U.S. arsenal have been 

tested in three Advanced Concept and Technology Development (ACTD) 

programs: 

• The Counterproliferation II Advanced Concept and Technology 

Development program administered by the Technology Division of 

the Defense Threat Reduction Agency; 

• The Agent Defeat Weapons Advanced Concept and Technology 

Development program begun in 2002 administered by the U.S. 

Navy; and 

• The Thermobaric Advanced Concept and Technology Development 

program was begun in 2002. The thermobaric operational sponsor

is the U.S. Forces Korea command, with the Defense Threat 

Reduction Agency as the technical manager.44

In addition, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Tyndall 

AFB began work on air-delivered agent defeat weapons in 1999. The 

overall agent defeat weapons program is designed to be compatible with 

U.S. arms control commitments and the agent defeat weapons Advanced 

Concept and Technology Development program is developing analysis 

tools to predict agent release plumes, internal dispersion and venting 

outcomes, and agent defeat weapons lethality against weapons of mass

destruction targets. 

The agent defeat weapons that are being designed are to be 

compatible with insertion into or to replace the 2000-lb BLU-109 warhead 

and will be compatible with USAF guidance kits for a number of other

U.S. bombs and warheads including the GBU-31, Joint Direct Attack 

Munition or JDAM.45
Counterforce Targeting . . . 27

During Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the BLU-118B 

thermobaric warhead was employed against Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces 

entrenched in caves and tunnels at Gardez.46

According to a report by the Jane’s Information Group, although the 

official goal of the Agent Defeat Weapons advanced concept technology 

demonstration project was “to fabricate eight weapons by fiscal year 2004 

for flight tests and validation and to have another 20 to leave for

operational use,”...nevertheless there was a push to get the weapons ready 

in time for a U.S. war with Iraq.47 Luckily, such agent defeat weapons

were not needed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

Of the 58 original ideas considered for research and development by 

the U.S. Government, only eight agent defeat weapons programs have 

been seriously pursued, but it is still certain on which ones might be worth 

full-scale acquisition and deployment. The problem is that some enemy 

chemical and biological weapons storage facilities may be so deeply 

buried and hardened as to require a nuclear weapon on an earth 

penetrating warhead to have any reasonable chance of destroying that kind 

of target. Thus, the agent defeat weapons R&D process goes on, still in 

search of a more effective agent defeat weapon that remains a 

conventional weapon. This is a problem still awaiting a solution. 

IX. Counterforce Science and Technology Support 

Much of the progress in U.S. counterforce programs in the past 

decade is the product of work done at the Defense Threat Reduction 

Agency which conducts and supports R&D programs in such areas as: 

• The Counterproliferation I and II ACTDs; 

• WMD Combat Assessment Systems; 

• Agent Defeat, Deny, and Disrupt Technologies; 

• Hard Target Defeat; 

• WMD Database Maintenance; 
28 . . . Counterforce Targeting

• Target Planning and Assessment tools (e.g., Hazard Prediction 

Assessment Capability - HPAC, Munitions Effects Assessment -

MEA, and Integrated Munitions Effects Assessment - IMEA); 

• Weather Modeling; 

• Survivability Assessments; 

• Hazard Prediction; 

• Force Protection Assessments; 

• Structural Response Technology; 

• Weapons Effects Phenomenology; 

• Nevada Test Site Operations; 

• Counterproliferation Analysis Planning System (CAPS); 

• Test and Simulator Operations; and 

• Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship. 

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is an amalgam of diverse 

parts. Its directorates focus on such programs as counterforce 

development, chemical and biological warfare defense, nuclear

technology, combat support, weapons elimination, counter-terrorism 

science and technology, on-site inspections to verify arms control 

compliance, as well as management of the U.S. Defense Department’s 

participation in the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in partnership

with the states of the former Soviet Union. The Defense Threat Reduction 

Agency’s predecessor was the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), which 

temporarily was named the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA), 

before it morphed into its present Defense Threat Reduction Agency form 

in 1998. 

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s counterforce philosophy is 

to first develop enabling technologies and then demonstrate those through 

testing, advanced demonstrations, and ACTDs. The Defense Threat 

Reduction Agency then transitions such capabilities to the warfighter,

procures limited numbers of unique counterforce systems, and then offers 

the combatant commanders support in the operational use of such 

counterforce systems.48
Counterforce Targeting . . . 29 

The Counterproliferation I and Counterproliferation II Advanced

Concept and Technology Demonstrations have provided the combatant 

commanders with some new bunker buster weapons (as well as agent defeat 

weapons) designed both to destroy hardened targets and to limit downwind 

fallout of biological, chemical, or nuclear contamination. The Advanced 

Concept Technology Demonstration program has been utilized to:49

• use mature advanced technology integrated into enhanced/new 

counterforce capability that meets the warfighter’s needs, 

providing early and affordable evaluations; 

• perform a military utility assessment of the new technology and

associated concepts of operations and tactics, techniques and

procedures, usually evaluating this in a combatant commander’s

military’s exercise; 

• leave behind new counterforce technology at the bases or other 

sites when the Advanced Concept and Technology Demonstration 

is completed; and 

• provide a counterforce program transition from Research,

Development, Test and Evaluation status to acquisition of new 

counterforce technologies, weapons, and tools for use by U.S. forces. 

The DTRA-managed Counterproliferation Advanced Concept and 

Technology Demonstrations have been aimed at providing the U.S. 

warfighter with improved counterforce or direct strike options against 

possible enemy WMD-related targets. Some of the products tested and 

provided to field commands via the Counterproliferation I Advanced 

Concept and Technology Demonstration are the hard target smart fuze, the 

advanced unitary penetrator, a targeting concept of operations, the low 

altitude navigation and targeting infrared for night (LANTIRN). 

X. Counterforce Targeting Planning Tools 

Other Defense Threat Reduction Agency products have aided the 

warfighting community in its ability to plan counterforce operations and 

predict outcomes. One such tool is the Integrated Munitions Effects
30 . . . Counterforce Targeting

Assessment (IMEA) which helps targeteers do pre-strike planning and 

post-strike assessments by using weapons and target characteristics as 

inputs to predict collateral effects.50 The IMEA provides an end-to-end 

capability to analyze results and collateral effects.”51

Other valuable counterforce targeting planning tools recently 

developed are the Munitions Effects Assessment (MEA), a WMD planning 

tool that estimates damage and the amount of agents released, and the 

Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capacity (HPAC) tool that predicts 

downwind hazards, collateral effects, and nuclear weapons effects. 

Another very significant improvement in counterforce targeting

capabilities over the past decade has been the Counterproliferation 

Analysis Planning System (CAPS), a U.S. Strategic Command and 

Defense Threat Reduction Agency classified computer-based program 

based at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where intelligence 

is collected, analyzed, and displayed on the chemical, biological, 

radiological, and nuclear weapons programs of states of concern. 

CAPS allows targeting analysts to identify key nodes in the

infrastructure of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and missile 

programs of such states and supplies a comprehensive fused intelligence

picture of their weapons of mass destruction assets. 

Thus, the key function of CAPS is “to provide comprehensive and 

timely counterproliferation target planning information to the combatant 

commander.”52 CAPS allows U.S. defense specialists to analyze another 

state’s specific approach to weapons production, identifying critical 

processing steps or production facilities which, if denied, would prevent 

that country from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.53

CAPS can also be useful to guide arms control verification efforts to 

assist in discerning compliance or noncompliance of other states with 

various nonproliferation regimes they have agreed to, such as the nuclear 

Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, or the

Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention. 

XI. Counterforce Employment and Preemption Decisions 

As the U.S. National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction

states, “Because deterrence may not succeed, and because of the potentially 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 31 

devastating consequences of weapons of mass destruction use against our 

forces and civilian population, U.S. military forces and appropriate civilian 

agencies must have the capability to defend against WMD–armed 

adversaries, including in appropriate cases through preemptive measures. 

This requires capabilities to detect and destroy an adversary’s weapons of 

mass destruction assets before these weapons are used.”54

The United States, therefore, in this national strategy, has stated that: 

“We will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes and terrorists to 

threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” Put another way, 

“we cannot afford to be the unready confronting the unthinkable.”55 To this 

end, better counter-CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and 

high-yield explosives) preparedness, the U.S. Counterproliferation Initiative 

was dedicated a decade ago in December 1993 when Secretary of Defense

Les Aspin announced the beginning of the Counterproliferation Program.

An important component of this counterproliferation readiness effort is the

capability to launch effective counterforce operations to eliminate the 

weapons of mass destruction threat posed if that action was deemed

necessary. 

Since Operation Iraqi Freedom there has been a debate about the

wisdom of the United States decision to preempt against what was 

perceived as a growing weapons of mass destruction threat from Iraq. The 

overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime was partially motivated by a sense 

of growing peril and a desire to extinguish that weapons of mass destruction 

threat before it was turned full force on the United States or its allies. 

The failure to find concrete evidence of the Iraqi weapons of mass

destruction arsenal after Operation Iraqi Freedom points out one of the 

hardest problems of a policy of preemption, namely the need for very 

accurate actionable intelligence to pinpoint the weapons of mass

destruction assets that the U.S. forces would have to destroy, disrupt, 

disable, deny, interdict, neutralize, or seize in a counterforce operation. It 

is hard to design an air tasking order or special operations plan without 

precise target location information. 

The hardest case is where a relatively peaceful situation exists, but 

where the U.S. authorities have evidence that leads them to believe that a 

malevolent regime is about to acquire a dangerous new weapons of mass 

destruction capability that U.S. officials believe will be used against the 

United States or an ally in the not-too-distant future. If the regime 
32 . . . Counterforce Targeting

leadership has a history of aggression, is a state sponsor of international 

terrorist groups, and has an evident and active hatred of the United States, 

such a new weapons of mass destruction capability is generally seen as

especially dangerous. In such scenarios, U.S. authorities may contemplate 

preemption as a means of removing that threat, if it appears all peaceful 

approaches have been explored and are unsuccessful and if the threat is 

viewed as imminent.56

Of course, if the United States is already at war with such a heavily 

armed adversary, the decision to forcibly disarm its weapons of mass

destruction assets is relatively noncontroversial. Here, a good offense (i.e., 

a good series of counterforce targeting operations) is perhaps the best

defense. Better to eliminate these chemical, biological, radiological, 

nuclear, or high-yield explosives rather than have the enemy strike with 

them. However, even in wartime, such counterforce strikes can backfire if 

the adversary sees himself forced into a “use or lose” mode. Such wartime 

or peacetime counterforce strikes need to be decisive in eliminating the

threat early in a developing crisis or the United States may face the wrath to

come from those enemy WMD-equipped forces missed in the first attacks. 

Unfortunately, real world decisions often have to be made when time 

is short and information is incomplete. Crises are generally marked by 

high stakes, surprise, and a short time for decision-making. Unfortunately, 

at the very time when rational decisions are most necessary, the pressure 

and stress of such situations add an extra difficulty for those in command. 

However, seeking answers to the questions raised above may be a step 

toward making a well-considered decision on whether or not to initiate 

action against enemy weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, such 

decisions will never be made lightly and preemption is rightly an option of 

the very last resort, if, it is to be exercised at all. 

Such analysts and legal authorities argue that preemption is illegal in

international law since it is an act of war against a hitherto peaceful state. 

The argument is made that all aggressors give some defensive rationale 

before they invade their neighbors and that a doctrine of preventive war 

would lead us back to the law of the jungle in international relations where

the strong can make the rules to fit their own situation. 

Others argue that the spread of weapons of mass destruction presents 

a new imperative in international relations. These argue that no state can 

tolerate an enemy weapons of mass destruction strike, due to the enormous
Counterforce Targeting . . . 33 

damage and mass casualties such weapons can cause, if it has the means to 

uncover an impending attack and to neutralize it before it happens. 

These argue that the United States has an inherent right of 

anticipatory self-defense. They argue that in some very few, very special 

cases the best and perhaps only means of effective defense is a good 

offense, that it is better to disarm by military action an adversary poised to 

inflict massive harm on U.S. forces or population rather than to suffer 

catastrophic losses due to, say, an enemy biological or nuclear attack.57

As Elihu Root wrote in 1914, “International Law does not require the 

threatened state to wait in using force until it is too late to protect itself.”58 

Just war theory, if applied to the concept of preemption and anticipatory 

self-defense, would limit such actions only to occasions where preemptive

actions were taken only in situations of evident self-defense, after peaceful 

remedies were exhausted, where there was a reasonable chance of success,

taken, in actions either proportional to or less than the injury or anticipated 

injury about to be suffered, and executed on the decision of a competent

authority.59

Another just war theorist, Michael Walzer, concludes that, given 

compliance with these conditions, “states can rightfully defend themselves

against violence that is imminent, but not actual.”60

Thus, the United States might legally, in certain situations, have the 

right to preemptively disarm a WMD-armed opponent, if an attack was

seen to be very likely. 

Perceptions of impending catastrophic attacks by an adversary might, 

therefore, dictate U.S. preemptive action in an extreme case. Indeed, no 

U.S. President could likely survive a later impeachment trial if it were 

proven after such a horrific weapons of mass destruction attack that he had 

substantial knowledge of an impending weapons of mass destruction strike 

and failed to take preventive action that was in his power to order. 

Thus, the United States will continue to include the preemption option 

in its repertoire of possible policy responses to those that threaten the 

United States and its allies with weapons of mass destruction. 

Counterforce capabilities, if mated with accurate and comprehensive 

intelligence, could be effective in blunting a weapons of mass destruction 

attack. Coupled with improved active and passive defenses, a respected 

deterrent capability, and aggressive non-proliferation diplomacy, perhaps 

the threat posed by such unconventionally armed rivals can be minimized 
34 . . . Counterforce Targeting

or neutralized. In both crises and wartime such counterforce operations 

may be all too necessary. 

XII. Counterforce: The Way Ahead 

While weapons of mass destruction targets are, without a doubt, highpriority for combatant commanders, the weapons and assessment systems 

best suited to address these targets (e.g., agent defeat/disrupt/deny 

weapons, standoff missiles with penetrating, low yield conventional

explosive payloads, UAV-based combat assessment systems, etc.) have 

not fared well in terms of dedicated service investment in them. This is 

likely for two reasons. First, the weapons of mass destruction target set, 

although important, is not large in comparison to the non-WMD target set. 

Secondly, the services’ investment decision-making process tends to favor 

higher visibility, higher probability of employment systems than ‘niche’ 

systems. Additionally, development and fielding of small numbers of 

specialized weapons/systems, i.e., ‘niche’ capability, brings with it the 

requirement to maintain proficiency with the systems and to sustain them 

in the field. Providing the combatant commander with the tools needed to 

accomplish the WMD counterforce mission is likely to remain challenging

under the current Defense Department investment construct. 

Despite funding limitations, the United States armed forces have 

acquired a significant improvement in their ability to execute successful 

counterforce strikes against future enemy weapons of mass destruction 

assets. The revolution in precision guided munitions has dramatically 

improved the lethality of U.S. forces against such time-critical targets. 

Stealth aircraft can also penetrate unscathed to target in a manner not 

seen prior to Desert Storm. Unmanned aerial vehicles, like Predators 

equipped with Hellfire Missiles, can provide a continuous overhead and 

lethal counterforce presence not available when Secretary of Defense 

Aspin announced the Counterproliferation Initiative in 1993. 

U.S. agent defeat weapons, now in research and development, show 

promise, one day, of successfully destroying, disabling, or denying access 

to enemy weapons of mass destruction sites without spreading their lethal 

contamination downwind. Analytical tools for characterizing targets and 

weapons effects also make life easier for planners given the task of mating 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 35 

the right weapon to a given enemy weapons of mass destruction target, 

and predicting effects. Thus, in all of these ways, there have been major 

technological improvements in accuracy, penetration to target, target area 

coverage, agent defeat weapons, and analytical tools. 

However, the adversaries have not been asleep while all this U.S. 

technological progress has been achieved. The North Koreas, Irans, and

other actual and potential rivals have hidden their weapons of mass

destruction assets, using camouflage, concealment, and deception 

techniques. Unfortunately, as the United States is finding out in Iraq, an 

adversary may be very successful in concealing weapons of mass

destruction programs and finding them may be like finding a needle in the 

proverbial haystack. 

It is close to impossible to execute successful counterforce attacks 

when the target locations are unknown. Thus, target identification and 

location is the key to counterforce success or failure. Position location 

uncertainty also robs the U.S. of its ability to successfully implement a 

preemptive strategy, so good intelligence on enemy weapons of mass 

destruction is an absolute requirement. 

Nor have adversaries been asleep in other ways. Adversaries like 

North Korea, for example, have burrowed into hills and mountains and 

moved their assets into tunnels, cut-and-cover structures, and deeply buried 

facilities. The “mole” strategy has been adopted to frustrate improved U.S. 

counterforce strike capabilities and, at present, there is only a partial U.S. 

capability against adversaries who have taken their weapons of mass 

destruction maintenance, storage, and production assets underground. 

Finally, adversaries have increasingly turned to deploying mobile 

missile launchers whose shoot and scoot tactics, coupled with numerous 

decoys, make counterforce targeting extremely perplexing and difficult. 

After a dismal failure in Desert Storm “Scud Hunting,” the United States 

military still lacks an adequate counterforce capability to find and destroy 

missiles on transporter-erector-launchers. The mobile or relocatable 

missile launcher problem is still a good way from being solved despite 

numerous improvements since 1991. 

Thus, in the foreseeable future, despite significant technological and

procedural improvements, U.S. counterforce applications can only 

promise a partial means of diluting and reducing the threat posed by 

enemy weapons of mass destruction. Much of the burden remains on 
36 . . . Counterforce Targeting

nonproliferation means, deterrence, active and passive defense, and the 

ability to manage consequences after an attack. 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 37

Notes 

1. See the remarks of George Ullrich, Director, Weapons Systems, Office of the

Secretary of Defense, ODUSD (S&T), “Presentation to the 2003 Munitions Executive

Summit,” Falls Church, Virginia, February 12, 2003. 

2. The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (European War) (Pacific War)

(Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Air University Press, 1987), 13. 

3. David A. Deptula, “Effects-Based Operations: Change in the Nature of

Warfare,” Defense and Airpower Series (Washington, D.C.: Aerospace Education 

Foundation, 2001), 5-6. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available from http://www.aef. 

org/pub/psbook.pdf. 

4. Ibid., 6. The original source is the United States Strategic Bombing Surveys

(European War) (Pacific War) (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1987), 13. 

5. Ibid., 5. 

6. Ibid. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Lt Gen Buster C. Glosson, “Impact of Precision Weapons on Air Combat

Operations,” Airpower Journal, Summer 1993, 5. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004,

available from http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/glosson.html. 

9. Anthony H. Cordesman, “Instant Lessons of the Iraq War,” Washington, Center 

for Strategic and International Studies, April 14, 2003, 88. 

10. Sandra I. Erwin, “Precision-guided bombs labeled ‘transformational,’” National

Defense, Arlington, Virginia, October 2001. On-line, Internet, 24 February 2003 

available from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=000000082252830&Srch

Mode=5&Fmt=3&retrieveGroup=0&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&x=-&VName

=PQD&TS=1061406042&clientId=417. 

11. Bill Sweetman, “Scratching the Surface: Next Century Air-to-Ground

Weapons,” Jane’s International Defense Review, July 1997, 55. 

12. Glosson, 5. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 
38 . . . Counterforce Targeting

15. “Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM),” United States Navy Fact File, 18 

February 2003. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available from http://www.chinfo.navy. 

mil/navpalib/factfile/weapons/wep-jdam.html.

16. “Smart Bombs,” Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Military Analysis

Network. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available from http://fas.org/man/dod101/sys/smart/ index.html. Improved U.S. PGMs include the following: GM-62

Walleye, AGM-65 MAVERICK, AGM-84 HARPOON, SLAM, AGM-86C CALCM, 

AGM-88 HARM, AGM-130, AGM-142 HAVE NAP, AGM-154 JSOW, AGM-158

JASSM, BGM-109 TOMAHAWK and its variants, LOCASS, FRSW, AARMD, and the 

HYSTRIKE/FAST HAWK. 

17. Glosson, 7. 

18. FAS, Op. Cit. The U.S. has acquired, for example, 11,000 GBU-10 and 32,000

GBU-12 guided bombs; 13,000 GBU-24s; 3,200 GBU-27s, and 300 bunker-busting

GBU-28s. The U.S. also possesses TV/IR guided bombs like the GBU-15 munition and

other GPS-Guided Bombs like the GBU-15, GBU-24 E/B, GBU-29, GBU-32, the GBU36, GBU-37, and GBU-ADW and other guided bombs like the 40,000 WCMDs acquired

since 1998. 

19. Deptula, 7.

20. “Proliferation: Threat and Response,” Office of the Secretary of Defense, 

(Washington, D.C., U.S., Department of Defense, January 2001), 90. 

21. “Nuclear Posture Review [Excerpts].” On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available 

from http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.

22. Barry R. Schneider, “Invitation to a Nuclear Beheading,” Across The Board, 

July/August 1983, 13. 

23. Nuclear Posture Review [Excerpts], 90. 

24. Ibid., 90-91. The Tunnel Defeat Demonstration Program is jointly sponsored by

the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and by the Defense Intelligence Agency

(DIA). Currently the Hard Target Defeat Office is housed in the DTRA Technology

Development Division, directed by Dr. Anthony Thomas Hopkins. 

25. This is a method of tunnel construction where a trench is excavated, the tunnel

structure built, and then is covered with earth and rock. 

26. Michael Giltrud, Briefing, “Emerging Concepts of Counterforce (CF)

Weapons,” DTRA/TD Slide, presented at Air War College, April 15, 2003. 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 39 

27. See the Gulf War Air Power Survey. See also, Rear Admiral Stephen H. Baker,

USN, (Retired), “Iraqi Scuds: A Threat We Have To Respect,” CDI Terrorism Project, 

Center for Defense Information, December 3, 2002, Baker summarizes, “on 42 occasions, 

patrolling aircraft spotted a launch plume, leading to eight attacks. Overall, tactical 

aircraft reportedly failed to destroy any Scud launchers,” 2.

28. Baker, 2. 

29. Gulf War Air Power Survey. See also, Barry R. Schneider, Future War and 

Counterproliferation: U.S. Military Reponses to NBC Proliferation Threats (Westport, 

CT.: Praeger Publishers, 1999), 155. 

30. Timothy F. Lindemann, “U.S. Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Missile 

Counterforce Capabilities,” Unpublished Dissertation, USAF National Security Fellows

Program, June 2001 draft, 9. 

31. Ibid. 

32. Ibid. 

33. These thoughts are the personal assessment of Mr. Steven Hancock, an

intelligence officer from the DIA’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC) who 

was a participant in the Combined Air Operations Center for Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

MSIC itself has taken no official position on the lessons of OIF. 

34. Ullrich, 11. 

35. Lindemann, 13. 

36. Harris, 37. 

37. Ullrich, 11. 

38. Ullrich, 38-40.

39. Briefing on “JTAMDO 2010 Vision for Attack Operations” by Colonel Rich 

Harris, USAF, JTAMDO, TCS/J8 to USAF Counterproliferation Center (CPC)

Workshop, March 26, 2003. See CPC Summary Report submitted to Technology

Division, U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, September 30, 2003, 11. 

40. Ibid., 10. 

41. Ibid., 11. 

42. Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S. Military Considers Weapons that Disable Bunkers, 

Spare People,” Wall Street Journal, July 1, 1999, 1.
40 . . . Counterforce Targeting

43. Paula R. Kaufman, “Fierce Thermobaric Weapons Readied Against

Underground Bunkers,” IEE Spectrum, 19 November 2002. On-line, Internet, 24 

September 2003, available from http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/wonews/

nov02/thermo.html. Thermobaric comes from two Greek words: “therme” for heat and

“baros” for pressure. As Dr. Stephen Younger, Director of the Defense Threat Reduction

Agency, has stated, “we have several programs...to look at advanced methods for agent

defeat, such as generating a high enough temperature for a long enough period to kill 

biological organisms. This appears to be a promising route, but lacking that ability the 

best we may be able to do is immobilize the agent until ground forces have arrived.” See 

“Issues and Events: Younger Speaks From the Frontline of Defense,” Physics Today, 

February 2003. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available from http://www.aip.org/ pt/vol56/iss-2/p23.html. 

44. “The DTRA Thermobaric ACTD,” Global Security. On-line, Internet, 1 July

2004, available from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2001/010725-

thermobaric.htm.

45. John Pike, “Agent Defeat Weapon, Agent Defeat Warhead (ADW),” Global

Security, Washington D.C., 22 December 2002. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available 

from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/adw.htm. ADWs are 

being designed to fit the GBU-15, GBU-24, GBU-27, GBU-28, GB-111B, AGM 130 and

GBU-31s. 

46. “DoD Readies ‘Thermobaric,’ Cave-Clearing Bomb For Enduring Freedom,” 

Inside The Air Force, vol. 13, No. 1., January 4, 2002. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004,

available from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/01/020104-Afw

s4.htm. See also Kaufman, 1. 

47. “U.S. DoD Expedites Anti-Chem-Bio Weapons Development,” Janes

Information Group, 13 September 2002. On-line, Internet, 1 July 2004, available from

http://www.janes.com/press/pc020913_1.shtml. 

48. Mr. Vayl Oxford, Deputy Director, Technology Division, DTRA/TD, Briefing

on “DTRA and Counterforce Operations Against Weapons of Mass Destruction,” April

2000, USAF Counterproliferation Conference, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. 

49. Ibid. 

50. Ibid. 

51. Oxford, 62. 

52. Ibid., 59. Three major aspects of CAPS program are: (1) Integration of 

intelligence and production process analyses to create detailed assessments of suspected
Counterforce Targeting . . . 41 

proliferating country’s WMD assets; (2) identification of critical nodes in each of these 

country’s WMD programs; and (3) consequence management of attack plans. 

53. See Counterproliferation Analysis and Targeting System (CAPS) at

http://www.llnl.gov/nai/technologies/techinfo2.html. This is the Internet website of

NISA, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory address. 

54. “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,” The White 

House, Washington, D.C., December 2002, 3. 

55. Barry R. Schneider quote that has become the motto of the U.S. Air Force

Counterproliferation Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. 

56. In considering the worth of any preemption decision, policy-makers will be

confronted with a number of important questions. (For an earlier discussion of these 

points see, Barry R. Schneider, “Offensive Action: A Viable Option?” Ch. 7, Future War 

and Counterproliferation: U.S. Military Responses to NBC Proliferation Threats

(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 157-182.) For example: 

• Should the United States initiate a war to deny a hostile government the use of

its weapons of mass destruction? To prevent it from acquiring that capability?

• Or, should the U.S. leadership, in all peacetime cases, abstain from initiating 

war and take its chances with non-military means of persuasion?

• How immediate is the adversary threat to use WMD? Has the United States

exhausted other non-military options first and does it have time to persist in

these further?

• How certain is U.S. intelligence about the adversary WMD capabilities and

likely timing of future WMD employment? Is the United States and/or its vital

interests at immediate risk?

• Are key enemy WMD targets precisely located and vulnerable to U.S. 

preemptive strikes? Does the United States possess the required counterforce

strike capabilities? What levels of damage could the adversary WMD inflict if 

the U.S. counterforce operation is not completely successful? 

• Can the adversary be deterred by U.S. threats and warnings short of war?

• Is surprise achievable? If not, can the counterforce preemptive attack succeed?

• Are the United States and allied states safe from WMD retaliation from the

adversary state or its regional allies?

• Is the United States committed to win the conflict once the preemptive strike

sparks it? Has it carefully planned the initial campaign, the possible directions

such a war might go in, and a reasoned exit strategy and post-war end game?

• Have the U.S. leaders set clear objectives and limits for U.S. military actions

and chosen appropriate means?
42 . . . Counterforce Targeting

• Finally, has the U.S. leadership weighed the costs and benefits of preemption as

opposed to a non-military set of options backed by the threat of retaliation?

Which option holds the greater risk to U.S. national security, counterforce 

targeting or adopting a wait-and-see diplomatic/deterrence option?

57. Ibid., 162-164. As Daniel Webster, U.S. Secretary of State in 1841, wrote a

note to the British Government in the 1837 Caroline Case, “use of force by one nation

against another is permissible as a self-defense action only if force is both necessary and

proportionate.” See Zachary Sr. Davis with Mitchell Reiss, consultant, “U.S.

Counterproliferation Doctrine: Issues for Congress,” CRS Report, Library of Congress, 

21 September 1999, CRS-19.

58. Elihu Root, “The Real Monroe Doctrine,” American Journal of International

Law, 35 (1914), 422. For an unsympathetic view of anticipatory self-defense, see Louis

Henkin, How Nations Behave, 2nd edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 

1979), 141-145. For a more supportive view, note Myres S. McDougal and Florentino P.

Feliciano, Law and Minimum World Order: The Legal Regulation of International

Coercion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961), 217-244. See also Schneider,

“Offensive Action: A Viable Option,” 169. 

59. Brad Roberts, “Military Strikes Against NBC-Armed Rogue States; Is There a 

Moral Case for Preemption? Unpublished paper, August 3, 1996. 

60. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 2nd edition (New York: Basic Books,

1992), 24. 
Counterforce Targeting . . . 43 

USAF Counterproliferation Center 

The USAF Counterproliferation Center was established in 1999 to provide 

education and research to the present and future leaders of the USAF, to assist them in 

their activities to counter the threats posed by adversaries equipped with weapons of mass 

destruction 

Barry R. Schneider, Director 

USAF Counterproliferation Center 

325 Chennault Circle

Maxwell AFB AL 36112-6427 

Email: Barry.Schneider@maxwell.af.mil

Jo Ann Eddy, Associate Editor 

The Counterproliferation Papers 

Email: JoAnn.Eddy@maxwell.af.mil

(334) 953-7538 (DSN 493-7538)
44 . . . Counterforce Targeting