task force

The Pentagon will have its first specially trained task force designed to rapidly respond to a catastrophic attack against the United States ready by this fall, a top military commander said last week.

While the task force heard descriptions of dozens of technically feasible and operationally relevant directed energy programs and activities, the report focuses on a smaller number of the most promising applications. Applications with potential to provide superior capabilities include long-range strategic missions such as space control and force protection, and tactical missions such as ground-based defense against rockets, artillery, and mortars and defense against man portable air defense systems. For some applications directed energy has the potential to compete favorably with kinetic solutions; for others, no adequate kinetics approach currently exists.