A new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.
The Air Force and the Army are working on a classified project to use new combinations of surveillance aircraft and other sensors, along with intelligence on the ground, to try to detect and counter the increasingly deadly ambushes against American forces in Iraq.
Remotely piloted aircraft like the Predator have played a crucial role in the Iraq war, not only providing a bird's-eye view of the battlefield but also giving military planners the ability to kill fiercely defended targets with a futuristic weapon ? all without risking American lives.
The Pentagon is considering converting some of its long-range, ground-based nuclear missiles into nonnuclear rockets that could be used to strike states like Iraq and North Korea on short notice.
The Pentagon plans to create a new command that combines the military network that warns of missile attacks with its force that can fire nuclear or nonnuclear weapons at suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons sites around the world.