(S)ome strategic thinkers contend that the United States is now facing the first insurgency of a global scale ¯ created by the interlinkage of multiple national insurgencies ¯ led by a network motivated by radical Islam. The Global War on Terrorism has all of the characteristics of an insurgency: protracted, asymmetric violence, ambiguity, dispersal, the use of complex terrain, psychological warfare, and political mobilization designed to protect the insurgents and eventually alter the balance of power in their favor; avoidance by insurgents of battlespaces where they are weak and a focus on those where they can compete, particularly the psychological and the political. The insurgents are fighting a total war with limited resources; the counterinsurgents are self-restrained by ethics and a desire to control costs. This belief suggests that the appropriate American response is to build a grand strategy modeled on counterinsurgency which reflects the differences between national and liberation insurgencies. . . .

Because insurgents attempt to prevent the military battlespace from becoming decisive and concentrate in the political and psychological, operational design must be different than for conventional combat. One useful approach would be to adopt an interagency, effects-based method of counterinsurgency planning focused on the following key activities...

ICWI (Interrupted Continuous Wave Illumination) is a technology that enables a missile control system to guide several missiles simultaneously to various threats, greatly enhancing a ship's defence capabilities.