Friday October 26, 2001

WASHINGTON - Underscoring the difficulty of its fight against terrorism, the Pentagon yesterday turned to private industry for solutions to problems such as determining whether a captured person has worked with germ or chemical agents.

The request to industry was announced on the 19th day of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, which senior U.S. military officials said was hurting the Taliban's ability to defend against opposition forces near Kabul, the capital.

The Pentagon said 80 strike aircraft hit Taliban targets around Afghanistan on Wednesday, and a similar number were used yesterday.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference that the U.S. government still does not know where Osama bin Laden is hiding in Afghanistan, but he expressed confidence that he would be found.

"I think we're going to get him," Rumsfeld said.

In a sign that the war effort may soon accelerate, British officials said their government is likely to announce additional military commitments to the U.S.-led coalition within a few days. Britain already is flying refueling and reconnaissance aircraft in support of U.S. air strikes, and it has fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from a submarine in the Arabian Sea. It has not flown fighter missions, however, and did not participate directly in last week's U.S. Army commando raid into Afghanistan.

Although the British government did not announce it, BBC TV news reported that hundreds of British troops would soon be joining U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The New York Times yesterday quoted Britain's top military officer, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, as saying ground troops will have to operate in Afghanistan for weeks at a time to find Osama bin Laden. Boyce said London is considering sending elite commandos, army paratroopers and Royal Marines trained in mountain and winter warfare.

Rumsfeld disputed the notion that not enough progress was being made in the search for bin Laden.

The success of the current operation, Rumsfeld said, "is ... not something that one measures by the number of bombs dropped or the amount of ordinance expended. It is going to be measured over time as to whether or not we are successful in stopping the Taliban leadership from harboring al-Qaida and stopping the al-Qaida organization from committing acts of terrorism that kill thousands of people."

Rumsfeld also argued that the bombing campaign has "taken out a large faction" of the Taliban's surface-to-air missiles, and a large number of their aircraft, transport helicopters and MiG fighters.

Still, the military effort has not yet succeeded in rooting out the terrorists.

In its request to private industry yesterday for new technologies for the war on terrorism, the Pentagon made clear it needs help both on the offensive and defensive sides of the problem.

The Pentagon request called for ideas on developing ways to detect chemical or biological warfare agents before they are released in a terrorist attack. It set a goal of gaining a two-minute warning against several top-priority agents, including nerve gases, blister agents and bacteria, including anthrax and the plague.

In a proposal published on its Web site yesterday, the Pentagon set out dozens of priority requests to industry for ideas that could provide solutions within 12-18 months. Many of the priority problems appeared directly related to Operation Enduring Freedom, the military campaign in Afghanistan.

One priority is detecting and mapping underground and concealed cavities "that may serve as secure havens for terrorists." Another is technologies to protect small military units that are deployed in remote areas - in rugged terrain in the presence of hostile forces - for long periods of time.

Another priority is developing a system for tracking an individual through multiple sequential two-dimensional video images or through multiple cameras. A related request is for a system to use voice prints to locate, track and correlate suspected terrorists and their associates.