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nonmilitary personnel, the Air Force quietly manages nearly 2,000 sorties a
day above perhaps the most complicated battle spaces in the history of
warfare. The logistics alone are dizzying: The Air Force hauls 3.7 million
pounds of fuel above Iraq and Afghanistan daily to refuel aircraft in flight.

When it comes to dropping bombs, most of the airstrikes carried out by the
Air Force are executed to support troops on the ground pinned down in a
firefight, called "troops in contact." Other branches of the U.S. military
regularly conduct airstrikes; the Army and Marines have hundreds of attack
helicopters working in the war zones, supporting U.S. ground troops much more
often than does the Air Force. But the Air Force has also enthusiastically
embraced what is called the Intelligence Surveillance, Reconnaissance part of
its mission. In Iraq and Afghanistan, this means using advanced technology to
locate individual people, and then tracking them using the cameras on the
Predator drones and other aircraft. These operations can go on for long
periods of time. The Air Force recently watched one man in Iraq for more than
five weeks, carefully recording his habits -- where he lives, works and
worships, and whom he meets.

The military may decide to have such a man arrested, or to do nothing at all.
Or, at any moment they could decide to blow him to smithereens.

The remarkably precise airstrikes rely on a battery of technology: the drone
aircraft, 3-D satellite images, and increasingly small precision weapons
guided by lasers or Global Positioning Systems.

"If it is a bad guy, a known terrorist, we can find him," says Lt. Col.
Kenneth Edwards, another officer running the floor during my visit. "We watch
them for a while. We determine a pattern of life and a positive
identification," he says, peering through his glasses at a small image of a
man on one of the screens. "Would you rather look in his window and possibly
get killed, or would you rather look at him from afar?" he asks, referring to
the danger of ground operations.

"On occasion, when there is just one guy in the middle of nowhere and we've
got him, we will target that individual from the air," affirms Col. Gary
Crowder, the commander of the operations center here.

What you hear from Air Force officers here is that Army Gen. David Petraeus'
counterinsurgency strategy has been fully incorporated into the air war. That
is, the U.S. is killing the bad guys -- but not civilians. All the
technological prowess is key to that mission.

But are the efforts to limit collateral damage really working? When the Air
Force has enough time to thoroughly plan a strike, the answer is yes,
according to Marc Garlasco, who was the Pentagon's chief of high-value
targeting at the start of the war in Iraq and is now a senior military
analyst at Human Rights Watch. "When they have the time to plan things out
and use all the collateral damage mitigation techniques and all the tools in
their toolbox, they've gotten to the point where it is very rare for
civilians to be harmed or killed in these attacks," Garlasco explains. But he
emphasizes that it's still dicey when the Air Force has to drop bombs, in
short order, to back up troops in a firefight. "When they have to do it on
the fly and they are not able to use all these techniques, then civilians
die."

Air Force officials admit they were stung by a series of headlines last
summer about civilian deaths from airstrikes, particularly in Afghanistan.
News reports from last June contained allegations of 90 civilian deaths from
U.S. airstrikes over a 10-day period. Afghan President Hamid Karzai held a
news conference that month, saying air operations had been "careless." On
June 19, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, representing
neaickly call up satellite images of his location. They have at their
fingertips high-fidelity images less than 90 days old of nearly every square
foot of Iraq and Afghanistan -- a vast amount of data. By overlaying two
images of the same location taken from separate angles, and donning a pair of
gray 3-D glasses (I wore a pair), a stunning real-life-looking, 3-D image of
Bubba's house appears on a computer screen: There is Bubba's yard, the tree
in Bubba's yard and so on. Using a mouse to point and click, a computer
quickly determines the size, height and precise location of nearby
structures.

The Air Force uses the live images from the Predator drones to try to see if
any innocent civilians are near a target. The 3-D satellite images are used
to help identify and measure the precise distance to other nearby "collateral
concerns" -- close-by buildings or any other thing they don't want to damage
in an airstrike. "In Iraq, if it looks like we are going to kill a civilian
by dropping a bomb, we don't drop a bomb," says Crowder.

Afghanistan is bigger than Iraq, and bigger bombs -- up to 2,000-pounders --
are often used there. The targeters planning strikes there sometimes have the
luxury of wide-open spaces and enemy forces that tend to gather in relatively
large groups, sometimes 20 to 25 fighters. Many more bombs were dropped in
Afghanistan last year (3,572) than in Iraq (1,447).

The combat zones in Iraq tend to be more urban, and more complicated. But it
doesn't take much of a bomb to kill one man. So the Air Force has altered one
of its relatively smaller munitions into a kind of sniper's weapon. The bomb
usually carries 200 pounds of explosives -- but the Air Force pulls out most
of the explosives, leaving in less than 30 pounds, and fills the rest of the
bomb with cement. The bombs have become so useful for narrowly targeted
missions that two-thirds of the Air Force fighters now go up every day with
this weapon nestled under the wings.

The Air Force has developed other methods to control bombing damage. Pilots
can now quickly aa, an Air Force attorney who watches Predator images in real
time to help commanders determine when airstrikes are legal. "A 500-pound
bomb with a five-millisecond delay -- five people in a room, somebody will
get up and walk away."

The entire chain of events, from stalking to airstrike, can happen very
quickly. This occurs when the location of a valuable target is only known for
a brief period of time -- they know where Bubba is, but they don't know long
he'll be there. The Air Force calls these "time-sensitive targets." In such
situations, the entire process -- pulling up the 3-D satellite images,
estimating possible civilian casualties, choosing weapons -- can necessitate
completion in less than 30 minutes.

While the Air Force handles that whole process, Army or Marine commanders on
the ground always make the final decision on whether to drop a bomb. But the
Air Force knows whom to look for. The Bush administration -- the president
himself and the secretary of defense -- have established broad categories of
people who can be targeted, according to Air Force officials. Using those
parameters, the commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan literally draw up a list
of names. Lawyers, like Carranza, and intelligence specialists review the
intelligence behind each name on that list.

That review is important under international law. The Law of Armed Conflict,
a web of international treaties including the Geneva Conventions, prohibits
the intentional killing of civilians unless they are taking a "direct part in
hostilities." This gets very complicated when fighting an insurgency.

"A problem is that Bubba is not a member of an army that is a party in a
conflict," explains Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor at Georgetown
University Law School. Solis says there is disagreement among experts about
whether, for example, a terrorist is taking a "direct part in hostilities"
when he is out walking his dog. "There is definitely an interpretational
issue here," Solis says. "We are pressing the envelope in the law of armed
conflict when we do this. I think sor reasons that can not be printed in this
article -- it was determined was posing a clear threat to the stranded
pilots. But then this individual didn't make any physical move toward the
pilots, appearing to take no overt hostile action. So was he taking a direct
part in hostilities?

In this case, the commander on the ground put the question to the Air Force
attorneys watching from the floor. "The question was, 'If I have to kill this
guy, is there a legal concern?'" Carranza, recalls. Carranza sent forward a
decision and a recommendation. "I told them, yes, you could [bomb him]." But
his advice was to wait for more cause to do so. "My recommendation was, 'You
probably have enough now. [But] if you get a few more things, you've got a
real solid case,'" he says.

This was happening quickly, in real time, under obviously tense
circumstances. Carranza says that in the end, the commander chose not to drop
a bomb and the pilots were safely rescued while the Air Force kept an eye on
the threat 400 yards away. "I have to tell you," Carranza says, "I don't envy
the people who have to make those choices."

All of the technological and tactical advances during the Iraq war have meant
that commanders have had to make those choices more often. "Prior to this, we
never did targeting of individuals," says Crowder. "Full-motion video is in
such high demand now," he says. "I can follow a guy back to his house and
then take out the entire house of IED makers," he says, referring to
insurgents using roadside bombs.

The Air Force may be in this business for a long time. For all the talk in
the United States about getting troops out of Iraq, there is a sense among
Air Force officials that they are going to be fighting from this command
center long after there are fewer boots on the ground. During my visit, Air
Force Secretary Michael Wynne arrived to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for
a new, very large and very permanent-looking living quarters for Air Force
personnel stationed here.

Lt. Col. Bill Pinter, who does strategic planning here, says nobody expects
the mission to end anytime soon. "They don't have an Iraqi Air Force," he
tells me, referring to the Iraqi government's nascent efforts to establish
some sort of air power. "The Air Force will be the last ones to go out the
door."