Intelligence: the silver bullet that will beat the insurgency.

Nearly three years of hostilities in Iraq have made it painfully obvious that despite untold billions of dollars spent on intelligence and surveillance systems, U.S. troops, for all intents, are fighting blind.

Ambushes, roadside bombs and suicide attacks against soldiers and Marines have proved to be effective tactics that have worked because the insurgents have seized the element of surprise.

While the Defense Department has been able to curb the casualty toll by deploying more armored vehicles and acquiring stronger body armor and electronic jammers that thwart detonations, the U.S.-led coalition has yet to make any significant inroads into the insurgents' ability to produce an inexhaustible supply of explosive devices and to stage attacks.

They apparently can attack whenever and wherever they wish.

Adding to the frustration of commanders is the realization that no amount of firepower is going to overcome a fundamental lack of what the Army describes as "actionable intelligence."

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, created a special task force two years ago to address the problem. Actionable intelligence, unlike other more traditional forms of intelligence, is information that would help tactical commanders, for example, locate the insurgent weapons depots and identify bomb makers.

Until the military can come to grips with this problem, it will continue to pay the price in the form of casualties, which have now reached nearly 2,000 dead and more than 14,000 wounded.

"We have firepower 10 times over what we need. What we don't have enough of is actionable intelligence," says Lt. Gen. John F. Kimmons, Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence.

Kimmons, who previously was the director of intelligence at U.S. Central Command, says the complexity of Iraqi culture and the intricacies of the urban combat zones make intelligence a "critical enabler" that could make or break the coalition's chances of success.

"The heavy burden falls on intelligence," Kimmons explains in an interview with military reporters.

The intelligence problem has to get fixed if the United States is to prevail in the war against terrorism, he notes. Regardless of how things turn out in Iraq or Afghanistan, the fight against radical Islamic fundamentalists will continue for many years, possibly in other parts of the world. "The insurgency will go on for decades," says Kimmons. "This threat will continue ... although it may not be in Iraq or Afghanistan."

The counterinsurgency war in Iraq, however, will be a touchstone for measuring future progress in fixing intelligence problems. "If you can get it right in iraq, you can get it right in North Korea and in homeland defense," says Kimmons.

What we are seeing in Iraq is one piece of a "worldwide insurgency," he adds. "Extremists will metastasize and go somewhere else," such as Southeast Asia or sub-Saharan Africa.

Getting a handle on battlefield intelligence requires a combination of policy and organizational changes, in addition to some new technology, Kimmons says. Pouring more money into intelligence programs is not really the answer, although, like everyone else at the Defense Department, Kimmons says he would welcome additional resources.

The "silver lining" of this war is that it has compelled decision-makers to rethink their stance about the value of intelligence and to allocate resources accordingly, he says. "Policies that we couldn't change in a decade, we've been able to change in two to three years."

Among the most significant developments in intelligence organizations has been the shift away from traditional chains of command to a horizontal structure that allows for wider sharing of information at the lower echelons. By the military's own account, the fighting in Iraq is a small-unit war, where key decisions are made at the platoon and squad levels.

Kimmons' office has led efforts to deploy "flat networks" that allow the dissemination of intelligence across battalion command posts in Iraq, and catalog, among other things, biometrics information about terrorist suspects. The insurgents--which include a mix of Al Qaeda operatives, cronies of the former regime, Sunni Iraqis and miscellaneous freelancers--is, after all, a perfect example of a flat network that has exploited the global reach of the Internet to move information, people and money.

"Flat networks are the future," says Kimmons.

The inability to share data quickly has caused problems for U.S. forces, he notes. The Army recently deployed a new wide-band communications network that makes it much easier to move data around at lightning speed. The flat network currently being built merges all sources at all classification levels, says Kimmons.

One of the weakest links in military intelligence--human assets--also is being addressed, he says. "Army intelligence will grow by up to 5,000 soldiers during the next couple of years."

As to how this insurgency can be defeated, Kimmons contends that it must happen at the grass roots level, once the Iraqis' own military and police force take ownership of their communities.

U.S. intelligence in many ways could benefit from the lessons of the insurgency. Asked how the insurgents got to be so smart, Kimmons replies that "they are observant ... and they go to school on how we fight." They also are media-savvy. They pay attention to the blogs, and are adept at data mining. They send photojournalists to film their attacks, and use the videos for training, battle damage assessment and to improve their tactics. They bank on the prospect of the U.S. giving up because the fight has gotten too hard and bloody.

The U.S. military, he says, "respects this enemy for being persistent and committed."