By Emily Baker

The day the towers fell in New York was the day reality hit in America.

But what has become known in living rooms across the country as the war on terrorism actually began decades before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, some officers say

"If you say the war started September 11th, you'll have a lot of people argue with you," said Brig. JB Gen. Christopher Tucker of the Army's Operational Test Command at West Fort Hood.

Iran first surfaced as a foe in 1979 after the overthrow of the Shah and the taking of American hostages by the new fundamentalist regime, Tucker said. A bombing attack on a U.S. base in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983 killed 220 Marines.

Conventional wisdom also points to 1993 in Somalia and the bringing down of a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu and the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York, both of which now are credited to Osama bin Laden's terror network, al-Qaida. More attacks on U.S. armed forces would follow with Khobar Towers in 1996 and the USS Cole in 2000.

Army planning for a new style of fighting actually began in the 1990s after the Cold War ended.

But just as the attacks that day made terrorism real to many Americans, they created an urgency to speed up what already was changing in the Army.

Training

Using passenger airlines as weapons could have been the first public clue that what the Army calls "conventional warfare" would not be the norm in the war on terrorism. Gone are the days of tanks lining up in a desert or field somewhere to shoot at each other, said Maj. Michael Simmering, the

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operations officer of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

While the initial attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq were conventional with airstrikes and invasions from the ground, both battlefields have shifted.

"You don't have tanks driving up, you have a guy planting bombs," Simmering said.

The result is a confusing battlefield where bad guys look like good guys and shooting the wrong one could have dire results.

Language and cultural barriers further complicate things. Soldiers still must be prepared for conventional fights. And with Army units spending one of every two years deployed, squeezing in enough training can be difficult. The regiment has deployed to Iraq twice and is anticipating a return.

But, as the regiment has learned from its own hectic schedule, providing the right training is not impossible.

"On eating an elephant, take small bites," said Maj. Adam Boyd, the regiment's intelligence officer.

Pushing training down to the squad and platoon level and teaching each soldier how to think is the key to success regardless of the type of battlefield, said Sgt. 1st Class Stephen Wright, the regiment's master gunner.

"It's like in school, if you get the basics, you can apply it to other things," Wright said.

Still, the task awaiting the smallest level in Iraq is major. Just as the enemy is changing, the Army's role is now including nation-building, what the Army typically refers to as "winning the hearts and minds of the people" by improving infrastructure, training police and other public services.

"It's amazing what you are asking them to do," Simmering said. "Take a 28-year-old captain with 100 men underneath him and ask him to set up a government in a town. You have guys at small unit levels making decisions that have implications on strategic levels."

Equipment

It's been said that nothing inspires inventions quite like a time of war. Just as the war in Iraq completely changes every six to nine months, the Army and the equipment it uses changes, too.

The result has been an increased demand on the Operational Test Command and its higher headquarters, the Army Test and Evaluation Command.

Much like the rest of the Army, the locally based command has adopted an expeditionary mindset, both in taking tests to units where they train and in deploying to the Middle East to study equipment as it is used in a combat zone, Tucker said.

The command has a continued presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait from teams that deploy in six-month shifts. Information is collected about how systems perform under actual combat conditions and is sent back to the Army's leadership and manufacturers. The result has been improvement to systems within a matter of months, Tucker said.

He offered the example of the Common Missile Warning System, which was improved because of feedback collected by the command's teams. He could not provide information about what was improved in a public forum.

Just as the time it takes to improve a system has decreased, so has the amount of time taken to test equipment at home.

"In the '70s, '80s and early '90s, the testing rhythm was in years," said Robert Hall, the command's technical director. "Now it is in months."

The command has to maintain a skilled and adaptive work force to test everything from aircraft to body armor. The command stays in close contact with the Army's staff and developers to learn what concepts are coming so the work force can be trained in advance, Tucker said.

Before the attacks created an urgency to fight terrorists, getting complicated training scenarios approved by range control was difficult, Wright said. Now, complicated and realistic are not obstacles, he said.

Money for equipment and training also flows more freely after the attacks, Wright said.

III Corps did not return e-mails requesting information about training budgets, how many extra training facilities have been built at Fort Hood in the last five years, whether how training scenarios are approved has changed or how much extra training like cultural and language training have cost.

Future

Predicting something that changes as quickly as a war is difficult, but Tucker and Hall said soldiers can expect more computers and electronics to use however the conflict develops.

"The technology is leading towards more complex systems," Hall said. "That will only make testing more challenging. I think we are looking at more robotics, systems that extend our view of the battlefield and our ability to interpret that battlefield."

Hall compared how fast the Army's technology is changing to the common analogy that a home computer is already obsolete by the time it is taken out of the box.

More work continues to be done with the Joint IED Defeat Organization, which works to counteract improvised explosive devices, the Army's term for roadside bombs, the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.