"The revolution in our military is only beginning, and it promises to change the face of battle." --President George W. Bush, speaking at the Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina

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Three months ago when Washington declared war against terrorism it set out three objectives: to defeat the Taliban; to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive"; and to dismantle the global Al Qaida network. Concurrently, the Bush Administration also warned Americans that this would be a long and bloody war. However, barely two months after the US first joined in the battle against terrorism in Afghanistan, it has practically routed the Taliban, pinned down bin Laden and virtually rendered Al Qaida ineffective.

While there are several factors behind the remarkable success of the US military campaign, one of the key factors is undoubtedly the result of what is described as the revolution in military affairs (RMA). There have always been at least two objectives driving the RMA. First, to ensure that the military goals are achieved in the shortest possible time and space; and second, to ensure that your own casualties are kept to the bare minimum. The undisputed leader of this revolution has remained the US, which, even if it did not achieve the first goal, managed to progressively attain the second. Even in cases like Vietnam, where the US failed to achieve its military goals, they managed to inflict greater casualties on the Vietnamese.

ACTION AT A DISTANCE: Air power, based on land and sea, crushed the Taliban

The pace of the revolution picked up dramatically following the end of the Cold War and the US outstripped even its allies in terms of technological edge. Thus in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the US-led coalition attained its formidable military objective within months and suffered negligible casualties. By the time of Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999, the US-led NATO force was able to achieve its military objectives without even putting troops on the ground and suffered virtually no casualties.

Afghanistan has clearly been not only the proving ground of the progress made by the RMA since the end of the Cold War in the sphere of communications and command and control; logistics; air defenses; munitions and aerial refuelling; information operations and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but has also helped to revive this administration's attempts to overhaul the military, which had almost run aground before September 11 2001.

GRIM REAPERS: In two months Bush's military overran the barren reaches of Afghanistan

Using state-of-the-art weapons, such as the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs, the US military was able to reduce its personnel losses to a bare minimum while enhancing its ability to search, track and attack even fast moving and small targets.

Similarly, precision-guided munitions, which were the exception in Operation Desert Storm, were used in greater number in Kosovo with devastating effect and limited collateral damage to civilians and have formed the majority of the arms used in Afghanistan. This is in sharp contrast to the Indian experience in Kargil where it took the sacrifice of hundreds of brave Indian soldiers to clear even a limited area occupied by intruders.

Although RMA is invariably thought of only in state-of-the-art technology terms and "gee-whiz" equipment, reflected in the present cumbersome acronyms, such as C4ISR (command, control, computer, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems, this is only one, albeit critical, part of it. An equally critical aspect of RMA is thinking through the strategic goals and devising the necessary tactics to achieve those goals. In this the US has been less successful. Thus despite the success of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Allied Force, the ruling autarchy in both Iraq and the former Republic of Yugoslavia remained intact. Even in the case of Afghanistan, senior Pentagon officials have admitted that despite the apparent military success of Operation Enduring Freedom the political outcome remains doubtful.

While the tactical and strategic principles are still evolving, one principle that has been incorporated in the new revolution is that of cooperating with what President Bush called "battle-friendly ... forces" but what are more accurately allies of convenience or opportunistic allies. This was the case in Kosovo when the US military worked closely with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army and is also evident in Afghanistan where the various components of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance are conducting the bulk of the ground operations on behalf of Washington.

In the short term these developments have emboldened the Bush Administration to seriously consider embarking on other military operations outside the Afghan theatre. Already Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria are being talked about as potential battlegrounds in the next phase of the war against terrorism. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia along with Britain, France and Russia have already indicated their unwillingness to enlarge the campaign to include Iraq, but these concerns are unlikely to prevent Washington.

The only restraint on Washington might well be its ability to successfully accomplish the RMA even while conducting its global war on terrorism. This, as President Bush ruefully noted in his speech at the Citadel military college would be "like overhauling an engine while you're going at 80 miles an hour". That may be a difficult feat even for the world's technological superpower to pull off.

The writer is an associate at the International Peace Academy, New York