Terrorism has become a more and more prominent method of warfare in the 20th and 21st centuries. While terror has been used as a weapon since the beginning of war, the rise of terror tactics being used by radical Islamist groups has risen to a unique level not seen before in modern history. Likewise, a superpower's response to an assault by extremists is also something not before seen, especially on a global scale. Massive invasions against other armies are becoming less and less common in the nuclear age, and now it tends to be a state government military fighting opposition with an ideology. The point of terrorism is that it can happen anywhere at any time, so therefore the coordination and sophistication needed by a group to carry out an attack is complicated, as is tracking this communication.
This is a colossal change from what the military spent hundreds (thousands) of years perfecting; warfare between armies. Land combat, air forces, tank warfare, etc etc, generals and tactics. Now, it's tracking down social networks, large families, and very specific individuals on the other side of the planet from a totally different cultural background. It's intelligence gathering and specific strikes, theoretically. Special forces and drones are gaining prominence in this new era. Wars between nation states are expensive and painful for the world, while simultaneously radical ideologies are using violence on a global scale with terrible results.
The result is a War on Terror, a war on an open-ended ideology with no clear beginning or middle or end, that has consequences we can't foresee. It's a different era.
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