OK, just for reference and people who might come across this via Google or other searches: I was able to fix this by manually copying "UIAutomationCore.dll" from the Windows system directories to the Thrustmaster TARGET x64 folder. There are actually several UIAutomationCore.dll files in Windows. I just picked the largest file (733KB) and manually copied it over. Now TARGET works again.
I still have no idea why this happened all of a sudden though. I definitely did not delete anything from the TARGET folders. The only thing I can think of is that I recently reinstalled FSX and maybe some FSX add-on tampered with the UIAutomationCore.dll and TARGET could maybe no longer find the correct one.