Scents that make you traceable , indoors and out . Nanocrystals that stick to your body , and light up on night - visual sense goggles . Miniradar that maps your location on Google Earth .
you’re able to race , but you ’ll learn it ’s hard to cover from a young range of mountains of military tech .
The Defense Department calls it “ tagging , trailing and locating , ” or TTL , this business of find and following high - value targets on the battlefield . Ever since SEAL Team 6 take outOsama bin Laden , we ’ve learned a lot about the technology used by peculiar operators to find and reach their targets , fromstealth helicopterstobiometric identification devices . TTL gear , though , ranks among the nervous Special Operations ’ extremely skittish armoury .
The military has spend a hefty chunk of variety on TTL tech:$450 millionhas gone to a exclusive party , Blackbird Technologies of Herndon , Virginia , which hasemerged as the loss leader in this covert field . million more have gone to the development of hemorrhage - boundary tracking methods , encompassing everything fromhuman - thermic - fingerprint detectionand miniaturecrop - dusting dronestoradar - responsivetags .
Al - Qaida says it find spy usinginfrared beaconsto call in laggard strikes in Pakistan . A Pakistani Taliban commander claims the United States putstracking “ potato chip ” in cellular phone , in ordering to trail Hellfire missiles on militants . But these are n’t the only technologies that can to secretly cover people .
With one technology , trackers might not even require to see you to get a localisation on your location . Like bloodhounds on the hunting , they can smell their way to you . Tracer Detection Technology Corp. mark targets with a paraffin wax crayon , fulfill with aperfluorocarbon , a thermally - stable compound used in everything from icebox to cosmetics . The perfluorocarbon ’s vapor can then be tracked with sensors , such as agas chromatograph . The feeling lingers for hours . cerebrate interlock yourself in a room with the window closed or take away the tag will avail ? Too tough , you still stink . allot to aresearch report submitted to the Justice Department(.pdf ) , the perfluorocarbon tracers can “ permeate closed room access and windows , container and luggage , ” and even give you aside for a while after a tagged item is hit .
Over the years , the company has receive a act of research contracts from the Navy . But Tracer chair Jay Fraser wo n’t say much about how those project have go . “ Tracer is developing a unique TTL capableness that will make it very unmanageable for enemy and felonious enterprisingness to operate , ” he einsteinium - mails Danger Room . “ The nature of our current and pending customer makes it toilsome for us to answer the rest of your questions . ”
Now a 2d tracer bullet : Imagine walking up to a target and pat him on the back with a clear liquid on your hand . He might never acknowledge it , but you ’d be able to see – and postdate – him from a space using night imagination goggles . Oregon - basedVoxtelmakes a Cartesian product , “ NightMarks , ” that can do just that . NightMarks are tiny nanocrystal quantum Lucy in the sky with diamonds that can be hidden in open liquids and seen only through a sensor like dark - vision goggles .
How do these midget dots work ? “ you may change the optic properties of cloth by making them small on the order of a nanometer in size , ” Voxtel CEO George Williams tell Danger Room . “ When they get down to that size , they have quantum - labour effects that cause their absorption and emission belongings – the lightness they engross , the light they put out – to commute , ” he says . “ And so using that , you may make all sorts of spectral barcodes that allow you to distinguish it and track . ”
Williams is stringent - lipped about Voxtel ’s kinship with the Defense Department and the military applications of its technology . However , a agile look at one2008 Voxtel contract with the Navyindicates that the Department already understands how utile the technology can be for chase targets . The contract bridge asks for “ covert microtaggants composed of nanocrystals ” visible through sensor like dark - vision goggles to “ enable war champion the power to track entity buried in urban clutter . ”
Another companionship has offer a slightly counterintuitive solution for military tagging : making sure its signal decays . You might intend that being able to see a taggant sign for as long as potential is always a good affair , butaccording to a briefing(.pdf ) fromTIAX LLC , it can actually be a problem .
Leftover taggants that last for long periods of time can seemingly clutter up an area with signals , and the mess can hinder a tracker ’s ability to key out between the subjects of new and honest-to-god tags . If they ’re still advertising their presence long after usefulness , opponents might also be able to find and reverse - engine driver the material . To get around the trouble , the briefing mentions that TIAX is working on “ customizable degradable taggants ” – exact paper unspecified – that will suffer their signal over time .
Other engineering are utile in justificatory trailing , such as for perimeter security department on small firebases . SpotterRF , makes a diminished radio detection and ranging - sensor organization , the SpotterRF M600 , that ’s about the size of it of a small netbook computer and can handily point out world creeping up on your side on Google Earth . The M600 use radio waves in theX bandthat can detect walkers up to 1,000 metre [ 0.62 miles ] and vehicle as far away as 1,500 measure . It incorporate with Google Earth by using its own built - in GPS to fix the gadget ’s position and sheathing tracked targets onto the mapping service .
The effect , a company rep e - mails , is “ like being able-bodied to nonplus a GPS traverse equipment on someone without having to add up anywhere near the person or vehicle . ” It ’s yet another way to hunt someone down who might not want to be hunted .
Above :
Micro Radio Transmitter
Oak Ridge National Laboratories developed this micro - miniature radio frequency sender ( above ) . It ’s smaller than a dime , and has a reach of three kilometers [ 1.9 sea mile ] .
Image : Oak Ridge National Laboratories
Bioreactive-Tagged Arm
A 2007 U.S. Special Operations Command briefing on “ Continuous Clandestine Tagging , Tracking , and Locating ” technology list a routine of tracking capability . This “ bioreactive taggant ” is identified as a “ current capableness . ”
Image : Special Operations Command
Quantum-Dot Tagging
This picture from a Sandia National Labs report shows quantum dots – crystals that change their optical properties , depending on their size . These dots are made of Cd selenide , crystallise on a newspaper publisher towel . Oregon - based Voxtel makes nanocrystal quantum Lucy in the sky with diamonds that can be enshroud in clear liquids and seen through night - vision goggles .
Image : Sandia National Laboratories
Infrared-Flash Tagging
In June 2009 , al - Qaida put out an electronic book , The opinion have-to doe with Muslim Spies , which claimed to publish picture of some of the devices Pakistani “ undercover agent ” used to guide American drone strikes . The pictures appear to show infrared beacons , power by a 9 - V barrage .
Image courtesy Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation
Radar-Responsive Tag
Sandia National Laboratories has stock out developing on these radar - antiphonal tag , which are like a long - range variation of the ubiquitous stick - on RFID tags used to mark item in shop . The radar - reactive tag end stays asleep until it is awaken by a microwave radar pulsation . The tags in Walmart have a range of a couple of measure , Sandia ’s tags can light up and locate themselves from 12 miles out .
SpotterRF Tag
The M600 made by SpotterRF is a compact radio detection and ranging organisation utile for tracking mankind and vehicle on modest firebases or in perimeter surety . The five - pound system can detect humans Alice Walker out to 1,000 meters [ 0.62 Roman mile ] and vehicles up to 1,500 m , and plot their positions on Google Earth .
mental image : SpotterRF
Human Thermal Fingerprint
In its2007 briefing , U.S. Special Operations Command also describes its goal of identifying targets by their body heat or “ human thermic fingerprint ” from a long distance away .
Chemical Light-Stick Tag
Another photo from al - Qaida ’s The Ruling Concerning Muslim Spies : It seems to be chemic clean stick – again , used to signal to the drones where to hit .
Wired.com has been expanding the hive head with engineering , science and eccentric acculturation news since 1995 .
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