Bio-Goo, Lasers = Terrorist-Trackers

It’s tough keeping track of stuff – especially for the military. Osama is still MIA; missiles are turning up in junk yards; and whatever happened to those damn WMDs?

The Air Force’s proposed fix: Mark those people and things with “taggants” of biological goo – and track 'em with lasers and airplanes. (Me, I’m still hoping to find my keys.)

According the official request, the desired tracking agents will...

utilize biological media such as synthetic DNA or proteins to provide complex, molecular scale detectors to covertly track adversaries, material assets and detect Chemical/Biological/Radiological/Nuclear/Explosive...targets. Applications include the ability to mark an asset or person of interest with an amount of taggant material that is small enough that it is covert, and then track movement and contacts through transferred taggant material. Simple taggants can be used to covertly watermark secure documents and systems to verify authenticity.

The taggants, a second request says, should glow "fluorescent or phosphorescent... when probed with laser radiation." Once they're emitting waves in the infrared or ultraviolet slices of the spectrum, that light will be picked up by reconnaissance aircraft (manned or robo-) flying anywhere between 100 meters and 5 kilometers above.

They call it "watermarking" -- like what you'd do to make sure a photograph wasn't stolen. But it's kinda like playing pin the tail on the donkey, right? Except that the tail is invisible to sight, and the donkey (terrorist) isn't supposed to know you're there.

Here's a question, though: Just how, exactly, does this little bugger get on Osama in the first place?

-- Kent Garber