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עברית (Hebrew)
Tunnels under borders like the one discovered last week in Gaza may be used for terror or just smuggling of drugs. A close cooperation between Israel and the U.S. may develop new techniques that will help in finding more such tunnels along the border with Gaza.
Criminals of all kinds are digging tunnels along the U.S. border at a fast and furious pace. Sixty percent of all tunnels ever discovered by U.S. Border Patrol agents have been found in just the last three years.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has teamed with Lockheed Martin to find way to discover more tunnels. One option being evaluated is to use a special radar mounted on a vehicle. The electromagnetic waves penetrate the earth to construct a multi-colored picture of what’s below. Tunnels show up as red, yellow, and aquamarine dots against a blue background. Border patrol agents would see these images on a monitor mounted inside their truck.
iHLS – Israel Homeland Security
The ground penetrating radar is a promising technology because it is already used by civil engineers to reconstruct underground images. But these engineers are usually only interested in detecting cables or pipes that may be a few meters beneath the earth.
The developers are concentrating their efforts on using much lower frequencies that can penetrate the ground much deeper, and a sophisticated new imaging technology that can display clear pictures of deep tunnels.
