WASHINGTON, April 11 (UPI) -- Secret tunnels lead into Baghdad's heavily guarded "Green Zone," according to the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
"Caves and tunnels provide secret entry into sensitive areas, such as Baghdad's International Zone, and might even contain prisons, weapons laboratories, and nuclear power plants," Tony Tether told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities on March 21 in his written testimony. "While large developed facilities have long been recognized as strategic threats, there is increasing need to find and characterize small underground structures. ... These include caves that serve as hiding places and tunnels for smuggling weapons and infiltrators across borders."
The Green Zone, or International Zone as it is called, is home to the U.S. Embassy, many Iraqi government offices and several U.S. military commands. It is also populated by Iraqis who lived in the neighborhood prior to the U.S. invasion and increasingly by news organizations and humanitarian groups as security in Baghdad proper has declined.
With an eye on North Korea, the Pentagon had long invested money in research for weapons and surveillance systems to use against deeply buried bunkers, nuclear missiles and laboratories. Now DARPA, the Pentagon's research wing, has begun a program to ferret out "tactical" tunnels. The "Counter Underground Facility Program" is developing ways to use seismic, acoustic, electromagnetic, optical and chemical sensors to find, characterize and conduct post-strike assessments of tunnels. It is currently developing a prototype low-altitude airborne sensor system that uses active electro-optical and gravity signature sensing specifically for small tunnels.
Tether told the panel LAASS may also prove useful against improvised explosive devices.
