US military to deploy 'spy rocks' in Afghanistan

America is supposed to wind down its war in Afghanistan by 2014.
But US forces may continue to track Afghans for years after the
conflict is officially done. Palm-sized sensors, developed for the
American military, will remain littered across the Afghan
countryside -- detecting anyone who moves nearby and reporting
their locations back to a remote headquarters. Some of these
surveillance tools could be buried in the ground,
all-but-unnoticeable by passersby. Others might be disguised
as rocks, with wafer-sized, solar-rechargeable batteries that could
enable the sensors' operation for perhaps as long as two decades,
if their makers are to be believed.

Traditionally, when armies clash, they leave behind a horrific
legacy: leftover mines which can blow civilians apart long after
the shooting war is over. These "unattended ground sensors," or
UGSs, won't do that kind of damage. But they could give the
Pentagon an enduring ability to monitor a one-time battlefield
long, long after regular American forces are supposed to have
returned home.

"Were going to leave behind a lot of special operators in
Afghanistan. And they need the kind of capability that's easy to
put out so they can monitor a village without a lot of overt
US-made material on pathways and roadways," says Matt Plyburn,
an executive at Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense
contractor.

"You use them to cover up your dead space -- the areas you're
concerned about but can't cover with other ISR [intelligence
surveillance and reconnaissance] assets," says Matt Russell,
an Army program manager overseeing the deployment of unattended
sensors.

But earlier UGSs -- even ones of the recent past -- were
relatively large and clunky, prone to false alarms, and had
lifespans measurable in days or weeks. "What we found in the field
was significant under-usage," Russell tells Danger Room. Plans
to incorporate them into every combat brigade fizzled as the
Army's proposed $200 billion (£128 billion) revamp, Future Combat
Systems, went south.

The new models are dramatically smaller and consume far less
power, enabling them to operate for months -- maybe even years --
at a time with only the slimmest chance of being detected. Lockheed
calls them " field and forget" systems for "persistent surveillance."

And they won't just be used overseas. US Customs and Border
Patrol today employs more than 7,500
UGSs on the Mexican border to spot illegal migrants.
Defense contractors believe one of the biggest markets for the next
generation of the sensors will be here at home.

"They could be used for border security or even around corporate
headquarters," Plyburn tells Danger Room.

In early 2011, commanders in Afghanistan issued an "urgent
operational needs statement" for better sensors. In response, the
Army shipped a new line of about 1,500 "expendable" UGSs to the warzone.
The size of a few stacked hockey pucks with a four-inch antenna,
these sensors are easily hidden, and can "pick up wheels or
footprints" for up to three months at a time, Russell says. It's a
perfect surveillance tool for the remote valleys of eastern
Afghanistan.

Even more sophisticated are the UGSs being tested northeast of
Norfolk, Virginia, at a Lockheed proving ground. Arrays of up to 50
palm-sized acoustic and seismic sensors form a mesh network. When
one sensor detects a person or a vehicle passing by, it uses
unlicensed radio frequency bands to pass an alert from one node to
the next. The alert finally hits a communications gateway, which
can send the signal via satellite, tactical radio network, or Wi-Fi
to a command and control center. That signal can tip off additional
sensors -- or it can send a Twitter-like message to an intelligence
officer's phone or tablet.

When they're not picking up signals or passing along messages,
the sensors are all-but-shut-down, barely consuming any power. That
allows them to last for weeks, buried underground. Or the sensors
can be encased in hollow "rocks" equipped with miniature solar
panels. A quick recharge from the sun will allow the sensor to "get
through the night anywhere on Earth that US forces operate," says
Plyburn.

Plyburn claims that the sensor's battery, about the size of a
postage stamp, has been able to go through 80,000 recharges,
compared to a few hundred cycles for a typical lithium-ion battery.
Even if he's off by a factor of 10, the sensor's battery could keep
the machine operational for nearly twenty-two years.

Russell is skeptical of
these assertions of longevity. "I'm sure there are a
lot of claims by contractors," he says. "My experience is: the
longer the lifespan, the bigger the battery."

Nor does Lockheed currently have a contract with Defense
Department to mass-produce the sensors. But Plyburn says there has
been interest around the armed forces, especially since the system
is relatively cheap. Plyburn says each sensor could cost as little
as $1,000 (£641) each -- practically expendable for a military
paying $80,000 (£51,242) for a single guided artillery round.

Lockheed isn't the only company claiming that its sensors can
operate for years on end. US Special Operations Command has handed
out at least $12 million (£7.69 million) in UGS contracts to tiny
Camgian Microsystems, based out of Starksville, Mississippi.
Company CEO Gary Butler, who spent years developing ultra-low
power integrated circuits for Darpa, was awarded in March 2012
a patent for
such a next-gen unattended sensor suite.

Rather than relaying alerts from node to node, each of Butler's
sensors is designed to send signals directly to a satellite --
speeding up notifications, and cutting down on power consumed.
Rather than a simple acoustic or seismic detector, the sensor
relies a steerable, phased-array radar and moving-target indicator
algorithms. That could give it a much greater ability to detect
people and vehicles on the run. High-powered solar cells provide
will enable up to "500,000 recharge cycles" could give the sensor a
"10-20 year life," according to the patent.

Butler won't say how US special operators are using his
research, if at all. But when I ask him about
the possibility of leaving UGS networks behind after
American troops have officially left, Butler calls that "plausible.
Very Plausible."

Camgian's patent claims that the sensor's ease-of-use and small
size means it "is easily emplaced in difficult areas, using
airborne assets such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles." Edward Carapezza, who has
been overseeing UGS research for more than two decades, says drones
are already dropping unattended sensors into hostile locations.

"In certain areas, we certainly are using unmanned vehicles and
unattended sensors together," says Carapezza, who now works at the
defense contractor General Atomics. He declined to name where these
operations were being conducted. He simply gave the rationale for
the missions. "Instead of sending patrols of our guys in, we send
in drones and unattended sensors -- dropping arrays, locating bad
guys, and then putting weapons on target."

The "MicroObserver"
UGS from defense contractor Textron has been in the field since
2008. The US Army is currently using the sensors in Afghanistan.
"Another customer -- we're not allowed to say who or where -- used
it as part of a comprehensive border security program in a Middle
Eastern country," says Patty Shafer, a Textron executive.

Textron's seismic sensors come in two varieties. The smaller,
7.62cm model, weighing 635g, will last about a month. The bigger
system, a 2kg, can be buried in the ground and gather intelligence
for more than two years. It can detect and characterise people from
100m away, and vehicles from three times that distance, Shafer
says. A conformal antenna allows it to communicate with a gateway
five kilometers away.

"Seismic sensors work well detecting vehicles on bumpy roads,
but lose range as the road becomes smoother, or the vehicle
lighter. Typically, magnetic sensors sense only large vehicles at
fairly short distances. The range of acoustic sensors depends upon
environmental conditions such as humidity and surroundings. Most
sense engine exhaust noise or other periodic pulse trains and
measure the period to determine numbers of cylinders and classify
the source," explains a Northrop presentation to an academic
conference on unattended sensors.

The Army has purchased over a thousand of the original versions,
with an average of four sensors, each. The vast majority have been
sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 20 Scorpion II systems were
recently bought by the Army Research Lab. The sensors can today
spot people from 800m away, and vehicles from 2,100m. The sensors'
batteries wear out after a month.

These might have been eye-popping results, not long ago. But the
US military now has plans to keep its network of tiny, hidden spies
going for much longer than that.