That underground tunnel in the TV show Weeds – the one where they moved drugs and illegal aliens into California from Mexico – was no TV show writer invention. There are probably dozens of such tunnels, similar to the ones dug by Hamas from Sinai into Gaza – except that in Israel, the terrorists move not only drugs, but weapons, like missiles and bombs, through the tunnels. Those are the missiles we hear about almost every day as they are fired at Israeli communities in the Negev.

The tunnels aren’t easy to find, and the tunnel diggers are very good at camouflaging their work. The problem is even worse in the U.S than in Israel (this one was air-conditioned – I guess Mexican smugglers have a higher standard of living that the ones in the Middle East!), because the border with Mexico is much longer than the border between Sinai and Gaza. Unless a cop or border patrolman gets lucky, it’s next to impossible to find the tunnels.

Now, a team of Israeli researchers may have discovered a way to solve the problem. Dr. Assaf Klar and Dr. Raphael Linker, of the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering have come up with a way to use sound waves to detect the existence of tunnels. “Tunnel excavation is accompanied by the release of stresses that cause permanent – though very tiny – displacements and strains in the ground,” says Dr. Klar. “If you can measure these strains in the soil with sensitive equipment, you can find the tunnel’s location.” In other words, you can find an underground tunnel if you know what to listen for!

Called BOTDR (Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry), the technology uses optical fiber that can read the underground topology of an area, “keeping an ear out” for patterns that indicate distortions in the underground soil or rocks. The Technion team applied the BOTDR technology to their system, which is programmed with profiles for all sorts of possible disturbances, such as rainwater dripping into the ground, flowing water, movements of snakes and other underground dwellers, etc. All those disturbances are filtered out – and the system raises an alarm when it comes across a pattern that indicates that a tunnel is being dug – or being used. The pair presented their findings last month at the Defense, Security and Sensing Conference of SPIE, to a rapt audience (so my sources say)!

Tags: Gaza, Hamas, hi-tech, israel, terrorists, tunnels, underground, war

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under hi-tech, israel, security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.