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The secret, never-before-used CIA tool that helped find airman downed in Iran: ‘If your heart is beating, we will find you’

By Steven Nelson | Published April 7, 2026, 1:47 p.

The CIA used a futuristic new tool called “Ghost Murmur” to find and rescue the second American airman who was shot down in southern Iran, The Post has learned.

The secret technology uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise, two sources close to the breakthrough said.

It was the tool’s first use in the field by the spy agency — and was alluded to Monday afternoon by President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe at a White House briefing.

This source and another with knowledge of Lockheed Martin intelligence collection tools told The Post that “Ghost Murmur” was developed by Skunk Works, the aerospace giant’s secretive advanced development division. The company declined to comment.

The technology has been successfully tested on Black Hawk helicopters for future potential use on F-35 fighter jets, the second source said.

The missing and wounded weapons systems officer — known publicly only as “Dude 44 Bravo” — was hiding in a mountain crevice after his F-15 jet was shot down late last week, surviving two days in desolate terrain as Iranian troops scoured the area for the American with a bounty on his head.

It was “about as clean an environment as you could ask for” because of low electromagnetic interference, “almost no competing human signatures, and at night the thermal contrast between a living body and the desert floor,” which “gave operators a secondary confirmation layer.”

“Normally this signal is so weak that it can only be measured in a hospital setting with sensors pressed nearly against the chest,” the source said.

“But advances in a field known as quantum magnetometry — specifically sensors built around microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds — have apparently made it possible to detect these signals at dramatically greater distances.”

“The capability is not omniscient. It works best in remote, low-clutter environments and requires significant processing time,” this person said.

It was unclear to The Post’s sources how long the processing time was in this use. It’s also unclear if the technology may have additional wartime offensive uses.

The pivotal moment in the frantic two-day search and rescue mission came when “Ghost Murmur” pinpointed the aviator’s location — with the first source describing the two technologies as both being useful in ball-parking and then confirming the location.

“He had to come out [of the crevice] to send the beacon,” the first source said. “It was less important the signal they sent and more important that he had to come out to send [it].”

Trump and Ratcliffe hinted at the new technology while briefing the press on the successive yet dramatic mission, which included hundreds of US troops and two rescue planes getting stuck in a field, requiring more planes and the destruction of the stranded jets — with no American casualties.

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https://nypost.com/2026/04/07/us-news/gh...daring-mission/