Holey WarHow to close the Gaza tunnels.
Posted Friday, Jan. 16, 2009, at 7:58 AM ET
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StumbleUpon6. Electromagnetic gradiometry. This might solve the depth problem. Originally developed for the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, it detects underground voids by discerning slight anomalies in electromagnetic or gravitational fields. Companies that sell EM gradiometers try to keep the range secret, so they don't become obsolete like GPR. One published account estimates their outside range at 150 feet. That's deeper than any known Hamas tunnel. Still, it leaves the problem of administration. The IDF abandoned its strip on the Gaza-Egypt border four years ago because it was too hard to defend. Who's going to operate the machines?
7. Drone-operated gradiometry. Here's an idea: Put the tunnel sensors on unmanned aerial vehicles. Supposedly this has been tried successfully at least once on the U.S.-Mexico border. A year ago, the Department of Homeland Security told Congress that DHS was "experimenting with UAV mounted digital electromagnetic gradiometers." A presentation from the DHS Science and Technology Directorate depicts a team of drones (see Slide 27) using gradiometry to sniff out tunnels. The drones selected for the assignment are already available, "fully autonomous," can fly for 10 hours, and have "a data link range of up to 22 nautical miles." Or the IDF could modify its own drones to do the job. So Israel wouldn't need sitting-duck ground forces to monitor tunnels and diggers. It could hunt them from the air.
8. Automatic sensors. If you don't want drones along the border, you could try "acoustic" or "seismic" sensors. These require no operators and, according to a research paper that accompanied last month's Army presentation, can detect digging or movement in a tunnel even in conditions that "confounded GPR and electromagnetic techniques." The Army has field-tested a network of buried acoustic sensors in Iraq, with "overwhelming success," the paper reports. This network, which the Army now calls the Tunnel Activity Detection System, consists of buried sensors ("geophones") that are connected by an underground cable and transmit data to an operations center "via a satellite uplink." Theoretically, the geophones could be buried along the Egypt-Gaza border, and the operations center could be in Tel Aviv.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is already working with Egypt on such a system. Recently, the United States allocated $23 million to Egypt for tunnel sensors. Two months ago, Ha'aretz reported that the corps was teaching Egyptian soldiers how to find tunnels using "instruments that measure ground fluctuations." Last week, the Washington Post said the corps was helping Egypt find tunnels with "sonar equipment." Apparently, what worked in Iraq is now being tried to Gaza.
Unfortunately, Israel doesn't trust Egypt to police the tunnels. Could Israel's defense industry build a similar system? It already has. Sonic Lynx, a firm based near Tel Aviv, advertises "an array of seismic and acoustic sensors deployed in the ground" that relay data "to a remote control and display station, where security personnel can view the classification of the threat together with its accurate location." Meanwhile, Electro-Optics Research and Development, a Haifa company that specializes in acoustics and seismology, has developed seismic antennas that can identify underground threats. Sonic Lynx recently lobbied the IDF to put its sensors under the Israel-Gaza border. In fact, Israel already has experience using acoustic sensors to hunt tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt.
9. Statistical bombing. Having failed to block the Egypt-Gaza tunnels, Israel is now bombing them from the air and shelling them from the sea. Some tunnels were picked out beforehand—the Israeli Air Force hit 40 in a single night—but in other cases, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, the IAF "dropped at 10-meter intervals 600 kg bombs with timing devices, which 'statistically' hunt the hidden tunnels." If Israel can't get a deal to block the tunnels with sensors or a barrier, it might have to resort to "statistical" bombing again. That could mean a bombing campaign along the border every three to six months—the length of time it takes diggers to complete new tunnels. An ugly prospect, to be sure. But not as ugly as what's going on right now in Gaza.
(Human Nature thanks Slate interns Jennifer Akchin and Gage Newman, who tunneled through the Internet to bring back the parts that were assembled to make this article.)
(Now playing at the Human Nature blog: 1. Why old people don't cause more car crashes. 2. Why cell-phone users do. 3. The beauty of adjustable glasses.)
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