TAMPA, Fla. — US special operations forces are using forward-deployed rapid DNA scanners on a limited basis to confirm targets. and Troops have used DNA from improvised bomb components to capture of "some very bad people," according to an official with US Special Operations Command (SOCOM).
SOCOM is evaluating the devices for wider fielding. and i If successful, they have the potential to cut the time used to process DNA evidence from weeks to 90 minutes, and replace fingerprint analysis downrange, according to Michael Fitz, SOCOM's program manager for sensitive site exploitation.
"It's a groundbreaking, game-breaking technology," Fitz said at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference on Wednesday. "In the past, a guy would have to put [a DNA sample] in an envelope and send it back to the states and wait a few weeks to find out who he had. By then he's had 12 other missions and forgotten who that guy was."
Coverage From the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference
During SOCOM's evaluation of the equipment, DNA found on components of an improvised explosive device led to the captures. The devices, which are expensive to use, are being saved for "the juicy missions," Fitz said.
"We've got these rapid DNA devices deployed downrange, actually collecting DNA samples from guys our guys encounter, and I can tell you we've already had some operational successes," he said.
"The driver in this scenario is we're fighting insurgencies," he said. "Identifying the enemy is half the game."
The program office is in the midst of an evaluation — with two sets of equipment in two locations — which will be used to decide by the end of the year whether to launch a formal acquisition program. Two companies have devices in the evaluation, NetBio, of Waltham, Massachusetts, and IntegenX, of Pleasanton, California.
The program is evaluating two devices, one made by Waltham, Massachusetts-based NetBio, and the other by IntegenX, of Pleasanton, California. Whether to launch a formal acquisition program will be decided by the end of the year.
SOCOM is guiding industry toward a future device that is smaller and tougher so elite troops can use them in on-the-spot analyses with little training.
The machines, which cost roughly $250,000 each, weigh 120 pounds or 200 pounds, depending on the manufacturer. The reagents, which have a two-month shelf life, have to must be refrigerated.
"We want something that doesn't take a Ph.D to operate, obviously," Fitz said. "We have knuckle draggers out there that are operating these things, and they are doing quite well and getting great results.
Ideally, such a machine would also alert the operator to a DNA match in the field, so that test results don't need to be sent to the US. Fitz acknowledged the the database SOCOM accesses for the work is not robust for the people special operators are interested in, we're interested in," likening it to where battlefield fingerprinting was a decade ago.
Fitz said the data in question is from a criminal database, populated with people suspects in the US, as troops have not been collecting DNA from insurgents, Fitz said. "a cumbersome lengthy process to do that. There was very little motivation for our units to do that because the results were so slow."
Typically, someone would have to take a swab of organic material called a buccal swab, place it in a sterile bag and ship it to a lab, which could have a backlog — a process that could take weeks.
With a rapid DNA scanner, an operator would place a piece of bubblegum or a cigarette butt into a cartridge filled with special chemicals and place it in the machine to compare it with known DNA profiles.
SOCOM has had two of IntegenX's devices, the RapidHIT, for the last six months. The device is the size of two laser copiers, so a five-pound device — which Fitz would like to see — is a ways out, said Benji Hutchinson, senior director of federal business for MorphoTrust USA, which has an agreement with IntegenX to sell and service the devices.
"I strongly believe the power is in the back-end data when you start doing comparisons, because that's when you save lives," he said. "That's where you have a real impact, because like [Fitz] said, the hit rate is going to be sparse."
Hutchinson said he has worked with the US Army's biometrics efforts and saw the size of a fingerprint scanner shrink to the size of a smartphone, leading hope to the idea a DNA scanner could be miniaturized.
"It's a technological feat that we've gotten it this far," he said. "Can it be done? I've seen it done before … It can be done with enough willpower and money."
Email: jgould@defensenews.com
Twitter: @reporterjoe
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
