Mike Baker

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In today's Back of the Brief, we're getting a bit of insight into a CIA technology that, well, sounds like something straight out of science fiction, but played a very real role in bringing an American airman home alive.

According to a new report, the CIA deployed a previously unknown tool called Ghost Murmur to help locate the second crew member of that downed F-15E in southern Iran.

The system can reportedly detect the faint electromagnetic signal of a human heartbeat from miles away.

Now, don't picture some sweeping all-seeing radar.

This appears to be far more precise and far more limited.

The technology works best in quiet remote environments, and in this case, well, the conditions were nearly perfect.

The airmen, identified only as Dude 44 Bravo...

was hiding in a mountain crevice, deep in sparsely populated terrain, with very little background interference.

That environment is what made the use of this device possible, because what ghost murmur is reportedly doing is essentially picking out a single heartbeat in a massive area, something that one source compared to hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is hundreds of square miles of desert.

The system reportedly combines advanced sensing technology with artificial intelligence, allowing operators to filter out noise and lock onto a specific human signature.

President Trump even suggested the CIA was able to locate the airmen from roughly 40 miles away.

Now, the airman did have a survival beacon, but it wasn't enough to pinpoint his exact location.

In fact, part of the challenge was that he had to briefly expose himself to activate it, while Iranian forces were, of course, actively searching for him.

That's where this ghost murmur device came in.

It helped narrow the search, confirm he was alive, and ultimately allowed U.S.