Taking the Hunt Underground

The US military has long experience in combating the threat presented by tunnels. Now it’s putting that knowledge to use for homeland security.

By: Mickey McCarter

10/31/2011 (12:00am)

The proliferation of tunnels to smuggle narcotics and people under the Southwest border is a well-known problem for the US Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has begun working to find ways to detect and defeat the threat.

The US military, however, has been fighting underground for decades. The modern Army often fought foes that hid in tunnels in the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong dug into the tunnels early in the war, taking advantage of their cover and using them to surprise American forces in attacks such as the 1968 Tet Offensive. The United States lacked any real means of detecting these tunnels and resorted to bombing them several times during the war.

Just as the Viet Cong moved fighters and supplies through their tunnels, the Taliban in Afghanistan have used tunnels for the same purposes. The mujahedin fighting the Soviet Union employed Afghan tunnels extensively in the 1980s. Those same tunnels have posed challenges for the US military since Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, Afghan detainees have sometimes resorted to tunnels to escape prisons a strategy also occasionally employed by the Allies and Axis alike when escaping from prisoner of war camps during World War II.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has been stepping up its efforts to detect tunnels in Afghanistan, representing the military's first true attempts to apply technology to the challenges of tunnel detection. Now, DoD is bringing its experience and knowledge to bear on behalf of homeland security.

Indeed, while it is not unusual for DHS to seek technology transfer assistance from DoD, the structure and scope of tunnel detection efforts is more robust than most other collaborative programs. (See “Tunnel Visionâ€