The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed a new technology dubbed "Ghost Murmur" in the high-stakes operation to retrieve the second U.S. airman from deep inside Iran over the weekend, according to a new report.
The tool is able to pick up human heartbeats across long distances, and then uses artificial intelligence (AI) to sift out background noise, two unnamed sources told The New York Post.
The mountainous terrain of southern Iran was an "ideal first operational use" for the technology, one of the sources said.
Newsweek could not independently verify this report. The Pentagon referred Newsweek to the CIA, which has been contacted for comment.
Hundreds of U.S. military personnel were involved in the rescue of an injured U.S. weapons systems officer over the weekend. The aviator was hiding in a remote part of southern Iran after his F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet crashed in the country on Friday.
The jet's pilot was quickly rescued, kicking off a frantic hunt to reach the second U.S. serviceman before Iranian authorities located him.
The F-15E was brought down by a shoulder-fired missile, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday.
It was the first time a U.S. jet was downed over Iran since the start of U.S.-Israeli strikes on the country more than five weeks ago.
The rescue came just days before U.S. President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, roughly an hour before the expiration of his deadline at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Trump had said a "whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," unless Iranian officials consented to fully reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane by this time.
But confusion reigns over the terms of a 10-point proposal, whether Israeli operations in Lebanon are included and whether the agreement—described as a "fragile truce" by Vice President JD Vance—can hold. Talks between Iran and the U.S. are tabled for Friday in Pakistan.
The lost aviator, described as injured and clutching a handgun, was crouched in a mountain crevice, thought to only be communicating sporadically with U.S. forces coming to his aid for nearly 48 hours.
He was "invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA," the spy agency's director, John Ratcliffe, told reporters.
Ratcliffe said the efforts to locate the missing airman were "comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert."
The CIA passed on the intelligence to the Pentagon and White House, running a "deception campaign to confuse the Iranians" searching for the U.S. service member, Ratcliffe said.
Trump said "thousands" of Iranians were scouring the rocky landscape in search of the aviator. Iranian authorities had offered a $60,000 reward for the American's capture.
An anonymous source told The Post the swathe of Iran where the airman was sheltering was "about as clean an environment as you could ask for," with few other people in the area and little to interfere with the new tactics.
The Ghost Murmur works "best in remote, low-clutter environments," this person said.
Trump said the airman, currently identified only as a colonel, had used a "very sophisticated beeper-type apparatus" U.S. military personnel carry to communicate his location from the mountain ridgeline.
U.S. officials identified the device as the Combat Survivor Evader Locator (CSEL), made by defense giant Boeing.
Aircrew and special forces have been using this device to survive when stranded since 2009. Boeing describes the CSEL as a "global 911 emergency call system for downed personnel."
The wounded airman emerged from his hiding place to use the beacon, and the Ghost Murmur picked up his location, The Post reported.
The Ghost Murmur was reportedly developed by a secretive, experimental branch of Lockheed Martin's operations, known as Skunk Works.
Newsweek reached out to Lockheed Martin for comment, but the aerospace company referred queries to the US government.