Oroville Mercury-Register

Units track guns using tech that could aid foes

- By James Laporta, Justin Pritchard and Kristin M. Hall

Determined to keep track of their guns, some U.S. military units have turned to a technology that could let enemies detect troops on the battlefiel­d, The Associated Press has found.

The rollout on Army and Air Force bases continues even though the Department of Defense itself describes putting the technology in firearms as a “significan­t” security risk.

The Marines have rejected radio frequency identifica­tion technology in weapons for that very reason, and the Navy said this week that it was halting its own dalliance.

RFID, as the technology is known, is infused throughout daily civilian life. Thin RFID tags help drivers zip through toll booths, hospitals locate tools and supermarke­ts track their stock. Tags are in some identity documents, airline baggage tags and even amusement park wristbands.

When embedded in military guns, tags can trim hours off time-intensive tasks, such as weapon counts and distributi­on. Outside the armory, however, the same silent, invisible signals that help automate inventory checks could become an unwanted tracking beacon.

An investigat­ion

The AP scrutinize­d how the U.S. armed services use technology to keep closer control of their firearms as part of an investigat­ion into stolen and missing military guns — some of which have been used in street violence.

The examinatio­n included new field tests that showed even low-tech enemies could identify U.S. troops at distances far greater than what contractor­s who install RFID systems say.

Which is why a spokesman for the Department of Defense said its policymake­rs oppose embedding tags in firearms except in limited, very specific cases, such as guns that are used only at a firing range — not in combat or to guard bases.

“It would pose a significan­t operations security risk in the field, allowing an adversary to easily identify DOD personnel operating locations and potentiall­y even their identity,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Uriah Orland told AP.

Spokespeop­le at the headquarte­rs of the Air Force and Army said they did not know how many units have converted their armories.

AP found five Air Force bases that have operated at least one RFID armory, and one more that plans a retrofit.

A Florida-based Army Green Berets unit, the 7th Special Forces Group, confirmed it uses the technology in “a few” arms rooms. Special forces soldiers can take tagged weapons into the field, said Maj. Dan Lessard, a special forces spokesman. A separate pilot project at Fort Bragg, the sprawling Army base in North Carolina, was suspended due to COVID-19.

The Navy told AP one armory on a base up the coast from Los Angeles was using RFID for inventory. Then this week, after extended questionin­g, spokesman Lt. Lewis Aldridge abruptly said that the technology “didn’t meet operationa­l requiremen­ts” and wouldn’t be used across the service.

With unit commanders looking to bolster armory security, defense contractor­s have offered a familiar technology — one with origins in the developmen­t of radar during World War II.

In the U.S. military, RFID use grew in the 1990s, after the first Gulf War showed a need to untangle vast supply chains of shipping containers. Its use has migrated to weapons management in more recent years. Government armories in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have been outfitted.

Conversion­s cost thousands of dollars, and sometimes more. Convenienc­e is a big selling point. Instead of hand-recording firearm serial numbers on paper or scanning barcodes oneby-one like a cashier, an armorer can read tags in multiple firearms with the wave of a handheld reader — and without having to see each weapon. The tags tucked inside don’t even need batteries.

Debate over tags

Contractor­s that retrofit armories say tags can be read only within a limited range, typically a few dozen feet or less. But in field testing for AP, two prominent cybersecur­ity experts showed that a tag inside a rifle can be detected from significan­tly farther, using inexpensiv­e components that fit in a backpack.

Because the hackers were following federal regulation­s that limit the power of radio signals, their RFID reader system lost the tag at 210 feet (64 meters). Enemies who would not feel so restricted could detect tags miles away, said Kristin Paget, the “Hacker Princess” who has worked at tech titans including Apple and Tesla.

The RFID system Paget and her hacking partner Marc Rogers cobbled together cost about $500. They said a tinkerer with YouTube access could learn the needed skills.

Executives at two companies that have installed RFID armories at Air Force bases said they had never heard of a 210-foot reading.

‘No risk at all’

One said he didn’t believe it. Eric Collins, the CEO of Trackable Solutions, said he’d heard concerns about troop tracking for years, but insisted it wasn’t a problem because — even with a stronger power source — no reader could find a tag more than several dozen feet away.

RFID in weapons poses “absolutely no risk at all,” Collins said. He called the Pentagon’s security concerns invalid: “The leadership needs their staff to give them better guidance.”

But a top weapons expert from the Marine Corps said he witnessed how tags can be read from afar during training exercises in the Southern California desert in December 2018.

“RFID tags on tanks, weapons, magazines, you can ping them and find the dispositio­n of where units are,” said Wesley Turner, who was a Marine chief warrant officer 5 when he spoke in a spring interview. “If I can ping it, I can find it and I can shoot you.”

The Corps has decided not to tag guns because doing so would boost troops’ digital signature on the battlefiel­d, “increasing the security/force protection risks,” according to spokesman Capt. Andrew Wood.

 ?? PHOTOS BY NOAH BERGER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Hackers Kristin Paget, right, and Marc Rogers adjust an antenna while testing radio frequency identifica­tion signal range in Hickman on Sunday.
PHOTOS BY NOAH BERGER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Hackers Kristin Paget, right, and Marc Rogers adjust an antenna while testing radio frequency identifica­tion signal range in Hickman on Sunday.
 ?? ?? Firearms instructor Michael Palombo holds a Springfiel­d Armory M25rifle during field testing to measure radio frequency identifica­tion signal range in Hickman on Sunday.
Firearms instructor Michael Palombo holds a Springfiel­d Armory M25rifle during field testing to measure radio frequency identifica­tion signal range in Hickman on Sunday.

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