The top secret CIA tool ‘Ghost Murmur’ used to save US airman downed in Iran by detecting his heartbeat

While the pilot ejected safely and was rescued by two military helicopters that same day, the second officer – injured, 200 miles behind enemy lines and armed only with a handgun – had to evade capture in the barren wilderness for 36 hours with a bounty on his head.

Trained in survival, evasion, resistance and escape (SERE) techniques, the airman was able to activate a Boeing-made Combat Survivor Evader Locator beacon just before he took cover in a mountain crevice, but his exact whereabouts remained uncertain as he hid.

He was finally found and retrieved by a team of commandos before dawn Sunday thanks to the new Ghost Murmur technology, sources told the New York Post.

The equipment uses long-range quantum magnetometry – technology that measures magnetic fields – to trace the electromagnetic signals produced by a human heartbeat.

It then pairs the data with AI software in order to isolate it from distracting background noise and pinpoint its source.

Speaking at a White House briefing on the daring operation Monday, Trump praised CIA Director John Ratcliffe for doing a “phenomenal job,” inviting him to discuss the new tool used in recovering the airman.

“It might be classified, in which case I’d have to put him in jail if he talks about it and I don’t want to put him in jail,” the president joked. “He doesn’t deserve that.”

Ratcliffe cautiously obliged without naming the technology or going into detail, saying his agency had used “exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service” possesses, comparing the rescue effort “to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

According to the Post, the technology was developed by Skunk Works, the secretive advanced development division of aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, and has been tested on Black Hawk helicopters with a view to its future use with F-35 fighter jets.

“It’s like hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert,” the newspaper’s source said. “In the right conditions, if your heart is beating, we will find you.”

The source said the remoteness of the Iranian wilderness had proven “an ideal first operational use” and “about as clean an environment as you could ask for”, given the absence of much electromagnetic interference, meaning there were “almost no competing human signatures, and at night the thermal contrast between a living body and the desert floor.”

They continued: “Normally, this signal is so weak that it can only be measured in a hospital setting with sensors pressed nearly against the chest.

“But advances in a field known as quantum magnetometry – specifically sensors built around microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds – have apparently made it possible to detect these signals at dramatically greater distances.”

They also addressed its limitations: “The capability is not omniscient. It works best in remote, low-clutter environments and requires significant processing time.”