The CIA employed a cutting-edge tool called “Ghost Murmur” to locate and rescue a U.S. airman shot down in southern Iran, sources said, The Caspian Post reports, citing The New York Post.

The technology combines long-range quantum magnetometry with artificial intelligence to detect the electromagnetic signature of a human heartbeat, isolating it from background noise across vast areas.

Officials described it as “like hearing a voice in a stadium, except the stadium is a thousand square miles of desert.”

Developed by Lockheed Martin’s secretive Skunk Works division, Ghost Murmur has been successfully tested on Black Hawk helicopters and could be adapted for F-35 fighter jets. The system was used operationally for the first time in the mountainous, sparsely populated terrain where the airman, known only as “Dude 44 Bravo,” hid for two days while evading Iranian forces.

“The name is deliberate,” a source explained. “‘Murmur’ refers to a heart rhythm; ‘Ghost’ reflects locating someone who has, for all practical purposes, disappeared.” Low electromagnetic interference and thermal contrast in the desert environment allowed the technology to pinpoint the pilot’s location, providing a critical layer of confirmation alongside his activated survival beacon.

Quantum magnetometry, leveraging microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds, allowed detection of the normally faint heart signals at unprecedented distances. While the system is highly effective in remote, low-clutter environments, it requires significant data processing time and is not omniscient.

The successful mission highlights the potential of advanced quantum-based tools in search and rescue operations, providing capabilities previously confined to hospital settings.