Did CIA Use Covert Tech To Find Lost Airman?

The CIA and U.S. military may have employed a secret, never-before-used technology to rescue the second American airman stranded behind Iranian enemy lines.

On April 3, Iran shot down an F-15E Strike Eagle during Operation Epic Fury, triggering a dramatic search-and-rescue mission to save the two crew members.

The pilot was found and rescued in “broad daylight,” but finding the weapons systems officer (WSO) proved far more difficult.

For nearly 48 hours, a “seriously wounded” American colonel evaded capture by scaling a ridge and hiding inside a mountain crevice as Iranian forces worked to close in on his position, The Daily Wire previously reported.

President Donald Trump later described the mission as an “Easter Miracle,” according to NBC News.

Speculation about how the United States ultimately located the airman has drawn attention online. The New York Post reported that the CIA used a classified system known as “Ghost Murmur” to detect the airman’s heartbeat from dozens of miles away. In a recent podcast, Joe Rogan and guest Duncan Trussell discussed the technology.

“This is science fiction. This is full minority report, science fiction-level technology. We can find a guy’s heart rate,” Rogan said. “What sick f*ck invented this?”

Joe Rogan: “CIA found the pilot who got shot in Iran by using classified tech called Ghost Murmur and AI that detects human heartbeats up to 40 miles away. What sick f*ck invented this. What else don’t they tell us?”pic.twitter.com/A3L9fge3CT

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) April 9, 2026

“They find this guy’s … heartbeat, he’s hiding in some kind of crevice, and then they’re able to go extract him,” Trussell told Rogan. “Heartbeat says a lot about a person — are they sleeping? Are they like in good shape, bad shape? Bet you can learn so much from a heartbeat.”

The classified technology “uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic signal of a human heartbeat,” according to the Post, “and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise.”

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

CIA Director Jon Ratcliffe did not confirm specifics, but referenced advanced capabilities during a White House press briefing, calling the tools used in the operation “exquisite” and unlike anything possessed by other intelligence services.

He described the rescue as a “race against the clock,” comparing it to “hunting a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

Ratcliffe also said the CIA carried out a deception campaign to mislead Iranian forces searching for the downed airman, adding that U.S. intelligence indicates Iran was “embarrassed” and “humiliated” by the outcome of the mission.

Not everyone is convinced of the government’s account or the powers behind the alleged technology.

Scientific American, a popular science magazine, spoke to researchers with expertise in magnetic fields, who describe the story “as almost certainly not true,” claiming the described ability of Ghost Murmur “finds no support in decades of peer-reviewed physics.”

Chad Orzel, a professor of physics at Union College, said to detect a heartbeat, a Ghost Murmur device would have to sort through more than the Earth’s natural magnetic field, but with “the heartbeats of the sheep and dogs and jackrabbits—whatever else is running around out there,” according to Scientific American.

“Quantum atomic transitions obey classical antenna physics,” Hans G. Schantz, scientist and engineer, posted on X. “Vastly superior performance, such as that attributed to Ghost Murmur, defies the known behavior of quantum systems.”

Quantum atomic transitions obey classical antenna physics. Vastly superior performance, such as that attributed to Ghost Murmur, defies the known behavior of quantum systems. https://t.co/1U0Ephx05z https://t.co/IAqdpGaHe3

— Hans G. Schantz (@AetherCzar) April 9, 2026

“Somebody yanking a reporter’s chain,” Orzel told Scientific American. “It could be a ‘snarky, clever way to say, ‘Of course, I’m not going to tell you how we figured this out.”

The Daily Wire reached out to alleged Ghost Murmur developer Lockheed Martin, but we have received no reply as of publication.

BREAKING????: The CIA just revealed its game-changing secret weapon: “Ghost Murmur” — an AI-powered tool that can detect a human heartbeat from MILES away.

It was used for the first time in the field to locate and rescue the downed U.S. airman stranded in Iran, according to the… pic.twitter.com/OmkdFDfNSq

— Officer Lew (@officer_Lew) April 7, 2026