WASHINGTON — The State Department is installing advanced, classified security systems in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen to monitor staff movements in those countries where moving among local populations remains dangerous, according to department budget and contract documents.
The Blue Force Tracker system uses a small transmitter mounted on a vehicle, an aircraft or a person that sends continuous signals to a Global Positioning System satellite and back to a computer in a secure command post. The command-post computer shows precise locations within a 10-foot radius of tracked people, vehicles or aircraft on ever-changing map displays.
“This critical technology provides department personnel with the confidence to travel into highly dangerous areas, knowing there is an over- watch and a reaction capability to help them at the push of a button,” according to a State Department fiscal 2012 budget document presented to Congress. About $9.4 million was being sought to support the tracking system in Iraq next year.
No State Department official would discuss the systems on the record. A department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity because security issues were involved, said last week: “The State Department uses all available options, including technology, to ensure the safety of our personnel. For reasons of operational security, we do not comment on what technologies the department employs, nor in which countries these technologies may be used.”
Four highly secure modular metal buildings are being built in Louisiana under a $23.1 million no-bid contract. When shipped to Iraq, they are to become the temporary operation centers holding Blue Force Tracker systems for two new embassy branches in Mosul and Kirkuk and two other facilities in Baghdad.
In addition, a $15 million classified facility to hold the tracking system is being assembled on the U.S. Embassy grounds in Islamabad, Pakistan. An advertisement posted in June by Olgoonik Development seeks a security specialist to work there for the Blue Force Tracker program.
Similar Olgoonik advertisements sought security specialists to work on Blue Force Tracker systems being put in Yemen and Afghanistan.
