Defense and Counter-Terrorism

Militaries around the world now use biometrics as a way to enhance battlefield awareness and manage encounters with mala fide actors which may be hidden in civilian populations.

The U.S. military pioneered the use of biometrics in Iraq and Afghanistan, where biometric indicators such as fingerprints, irises, and facial images were collected from captured prisoners and other individuals in the field. Comparing these indicators against latent fingerprints found on explosive devices and collected through other encounters, the U.S. military was able to establish linkages with hostile activity.

Since then, the use of biometrics in military applications has expanded significantly. Biometrics are now used to identify pirates in the Indian Ocean, track terrorist travel around the world, and map the connections between criminal networks which pose a military threat.

Most common biometric modalities used in defense and counter-terrorism:

• Fingerprint
• Eye
• Face
• Voice
• Palm Behavioral Biometrics
• Multimodal Biometrics