Forest Search and Rescue | Army Uses Cell Phones to Find Missing Persons

Even without a network, your cell phone could save your life if you get lost in the forest or at sea. The Canadian army has just acquired a new technology that allows it to find people more easily thanks to their wireless.

Welcome to CASSAR

Since early September, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association have both begun using a “Cellular Airborne Search and Rescue Detection System,” more commonly known as CASSAR. It essentially allows a person to be located very precisely by their mobile phone. But to do this, the phone must be turned on, sufficiently charged and not in airplane mode. Officers can then communicate with the person from the aircraft, exchanging text messages or voice messages to confirm their condition and level of distress, even if no cellular network is available.

“More precise”, faster

According to Royal Air Force Captain Zachary Hotte, this system “will mainly help identify people more quickly and more accurately.” “Canada is a big country with many different environments, but especially with a large concentration of hikers, hunters, fishermen. Sometimes, therefore, the perimeter is very large, but when you have to act to find people, you have to be as fast as possible,” he explained in an interview. For now, only a few military aircraft will have CASSAR, including the CC-130H Hercules, one of the main search and rescue vehicles in British Columbia. Two other aircraft located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Greenwood, Nova Scotia, have also recently had it.

Already used successfully

So far, the system has been “successfully used” in a few search and rescue missions, Hotte says. One took place on June 8, when a boat with five people on board was reported overdue. The military contacted the occupants through their phones to ensure their safety. A few days later, on June 15, two hunters who had left with a boat were also reported missing and contacted in the same way. An aircraft was then able to locate the missing vessels “despite weather conditions that included thick fog,” the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) report.

What’s the difference?

So far, the CAF has largely used synthetic aperture radar – in English, the synthetic aperture radar or SAR – in their search missions. It is a radar that can produce images of landscapes and territories, most often in two dimensions. However, “the search phase of SAR operations can be particularly challenging, given the size and diversity of Canada’s terrain and climatic conditions,” says Captain Meagan Duncan, in a notice posted on the Government of Canada website. Like her colleague, she believes that the new cellular technology will now save “precious time.”

Just to save lives

The Department of National Defence promises that CASSAR’s technology will be used “only for search and rescue purposes, to locate and communicate with missing and presumed distressed persons,” in other words, to save lives. “The system does not intercept any personal data and cannot retain information beyond the short-term requirements of the mission. The system does not have the capability to intercept contact lists, text messages, emails or calls from any cell phone,” federal authorities certify. Coordination will also be made with network service providers to ensure that no interference is made with local cellular networks during a military operation.