The Korean War has been over for nearly six decades – at least according to the calendar. But for families like that of Army Cpl. A.V. Scott of Detroit, MI, wondering what happened to their POW relative has undoubtedly made the ticking of the clock since then seem endless. And the same incessant ticking of the clock could be experienced by families of today’s soldiers – if component counterfeiters continue to enter the military supply chain. However, new DNA evidence is proving itself a viable source of security in both scenarios.

DNA helps sort out past battlefield death

Part of the 503rd Field Artillery Batallion, 2nd Infantry Division, Army Cpl. A.V. Scott was delivering supplies in February 1951 to U.S. Forces 70 miles outside Seoul, South Korea when he was taken prisoner during a Chinese Communist attack. He was immediately forced into a POW camp situated in North Korea’s Suan County. Some time after the attack, fellow POWs told officials that Scott had died only two months after his capture. But was it true?

While hearsay reigns or “don’t ask, don’t tell” is the catchphrase of the day, recent DNA and other evidence on warfighter remains sent back to the U.S. from North Korea in the early 1990s was able to provide verification just this week: Scott’s remains were indeed among those sent back to the U.S. For Scott’s family, this week’s news of DNA identification undoubtedly helped end decades of unsurety and insecurity about what actually happened to Scott. Was he OK, was he still alive, what conditions was he in if he was still alive? This closure will come full circle next week as their military-honored relative is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

DNA helps preserve modern warfighters’ lives

Just as DNA was key in providing more security for Army Cpl. Scott’s family, DNA can additionally serve on the modern-day battlefield to spare warfighters’ lives at the front end. According to James A. Hayward, Ph.D., Sc.D. and Chairman, President, and CEO of Applied DNA Sciences, DNA can be used to ensure security within the DoD’s military supply chain to protect the warfighter from deadly circumstances arising from counterfeit components.

What Hayward proposes in his recent Military Embedded Systems article entitled “DNA protects electrical components against counterfeiting” is that instead of using only RFID, holograms, and optical strips – among other commonplace component-marking techniques already in the counterfeiter’s arsenal – a new method is more effective. Specifically, he asserts that the military should use DNA taggants cloned inside microorganisms including bacteria or yeast to mark the real-deal components. Applied DNA Sciences’ botanical DNA taggant technology proffers the advantages of easy integration into holograms, RFID, serial numbers, labels, or other anti-counterfeit methodologies.

And botanical DNA taggants are extremely difficult to duplicate or reverse engineer – unless you’ve got the time and resources to replicate the DNA segment several billion times. And you’d have to possess the matching DNA strands anyway… And then there’s the matter of cost. Since each taggant only needs a miniscule amount of DNA, Hayward says the cost is “relatively inexpensive when compared to other anti-counterfeiting devices … .” Not only that, the accuracy of botanical DNA taggants is pretty high: “The error frequency for false positives is less than one in a trillion,” Hayward states.

How does one go about implanting botanical DNA taggants into their military-use semiconductors, microchips, and components to ensure military supply chain integrity? You’d have to ask Applied DNA Sciences, but you can expect a few supply chain conferences, lab analyses, and unique DNA marker creations if you give them the green light. And counterfeiters beware. Applied DNA Sciences not only ensures genuine components in warfighter tech; they can also provide forensic proof against counterfeiters who have entered the supply chain, if the discoverer (or the U.S. DoD) feels they need to do the “Law & Order” thing.