No wonder we are headed where we are.

[Abraham]

Government planted microchips in anyone's body is a very, very bad idea...

[joe817]

Government planted microchips in anyone's body is a very, very bad idea...

Absolutely! many times over. That has totalitarian state & control written all over it!

[ShootDontTalk]

Government planted microchips in anyone's body is a very, very bad idea...

The military already has such a system called Blue Force Tracker. It doesn't provide individual soldier data, but close enough.

[The Annoyed Man]

Baldeagle, Not sure if your comment is serious or in jest. The type of chip this guy implanted doesn't have anywhere near the capabilities or range to accomplish what you suggest. NYC transponders only work within very close range, usually inched.

And military aircraft already have IFF transponders. Sometimes they don't work or a particular aircraft doesn't get the proper code installed.

Yes, my comment was serious, but I was not referring to the chip the boy put in his hand. It would have to have a lot more capability than that.

IFF only identifies friendly equipment. I'm talking about the capability, for example, to identify a six man team on a recon mission and know where they are at all times. To detect their movements and identify by heat signatured both them and any enemy in the area by the lack of a responding biochip matching a heat signature.

It would be nice to have that capability. I'm also sure you already know, but IFF stands for Identification Friend or Foe. True, it really only positively identifies friends and does so with a foe by not responding with the correct code. The same would happen with these microchips unless our foes were also implanted and we had those codes.

As for a recon mission, that too would be nice for recovery or rescue, but otherwise I think they, like submarines, prefer to remain undetectable as much as possible.

Back on topic. I've thought something like this would be great for children that could be removed when they are 18 if they choose to do so.

Implants represent a security risk for infantry. Every single unrecovered body would mean an implant fallen into enemy hands, to be potentially re-implanted in one of their guys. If you lose an externally worn piece of IFF equipment, it would be fairly easy to send a signal to the device to wipe it clean if it fell into enemy hands. I did this with my missing iPad the other day (which fortunately for me, an honest man found it in an alley and returned it to me). But unless a man's comrades witness his being vaporized by an explosion so there's nothing to recover, or he is killed and his body recovered by friendly forces, there is no way to know for certain if he is merely MIA and still alive, or if his body and implant have been recovered by the enemy. Once it got out that our guys had implanted ID chips, those chips could become a "battlefield pickup" asset for an enemy.

For those reasons, I think that an externally worn device is a better choice......whether that is some kind of molle gear, or worn on a wrist, or velcroed to a uniform, or whatever. If each IFF item has a unique serial# which is paired to an individual soldier's ID#, and that soldier reports his gear missing, it is easy enough to send a signal to the device disabling it. If it is later recovered, it can be reprogrammed and put back into circulation.