When a terrorist smuggled a bomb into a dining hall during lunchtime at a U.S. base in Mosul last December, killing 22 people and wounding 50, it became clear that security at U.S. bases in Iraq is not what it should be.

In January, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called for a new biometric-based identification system to better defend soldiers from terrorist fifth columns inside U.S. bases. It’s a $75-million effort that offers a ripe opportunity to companies working on bio-metric technology.

One such company, Ideal Innovations in Arlington, Virginia, just snagged an $8.2-million U.S. Army contract to provide biometric ID cards to soldiers and Iraqi employees on U.S. bases.

Ideal Innovations is a six-year-old company specializing in biometric technology. It expects revenues of about $12 million in 2005.

The need for sophisticated ID cards that contain biographical data, fingerprint and iris scans, as well as the machines needed to read the cards, will likely only grow in coming years.

The U.S. military is shuttering foreign bases in places like Germany and opening new ones in far less stable environments.

Recent political unrest in Uzbekistan, where the U.S. maintains four military facilities, underscores the demand for improved security on forward U.S. bases supporting the country’s so-called war on terror.

Technology Gantlet

In mid-May, the U.S. Army demonstrated a new system that will require employees at U.S. bases in Iraq to pass through a gantlet of checkpoints. The Army says it hopes to have the system in place as soon as possible.

Still, as recently reported failures with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT “virtual border” program demonstrate, technology alone can’t stop malicious infiltration across guarded borders.

“If they think they are going to throw biometrics out to Iraq, and that is going to solve all their problems, they are wrong,” says Maxine Most, president of Acuity Market Intelligence in Boulder, Colorado, who writes frequently on the emerging biometrics market.

Acuity Market Intelligence estimates the worldwide market for core biometric technology, in the private sector as well as the public, will quadruple to $4.4 billion in 2010 from $1.1 billion in 2006.

Ms. Most said biometrics is an ideal technology for determining that someone is who they say they are. It still can’t tell “the good guys from the bad guys.” For that, the Pentagon would do better to focus on gathering human intelligence with thorough background checks.