There have been dozens of similar frauds since, where the snake-oil-salesmen just dress up a dowsing-rod with blinking lights.
Remember, Tom Clancy was a fiction writer in the same vein as Dan Brown novels or CSI TV shows. His main nod to realism was in realms like military jargon or describing the correct fire-selector for a given model of gun.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/24/local/me-26013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker
There have been dozens of similar frauds since, where the snake-oil-salesmen just dress up a dowsing-rod with blinking lights.
Remember, Tom Clancy was a fiction writer in the same vein as Dan Brown novels or CSI TV shows. His main nod to realism was in realms like military jargon or describing the correct fire-selector for a given model of gun.