Lidar uncovers a lost WWII battlefield on New Georgia Island, where researchers are working to locate 23 missing American servicemen.
A research team led by Binghamton University anthropology professor Carl Lipo and geography professor Thomas Pingel deployed drone-mounted lidar to map an undisturbed World War II battlefield on New Georgia Island in the Solomon Islands. Partnering with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the project aims to locate 23 missing American servicemen left behind during the July 1943 campaign to cut Japanese supply corridors between Bairoko Harbor and the Munda airstrip
Archival Records Meet AI-Assisted Terrain Analysis
Prior to field operations, the team processed archival after-action reports, battle accounts, and hand-drawn maps through artificial intelligence to synthesize probability layers and trace daily troop maneuvers. Working alongside flight partner Kahuto Pacific and field archaeologists from the International Archaeology Research Institute, Inc., the researchers conducted 25 drone flights over a one-square-kilometer sector across Dragon’s Peninsula. Laser pulses filtered through dense jungle canopy, generating point cloud elevation models that exposed physical earthworks, including combat trails, foxholes, machine gun nests, and bomb craters that remain preserved beneath tropical vegetation.
Correcting Decades of Misread Terrain
In one instance, archival records described a landform defined by four parallel ridges, which led decades of researchers to misinterpret the defensive perimeter. The resulting bare-earth digital terrain model revealed that the area actually contains a single ridge, proving that a secondary text had conflated military defense belts with physical topography. Ground teams confirmed these findings, locating physical debris such as barbed wire barriers, Japanese supply canisters, gas masks, and ordnance.
Narrowing the Search for Missing Servicemen
Resolving the spatial structure of the four Japanese defensive tiers allows analysts to model weapon lines of sight, interlocking machine gun fire arcs, and retreat corridors. Because historical casualties occurred predominantly between the third and fourth defensive tiers during an opposed retreat under fire, calculating precise lines of sight across terrain bare-earth returns gives forensic investigators targeted geographic boundaries for field excavation.
A Growing Toolset for Conflict Archaeology
This workflow demonstrates the variety of new tools available to conflict archaeology, where historical text converges directly with active 3D capture. Operating sensors in remote, high-canopy environments often challenges passive photogrammetry, but airborne lidar point clouds deliver the spatial precision required to uncover subtle terrain modifications, from burial mounds to logistical paths.
Source: Binghamton University, September 18, 2026 — https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/6450/discovering-a-lost-wwii-battlefield-in-the-solomon-islands
Editor’s note: This is the third WWII battlefield expedition Lipo and Pingel have conducted with DPAA, following earlier lidar surveys at Guadalcanal’s Gifu strongpoint and Guam’s Bundschu Ridge. Researchers plan a follow-up expedition to New Georgia in July, timed to the battle’s anniversary, when drier conditions are expected to make travel paths and burial sites easier to identify.
