Thousands of American soldiers are buried in Europe with no identification Traditional identification tactics included consulting dental records and bone measurements, which are increasingly seen as outdated methods The Army sometimes uses DNA of relatives to help identify an unknown soldier, but finding those relatives in the first place is challenging They are now considering taking the DNA from unknown soldiers and putting it in public databases, hoping to find relatives and narrow down an identity A similar process was used to find the Golden State Killer The budget for the current process is $150 million, with less than 200 identifications made on an annual basis