Going Public - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 89

funded relied primarily on selling its ability to “drop five bombs in the same
hole,” a slogan that Parkinson, the first joint program manager, posted in his
office.23 23 Precision bombing capability was much on the minds of military lead-
ers at the time, given their experience in the Vietnam War, when the United
States conducted the most massive aerial bombardment in history. By weight,
the bomb tonnage dropped in Indochina was three times as much as that used
in the combined Pacific and European theaters of World War II and fifteen
times the amount dropped in the Korean War. 24 Fewer bombs delivered more
accurately held the promise of lower costs, fewer targeting errors, and reduced
casualties among pilots and noncombatants.
Civil aviation remained on the sidelines during the gps validation phase,
which lasted five years. John McLucas, secretary of the Air Force when the gps
program began, left that post in 1975 to head the Federal Aviation Administra-
tion (faa) for two years. Despite being such a strong proponent of the system
that he ordered a vanity license plate that read “gps now,” he later admitted,
“I could not get the faa interested in gps.” 25
The program faced continuing financial pressures as oil shocks, runaway
inflation, and soaring interest rates pummeled the economy for the remainder
of the decade. At the beginning of 1973, crude oil was around four dollars per
barrel, the annual inflation rate was just over 3 percent, and the U.S. prime
lending rate was 9.75 percent. 26 By December 1973, when the Defense Systems
Acquisition Review Council approved gps, the nation was two months into the
Arab oil embargo, which lasted more than six months. Oil prices tripled, rising
to twelve dollars per barrel, and 1973 ended with an annual inflation rate of 8.7
percent. The energy crisis was so severe that the White House Christmas tree
remained unlit that year. If the gps apps that people take for granted today had
been available then, motorists would have been using them to search for the
gas stations with the shortest lines or in many cases the ones that had any fuel
at all to sell. Inflation reached 12.3 percent the following year before settling
back into a 4-6 percent range that lasted until a second oil shock in 1979, fol-
lowing the Iranian Revolution. Crude oil then rose to twenty dollars per barrel
on its way to a 1981 peak near thirty-ive dollars, and inflation climbed to around
13 percent. By December 1980, the prime rate had soared to a record high of
21.5 percent.
In this tenuous budget environment, the gps program gestated fitfully and
nearly miscarried. As a support system rather than a weapons system, it lacked
dependable support from one or more service branches— even from the Air