Going Public - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 92

a dozen Vela satellites, but the satellite's design life span was just eighteen
months, so the need for frequent replacement was great. (Although one satel-
lite operated for fourteen years.)
Soon after the gps program began, military officials investigated the possi-
bility of “piggybacking” nuclear detonation sensors aboard gps satellites. In
tests conducted in 1978 and made public in 1982, satellite contractor Rockwell
International studied whether it could add ionds sensors to gps without neg-
atively affecting the primary navigation mission. Rockwell concluded that gps
was an “ideal host” for nuclear detonation surveillance. 39 Worldwide cover-
age and the ability to pinpoint the location and altitude of a nuclear burst made
gps ideally suited for the job. Spreading the sensors across eighteen satellites
(the planned constellation in 1981) made them more likely to survive any Soviet
antisatellite attack, a Congressional Budget Office (cbo) report noted. 40 The
cbo report further stated that in a nuclear war ionds could tell U.S. command-
ers which areas of the United States had escaped destruction, helping to coor-
dinate recovery efforts, as well as identify Soviet targets that had escaped an
initial retaliatory strike, aiding decisions about subsequent strikes. It is not
difficult, given the mindset of the Cold War, to conclude that for some officials
these capabilities outweighed gps's still-unrealized navigational potential.
The cbo report, citing national security reasons, withheld budget figures for
ionds. However, the Department of Defense's annual report for fiscal year
1981 openly listed projected costs of $40.5 million for ionds development in
fiscal years 1979 through 1982. 41 navstar 6, launched April 26, 1980, carried
the first ionds sensors, and after successful testing, every subsequent gps sat-
ellite has carried nuclear detonation sensors.
Escalating costs for the gps program continued to be a concern, as a gao
report issued in February 1980 demonstrates. It offered a new estimate of $8.6
billion in total program costs through the year 2000, offset by no more than
$1.2 billion in savings identified from the phaseout of other defense systems.
On the other hand, the report stated, “We believe that force-efectiveness
studies have demonstrated that navstar could improve the effectiveness of
some military missions.” 42 Beyond reducing the number of aircraft needed to
achieve a particular objective and delivering munitions more precisely, the
report listed en-route navigation, search-and-rescue operations, and mine-
sweeping. The report also noted that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defense
Mapping Agency had committed to purchase 14,828 receivers over sixteen
years, starting in 1984. If these projections for program cost and number of