Going to War - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 110

1950s introduced satellites to a general audience by calling them artificial
moons, reporters covering Desert Storm often commingled gps with recon-
naissance, communications, and weather satellites. For example, on the Feb-
ruary 8, 1991, cbs Evening News , Bruce Hall reported on the role of spy satellites
and noted that the military had “a group of satellites” that could tell ground
troops their location on the featureless desert. An unidentified soldier he inter-
viewed remarked simply that the system worked great. 27 Some reports artfully
depicted the system's utility. In a February 25, 1991, Los Angeles Times article,
“Ground War Puts Some Exotic New Weapons Systems to Test,” staff writers
Karen Tumulty and Bob Drogin described the unnamed system as “a two-
pound, high-tech compass that gets its readings from satellites rather than
magnetic poles.” 28 A more in-depth wartime look at gps was a February 6,
1991, special to the New York Times business section, titled “Business Technol-
ogy: War Spurs Navigation by Satellite.” 29 Andrew Pollack's story fully explained
the technology, its military and emerging civilian uses, and the rise of receiver
manufacturers Trimble Navigation and Magellan Systems. Some war cover-
age billed as an examination of high-tech military systems overlooked gps
altogether. cnn's Crossfire devoted the entire program on January 25, 1991, to
the issue of whether opponents of Reagan's military buildup owed an apology
given the success of American high-tech weapons. gps was not mentioned in
a discussion that included aircraft carriers, stealth fighters, cruise missiles,
smart bombs, Patriot antiballistic missiles, the m-1 tank, and the Bradley fight-
ing vehicle. 30 A cbs News special report about fighting a high-tech ground war,
which aired February 23, 1991, mentioned multiple-launch rocket systems, the
night vision and laser-targeting capabilities of the Apache helicopter, and the
speed and accuracy of the m-1 tank, but not gps. 31
The war's end brought countless media analyses and spawned many books.
Turner Broadcasting, cnn's parent company at the time, rushed a book to
market in the summer of 1991. It of course mentions nothing about the clas-
sified calcm attack. Numerous references to “smart bombs” explain bombs
and missiles guided by lasers, tv cameras, or infrared “heat-seeking” systems.
Its index lacks the terms navstar , Global Positioning System , or gps , and none
of the three appear explicitly in the topic, although a few passages come close
to mentioning them. One illustration describing the slam states, “While the
missile is in flight, the satellite receiver/processor updates the missile's inertial
navigation system” (emphasis added). 32 In another instance the text states,
“Also overflying the Middle East were U.S. global-positioning, meteorological,