Going to War - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 118

b-52 bombers using gps saw their gravity bombs fall consistently four hundred
to six hundred feet short of their targets before figuring out that their inertial
navigation systems were set to wgs-72, the older system from 1972. 69
To solve the map problem, the Defense Department contracted with two
private companies, American-owned Earth Observation Satellite (eosat) and
spot Image, a French firm, to downlink wide-area digital satellite images to
receiving stations in Saudi Arabia. This arrangement enabled military map-
makers to create updated maps of the swath of land under a satellite pass within
a matter of hours and distribute paper copies to troops in the field. These sat-
ellite images were not simply high-powered photographs made from space.
They were multispectral images, derived from sensors capable of measuring
wavelengths not visible to the eye. Multispectral imaging can detect heat and
moisture, revealing water depth along coastlines, heated structures beneath
vegetation, and tracks where equipment has traveled over the ground. 70 eosat's
two Landsat satellites carried onboard gps receivers, yielding precisely known
orbits and thus images with highly accurate coordinates ready-made for use
with gps receivers. 71 In the hunt for Iraqi scud mobile missile launchers, recon-
naissance teams combined these assets with sensor data from three U.S. spy
satellites of the Defense Support Program (dsp). The Pentagon began devel-
oping dsp satellites in the late 1960s to detect ballistic missile launches, pri-
marily Soviet icbms. Desert Storm constituted the first “real-world” test of the
system, and although it was developed as a strategic asset, military analysts
praised its value for tactical battlefield use. 72 This use of satellite technology
and digital image processing to provide real-time space surveillance of enemy
movements was a technological milestone of the war. Together with gps nav-
igation, the overwhelming use of satellites led military leaders to proclaim the
Persian Gulf War “the first space war.” 73
In a notable historical coincidence, Saddam Hussein launched his invasion
of Kuwait on the same day, August 2, 1990, that the Air Force launched a gps
satellite into orbit. The Air Force launched two more satellites over the next
three months, one on October 2 and another on November 26, bringing the
constellation size to sixteen—still five short of the minimum required for con-
tinuous, worldwide three-dimensional coverage. Although some accounts erro-
neously describe these satellites as hurried into orbit to prepare for battle, the
launches went up according to a schedule established well before the inva-
sion. 74 Neither the Air Force nor its suppliers could accelerate the launch pro-
gram, given its complexity. 75 However, the military took several steps to