Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 121

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Going Mainstream
a consumer industry is Born

Time is the greatest innovator.

Francis Bacon, “Of Innovations,” The Essays , 1625

Hearing no more gunshots, voices, or footsteps for about an hour, Capt. Scott
O'Grady decided to risk calling for help on his survival radio. 1 He had spent
most of the past three hours lying motionless, facedown in the dirt, with his
gloved hands covering the exposed sides of his face and ears. The events that
landed him in the Bosnian underbrush, hiding like a hunted rabbit, replayed
in his mind, interspersed with reminiscences from his youth, lessons from his
Air Force training, and scenarios for his survival. One moment he was cruis-
ing at twenty-six thousand feet, the next he was riding a fireball as his cockpit
disintegrated around him. Four seconds after his f-16 fighter's alarm system
warned that targeting radar had locked onto him, a Serbian sa- 6 surface- to-
air missile slammed the plane's belly, slicing the aircraft in two. He recalled
spotting the yellow ejector-seat handle and tugging it, thrusting himself into
the clouds and away from the burning debris that was traveling 350 mph. His
long descent by parachute, observed by Serbian soldiers, left him only minutes