Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 125

tension for civilian users, both domestic and abroad. Some thought the gov-
ernment should privatize it partially or completely. Others envisioned over-
sight by a multinational civilian agency akin to the International Civil Aviation
Organization (icao). 21 Solving these issues was difficult because they crossed
not only borders but also traditional bureaucratic boundaries, and there was
no mechanism for sharing information and responsibilities across the differ-
ent missions of the Departments of Defense, Commerce, and Transportation,
a problem often described as “stove-piping.” 22
One lesson the Gulf War taught about satellite systems was that “everyone
will want them,” Martin C. Faga, an assistant secretary of the Air Force, told
a U.S. Space Foundation symposium in April 1991. 23 Already the Soviet Union
had launched much of its similar glonass constellation (now a Russian sys-
tem, following the Soviet breakup in December 1991). The European Union
(eu), dependent on two defense-run systems, began to contemplate building
its own system. Before the end of the decade, in May 1999, the eu authorized
the first funds for its commercially oriented Galileo system, described initially
as a twenty-one-satellite constellation similar to gps. 24 Therefore, concerns
in the early 1990s about how the United States should manage cooperation
and competition with other global navigation satellite systems were quite valid.
From an economic standpoint, many feared that the policy of degrading the
civilian signal and the military's ability to shut down gps service at its discre-
tion would suppress private investments in research, development, and man-
ufacture of commercial products or consumers' willingness to buy and integrate
those products into their business or personal activities. Domestic commercial
gps sales were $213 million in 1991, and the U.S. gps Industry Council pro-
jected a 62 percent rise by 1996. 25 Farmers had already begun experimenting
with gps to spread expensive fertilizers more accurately, boosting yields while
reducing costs. 26 The Department of Transportation estimated that traffic con-
gestion caused $73 billion in lost productivity each year, highlighting the early
opportunities that many companies saw in the automobile navigation mar-
ket. 27 From tracking endangered species to fleets of rental cars and delivery
trucks, gps empowered a surge in geographic information systems (gis), a
$1.41 billion worldwide market in 1990 that the market research firm Data-
quest projected would double by 1994. 28 Some companies with large commu-
nications infrastructures were already adopting gps timing to synchronize
their data networks, but Atlanta-based Southern Company, a power and elec-
tric utility operator, specifically cited the military's ability to degrade the sig-