Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 130

a height no lower than 200 feet above the runway. 61 Category II and III
approaches, denoting poor visibility, require much more precise instrument
guidance, as they place the pilot closer and lower before he spots the runway,
leaving little margin for decision making. Pozesky told the subcommittee that
waas could provide Category I landing guidance at virtually all major airports
across the United States without the need to install local ground-based dgps
systems. 62 At the time officials estimated that about one hundred existing
approaches would need differential ground systems for more precise Category
II and III landings. 63 The decision to back waas also signaled a move away
from microwave landing systems, a competing technology that many Euro-
pean nations continued to pursue. 64
By mid-1994, the faa began soliciting bids for waas, anticipating that it
could begin fielding the system in mid- to late 1997 and complete it within six
years for between $400 and $500 million. 65 The design called for about two
dozen ground reference stations across the nation and a central station for
sending the signals via satellites to airplanes. Five teams, each a consortium
of companies, bid on the project, but when the time came to award the con-
tract early in 1995, the announcement was delayed; the faa had learned the
Pentagon was planning new experiments to jam the same signal it was trying
to enhance. After months of wrangling, the Transportation and Defense Depart-
ments announced they would conduct “joint testing and review of waas,” but
with the civil aviation industry unnerved by the episode, this time President
Bill Clinton himself sent a letter to the icao reaffirming the U.S. commitment
to civil use of gps. 66
Crafting a Policy Framework
It is not surprising that the study findings delivered two months later by the
National Association of Public Administration and the National Research Coun-
cil included in capital letters the plea, “the united states needs a national
strategy for gps.” 67 The napa/nrc study recommended that the president
adopt specific national goals and create an executive board to implement them.
Similarly, the rand study suggested a presidential decision directive, a type
of executive order, as the policy-making framework. The two studies' conclu-
sions and recommendations had more in common than they differed. Both
stipulated the priority of national security but saw great risks in failing to engage
international users and manufacturers. Of the top eleven companies holding
international patent rights for gps products in 1994, four were Japanese and