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What did the rest of the world think of GPS when it first came out? Was it a shock to the USSR that we gained those capabilities?
by oh_sigh 7y ago
What did the rest of the world think of GPS when it first came out? Was it a shock to the USSR that we gained those capabilities?
- chiph 7y agoIt came as an unpleasant shock to Saddam's Iraq, because it allowed US armored forces to navigate accurately through the desert and drive him out of Kuwait. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gps-and-the-world-s-first-space-war/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gps-and-the-world... The NAVSTAR GPS constellation was incomplete at the time, so accurate positioning was only available for 19 hours a day. There weren't enough mil-spec receivers to go around, so some units relied on commercial receivers that parents had bought their sons and mailed them to them.
- coin 7y agoRumor has it that the Air Force temporally turned off SA so that civilian GPS receivers used by US military forces could get high accuracy positions.
- colechristensen 7y agoSA (Selelective Availability) was disabled in 2000 by an act of Congress and according to gps.gov >The United States has no intent to ever use Selective Availability again. I wouldn't be surprised if SA was turned off during that war.
- beerandt 7y agoThey didn't "turn it off" as much as set it very very low, maybe even to 0. But even then, military grade receivers still enjoyed 1-2 magnitudes of improved accuracy. Clinton turned it off after surveyors figured out differential GPS, which essentially made it obsolete.
- chiph 7y agoI was out of the USAF by this time, so I have no direct knowledge. But I imagine they did a risk assessment over the possibility of the Iraqi forces gaining access to GPS, either because they bought commercial receivers, developed their own, or got loaned some from more-capable country who would have liked to have seen the US + coalition fail.