I have long advocated that our warfighters and first responders deserve the best equipment available so they can answer the basic question, “Where Am I?” quickly and with complete certainty. Or, “Where am I now and how do I get to someplace of relative safety quickly?” Unfortunately, government-furnished equipment (GFE), in this case the GPS handheld equipment we supply our warfighters, does not do a good or even adequate job of answering that question.
The aggregated DARPA Microtechnology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (micro-PNT) program is pursuing a new wave of innovation focused on bringing to life revolutionary ideas and fabrication technologies on micro/nano/pico/femto/atto scales, packaging, ultra-low-power electronics, innovative algorithms, never-before-explored architectures, and exploitation of new integration paradigms.
Operation Waypoint, a Minnesota-based, non-profit program administered by American Legion Post 621, has broadened its program from a state and regional focus to national in scope with its new website, gpsfortroops.org. Run by volunteers, the program is committed to increasing the safety of military men and women deploying to the Middle East with the guidance of highly accurate, handheld GPS units and mapping cards for Iraq and Afghanistan. Since its inception, Operation Waypoint has relied heavily on its partnership with GPS device manufacturer Lowrance to provide GPS products and charts to soldiers preparing to serve, as well as generous donations from service and social organizations and numerous individuals to fund the effort.
It is not the best of times as we have been at war for ten years without significant upgrades to the military GPS user equipment supplied to our valiant warfighters. It is not the worst of times as war inexorably draws to a close; now of course come a few military GPS upgrades for which the warfighters have been clamoring for ten years.
The first time I ever heard of the Magnavox Research Laboratory in Torrance, California, was in 1966, as a young engineer working at Hughes Aircraft. We were building large (46-foot diameter) ground stations for the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS). Magnavox was supplying the secret anti-jam modems used in the terminals.
Defense editor Don Jewell is a retired Air Force officer who served for 30 years; many of his former peers and contemporaries are currently senior officers in today’s U.S. Air Force. Don sat down recently with General C. Robert Kehler, Commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, whom he has known and worked with for more than 20 years, to discuss GPS from the four-star point of view.
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