National Space Policy: NSDD-42 (issued on July 4th, 1982)

: Does anyone remember TERCOM guidance for cruise missiles? The acronym stood
: for TERrain COMparision and tried to fit output from a mapping radar in the
: missile to a digital map, to figure out where it was. It sucked, but it was
: eventually brute-forced to work. This was because we didn't have any decent

We had very good maps of the USSR. Of course we had to make them
ourselves. TERCOM wasn't bad, andindeed some of its descendants are
still in use thuogh now they often find spots on targets and not just
valleysand roads.

regards,
---------------------------

B

: Notice that DNSS was created from Air Force and Navy programs. This
: isn't to say that the Army didn't ask for their own separate program
: like the AF 621B or Navy's Timation. But it's not hard to imagine a
: scene where the Army chief of staff approaches the SecDef...

The Army did have its "own" system into the late 60s and
early 70s, called SECOR. It was used extensively for geodetic survey
and pre0surveying launch locations for army missiles. Like its
contemporaries, it was not designed for "tactical" use like GPS.
One thing to keep in mind about GPS is that it has worked so much better
than most hoped for. With continuing advances in electronics manufacture
and computers it has become possilbe to makerelatively cheap/reliable
units for the smallest echelons. Originally there were doubts as to how
practical it would be for aircraft, for example. Its tunred out to be
a wonder. I
There was a re-organization in the 60s that rationalized a lot of
the space projects, expecially as there was increasing overlap between
"black" NRO systems and 'mundane' DoD efforts. The Navy was put in charge of
timekeeping and precision time interval technology, more or less, and
GPS ended up being one facet of that. It was a traditional mission, the Navy
had been keeping time since noon "dropping the ball" in DC in the 1850s.
Just a tad bit more acccurate these days. :-)

regards,
---------------------------

(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:
From Scott Kozel:

The Soviets also considered ICBMs to be long-range artillery.

Accurate ICBMs and SLBMs existed by the thousands, on both sides of the
Iron Curtain, long before GPS ever existed.

I don't see how those facts refute anything I've stated.

GPS is not "offensive space-based weaponry", and for you to assert that
it is, shows you have an agenda to post disinformation about the topic.

If you're concerned with disinformation, you might want to be more
careful about the words you choose to put quotes around, because that
isn't what I said.

What I put in quotes, is a paraphrase of what you were asserting.

And if you don't see how GPS was funded for its offensive capability,
I suggest that you review the plethora of information in the links
provided in this thread alone.

Given that you have not posted one single jot about the USSR's offensive
ballistic missile systems that the U.S. was trying to defend against
during the Cold War, nor about the USSR's "hunter killer" sattelites
which actually -were- an offensive spaced-based weapon, I have to
question everything that you have posted and wonder why you are digging
down so deep to construct your anti-U.S. rants, and complaining about a
communication system.

Do you think that the military developed GPS for *defense*? They are
in the business of killing people. They use technology to kill people
more efficiently. The justification for funding multiples of billions
of dollars for GPS fits right in with that.

GPS is incapable of killing a single person.

GPS was not funded so that you can have a moving map in your car for
your daily commute to work.

"Originally designated the NAVSTAR (Navigation System with Timing And
Ranging) Global Positioning System, GPS was developed by the US
Department of Defense to provide all-weather round-the-clock navigation
capabilities for military ground, sea, and air forces. Since its
implementation, GPS has also become an integral asset in numerous
civilian applications and industries around the globe, including
recreational uses (e.g. boating, aircraft, hiking), corporate vehicle
fleet tracking, and surveying".

http://leonardo.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/Programs/gps.html

From Steven James Forsberg:
: Notice that DNSS was created from Air Force and Navy programs. This
: isn't to say that the Army didn't ask for their own separate program
: like the AF 621B or Navy's Timation. But it's not hard to imagine a
: scene where the Army chief of staff approaches the SecDef...

The Army did have its "own" system into the late 60s and
early 70s, called SECOR.

I wasn't saying that the Army didn't have any sat-nav system. My
comment was regarding *quality*. High performance nav systems require
high dollar investment in research.

A general statement about funding during the Cold War is that the Air
Force and Navy got the lion's share.

The Triad was...

2 x AF,
1 x Navy,
0 x Army.


It was used extensively for geodetic survey
and pre0surveying launch locations for army missiles. Like its
contemporaries, it was not designed for "tactical" use like GPS.
One thing to keep in mind about GPS is that it has worked so much better
than most hoped for. With continuing advances in electronics manufacture
and computers it has become possilbe to makerelatively cheap/reliable
units for the smallest echelons. Originally there were doubts as to how
practical it would be for aircraft, for example. Its tunred out to be
a wonder. I

Here's where that hypothetical scene comes in...

We can guess that the Army wanted a system with performance specs
along the lines of 621B/Timation, but research for this would require
big bucks. Someone at OSD had to prioritize which services would get
how much. And this required a judgement of projected return on each
dollar of investment. With the Army having little control over nukes,
they get little priority for funding.

(This happened with *lots* more programs beside sat-nav.)

There was a re-organization in the 60s that rationalized a lot of
the space projects, expecially as there was increasing overlap between
"black" NRO systems and 'mundane' DoD efforts. The Navy was put in charge of
timekeeping and precision time interval technology, more or less, and
GPS ended up being one facet of that. It was a traditional mission, the Navy
had been keeping time since noon "dropping the ball" in DC in the 1850s.
Just a tad bit more acccurate these days. :-)

No doubt about the accuracy of atomic clocks compared to sundials!

But as far as how long the US Navy has been keeping time, I'd go back
a lot earlier than the 1850s. And if you meant to say how long the
_USNO_ has been keeping time, their official site states that their
time-ball in DC started in 1845 (ref-
http://www.usno.navy.mil/command_history.html).

Well before the US Navy had a USNO, they kept time and communicated
it. There's a long history of time being critical to ship navigation.
While latitude can be directly measured, longitude measurements are a
function of time. This is a necessary result of Earth rotation
symmetry.

While time-balls provided a visual synchronization for clocks, the
older "technology" of bells communicated an aural synchronization.
The word 'clock' came from the word that meant 'bell'. While the very
word 'navigate' came from the same origin as the word 'Navy'. The
Latin 'navis' simply means 'ship'.

I'd say that the US Navy has been keeping time since the very first
day of the US Navy.

And the amazing story of pre-US Navy ship timekeeping focuses on that
famous pre-Beatle Brit by the name of John Harrison. His chronometers
were as big a revolution for navigation in the 1700s as GPS is for us
today.


(...although his 'Pi'-based musical scale theory has been slow in
catching on!
http://www.lucytune.com/academic/manuscript_search.html)


~ CT

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:
From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:
From Scott Kozel:
The Soviets also considered ICBMs to be long-range artillery.

Accurate ICBMs and SLBMs existed by the thousands, on both sides of the
Iron Curtain, long before GPS ever existed.

I don't see how those facts refute anything I've stated.

GPS is not "offensive space-based weaponry", and for you to assert that
it is, shows you have an agenda to post disinformation about the topic.

If you're concerned with disinformation, you might want to be more
careful about the words you choose to put quotes around, because that
isn't what I said.

What I put in quotes, is a paraphrase of what you were asserting.

Your paraphrase completely altered the meaning of what I said.

And if you don't see how GPS was funded for its offensive capability,
I suggest that you review the plethora of information in the links
provided in this thread alone.

Given that you have not posted one single jot about the USSR's offensive
ballistic missile systems that the U.S. was trying to defend against
during the Cold War, nor about the USSR's "hunter killer" sattelites
which actually -were- an offensive spaced-based weapon, I have to
question everything that you have posted and wonder why you are digging
down so deep to construct your anti-U.S. rants, and complaining about a
communication system.

Please check what you've just said with the following:

- GPS is not a communication system.

- The US gave up on trying to _defend against_ Soviet ICBMs.

- I'm well aware of Soviet offensive weapons (to include space station
armament).

- Criticism of the US government does not necessarily make someone
"anti-U.S."

Do you think that the military developed GPS for *defense*? They are
in the business of killing people. They use technology to kill people
more efficiently. The justification for funding multiples of billions
of dollars for GPS fits right in with that.

GPS is incapable of killing a single person.

We are agreed that GPS is not a weapon.

GPS was not funded so that you can have a moving map in your car for
your daily commute to work.

"Originally designated the NAVSTAR (Navigation System with Timing And
Ranging) Global Positioning System, GPS was developed by the US
Department of Defense to provide all-weather round-the-clock navigation
capabilities for military ground, sea, and air forces. Since its
implementation, GPS has also become an integral asset in numerous
civilian applications and industries around the globe, including
recreational uses (e.g. boating, aircraft, hiking), corporate vehicle
fleet tracking, and surveying".

http://leonardo.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/Programs/gps.html

That is consistent with everything I have been saying. It was
developed to provide military capability. Today we use it for
boating, hiking, OnStar and such.



One point you might want to check against here is the meaning of the
acronym NavSTAR. This is from the official source (it doesn't get any
more official than the NavSTAR GPS JPO):

NavSTAR - Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging

(https://gps.losangeles.af.mil/gpslibrary/Acronyms.asp#n)


~ CT

From Scott Kozel:
Sander Vesik wrote:

Scott M. Kozel wrote:
Sander Vesik wrote:
Scott M. Kozel wrote:

GPS is not "offensive space-based weaponry", and for you to assert that
it is, shows you have an agenda to post disinformation about the topic.

Fine. And I doubt many people would argue against that. But surely you
don't want to claim that specificly military tailored and military
controlled navigation satellites used in weapons targeting are part
not of space militarisation?

I just got done refuting that notion. GPS has many civil uses, and is
no more "space militarisation" than is things like computers,
calculators, and microelectronics that makes modern satellites feasible,
plus weather satellites and other communication satellites.

This is simply nonsense. When was the last time you saw a receiver on
sale that could actually make use of all GPS? GPS is not in any way
comparable to computers or modern electronics. It is not even designed
for civilian use, you may as well claim military cargo planes are not
military aircraft at all.

You're the one who is posting nonsense. Obviously you've never seen the
commercially available receivers that instantly provide the exact
coordinates of a location to within a few feet. That has valuable civil
navigational uses.

I totally agree that GPS has many civil uses. You can say the same
thing about the internet. But that does nothing to change the history
of the origins of either system stemming from nuclear warfare.

Here is a fact that:

"it is commonly known that civil users outnumber military users by 100
to 1 and the ratio is increasing".

Along with internet use, the civil/military user ratio for interstate
highways is way up there too. But the fact remains that the funding
for many infrastrucure elements that we take for granted today came as
a direct result of nuclear warfare strategy.

Accurate ICBMs and SLBMs existed by the thousands, on both sides of the
Iron Curtain, decades before GPS ever existed.

Which is utterly irrelevant to whetever GPS is space militarisation
or not.

It is totally relevant, since those ICBMs and SLBMs can be (and were)
very accurate without GPS.

Inertial navigation systems are (and were) notoriously lacking in
reliability. This translates to a lack of reliable accuracy in the
nuclear triad (bombers being far more susceptible than ICBMs to INS
inaccuracies since acceleration errors build over time). And this
translates to a decrease in deterrent effect.

GPS was essentially funded as a force multiplier that helped tip the
balance of power in the favor of the US.

You're just looking for any far-fetched excuse possible to attack the
U.S.

I don't speak for Sander, but I hope you don't see my efforts as an
_attack_ against the US. As I've stated elsewhere, offering criticism
toward the US does not necessarily make someone anti-US.

Every country has its faults. Patriotic nationalism can have a
negative effect of *hiding* those faults (note that Nazi is a
contraction of a German word for nationalist).

My definition of patriot includes working to identify and fix critical
faults.


~ CT

(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:
From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:
From Scott Kozel:
The Soviets also considered ICBMs to be long-range artillery.

Accurate ICBMs and SLBMs existed by the thousands, on both sides of the
Iron Curtain, long before GPS ever existed.

I don't see how those facts refute anything I've stated.

GPS is not "offensive space-based weaponry", and for you to assert that
it is, shows you have an agenda to post disinformation about the topic.

If you're concerned with disinformation, you might want to be more
careful about the words you choose to put quotes around, because that
isn't what I said.

What I put in quotes, is a paraphrase of what you were asserting.

Your paraphrase completely altered the meaning of what I said.

And if you don't see how GPS was funded for its offensive capability,
I suggest that you review the plethora of information in the links
provided in this thread alone.

Given that you have not posted one single jot about the USSR's offensive
ballistic missile systems that the U.S. was trying to defend against
during the Cold War, nor about the USSR's "hunter killer" sattelites
which actually -were- an offensive spaced-based weapon, I have to
question everything that you have posted and wonder why you are digging
down so deep to construct your anti-U.S. rants, and complaining about a
communication system.

Please check what you've just said with the following:

- GPS is not a communication system.

It functions fundamentally by receiving and transmitting radio waves,
and that makes it a communication system.

- The US gave up on trying to _defend against_ Soviet ICBMs.

The technology to directly do that didn't exist when GPS started in
1978, so the U.S.'s prime defense against Soviet ICBMs/SLBMs was to have
a survivable second-strike capability, so that the Soviets would know
that they couldn't launch a first strike that would prevent devastating
retaliation from the U.S.

- I'm well aware of Soviet offensive weapons (to include space station
armament).

It's nice that you finally acknowledged that.

GPS is incapable of killing a single person.

Or damaging other satellites.

We are agreed that GPS is not a weapon.

GPS is not a weapon, and it is not an "offensive" system either, since
it is unlikely to have been built with military functions, if not for
the decades-long threat of conquest of the U.S. by the USSR; so
conceptually any military function of GPS was -defensive- in nature.
For that matter, the U.S. is unlikely to have deployed ICBMs and SLBMs
if not for the fact that the USSR was doing so and aiming them at the
U.S. and NATO.

(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Obviously you've never seen the
commercially available receivers that instantly provide the exact
coordinates of a location to within a few feet. That has valuable civil
navigational uses.

I totally agree that GPS has many civil uses. You can say the same
thing about the internet. But that does nothing to change the history
of the origins of either system stemming from nuclear warfare.

The initial projected uses of them were far more diverse than things
related to nuclear warfare.

Here is a fact that:

"it is commonly known that civil users outnumber military users by 100
to 1 and the ratio is increasing".

Along with internet use, the civil/military user ratio for interstate
highways is way up there too. But the fact remains that the funding
for many infrastrucure elements that we take for granted today came as
a direct result of nuclear warfare strategy.

You've mentioned Interstate highways several times now, and highway
administration happens to have been my profession for 30 years, so let's
set the record straight with respect to Interstate highways. The
Interstate highway system was first approved in plan in 1943 (before
nuclear weapons existed), and in actual construction beginning in 1956,
and the federal funding mechanism was 90% federal funds from the Highway
Trust Fund which was stocked with the receipts of direct road user tax
revenues.

The Interstate highway system never got funding from the U.S. Defense
Department, and the prime impetus for beginning the system was to
provide more capacity for the burgeoning civilian traffic in the nation,
and the "and defense" in the system name "National System of Interstate
and Defense Highways" was tacked on by politicians who wanted to add
weight to getting the 1956 Highway Act passed; but the IHS always was
intended primarily for handling civilian traffic.

About 3,000 miles of state-built (with no federal funds) turnpikes
predated the Interstate highway system, and they were built for the same
basic reasons as the Interstates, to the same basic superhighway design
standards, so the concept and need for such superhighways was well
established before the Interstate highway system was started; in
fact, much of that turnpike mileage was later incorporated into the
Interstate highway system, route-wise.

This aside on highways is instructive, because it highlights how
misconceptions can arise about the origins of things.

It is totally relevant, since those ICBMs and SLBMs can be (and were)
very accurate without GPS.

Inertial navigation systems are (and were) notoriously lacking in
reliability. This translates to a lack of reliable accuracy in the
nuclear triad (bombers being far more susceptible than ICBMs to INS
inaccuracies since acceleration errors build over time). And this
translates to a decrease in deterrent effect.

Still, GPS did not provide any new unique capability, and all 3 legs of
the U.S. nuclear triad were quite accurate in their own right prior to
GPS.

GPS was essentially funded as a force multiplier that helped tip the
balance of power in the favor of the US.

That claim could be made about many things, such as better computers,
better radios, more education for military personnel, better C-rations
for soldiers, etc., etc.

--
Scott M. Kozel Highway and Transportation History Websites
Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. http://www.roadstothefuture.com
Philadelphia and Delaware Valley http://www.pennways.com

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote in message
...

That claim could be made about many things, such as better computers,
better radios, more education for military personnel, better C-rations
for soldiers, etc., etc.

.... The Soviets' winter boots. There's a good force multiplier right there

"Neil Gerace" wrote:

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

That claim could be made about many things, such as better computers,
better radios, more education for military personnel, better C-rations
for soldiers, etc., etc.

... The Soviets' winter boots. There's a good force multiplier right there


Their vodka is a good force multiplier, also! :-]