gps at war

GPS at War: A Ten-Year Retrospective

James M. Hasik, IBM Global Services Michael Russell Rip, Ph.D., Michigan State University

James Hasik holds an MBA (Finance & Business Economics) from the University of Chicago and a BA (History & Physics) from Duke University. His research interests and experience span military and commercial policy, management, and technology. He is a former US Navy officer.

Michael Russell Rip holds appointments in James Madison College and the Department of Epidemiology, College of Human Medicine, at Michigan State University (MSU). He holds B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. (Community Health) degrees from the University of Cape Town, and a Ph.D. (Epidemiology) from MSU. His research interests include the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the international security dimensions of GPS.

ABSTRACT Since its large-scale debut in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, GPS has grown over the past ten years to support nearly every aspect of US warfighting. No significant military operation is conducted without it, and no substantial system is built without it. This profound investment has occurred because GPS has enabled the lethal combination of precision strike with standoff range, adverse weather performance, and operational flexibility – all at a low marginal cost. In operations such as Desert Storm, Deliberate Force, and Allied Force, GPS and synergistic systems have enabled US and Allied forces to dominate their opponents in ways that were inconceivable in the 1980s. However, operations such as Desert Fox and Infinite Reach have shown that GPS is not a political silver bullet. Paradoxically, the tactical dominance afforded by GPS-equipped systems seduced American political leaders in the 1990s into a series of questionable, though seemingly riskless, standoff strikes. Despite the ubiquity of GPS, fratricide and collateral damage still plague military efforts (albeit at a reduced level). Thus, the allure of bloodless warfare and the reality of maddeningly persistent losses may have combined to condemn such campaigns to a cycle of undeliverable surgical promises. At the same time, potential enemies may not remain idle. The immense capability of GPS – shown on television for the world to see – has induced military powers around the globe to adopt it for their new systems as well, and to find ways of combating it. The low marginal cost of this investment may affect a relative shift in the balance of power away from progenitors of GPS. Countries with hitherto little hope of challenging NATO may now find their asymmetric strategies bolstered by the unforeseen secondary effects of widespread GPS adoption.

GPS at War: A Ten-year Retrospective

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THE NEW BINDINGS OF WAR

The weapons of choice during the air campaign over Kosovo were the precision, GPS-aided weapons… in the next conflict you will see 100 percent utilization of these weapons. [1]

General Lester Lyles USAF Vice Chief of Staff

Military use of GPS has come a long way in the past ten years. Virtually every aircraft and missile flying over Yugoslavia during NATO’s 1999 campaign was equipped with GPS navigation, and much of their dramatic capabilities derived from it. It is doubtful that any technology since nuclear weaponry has had such a dramatic influence on military strategy. Today, GPS is the glue that binds together modern military operations, and its promise and pitfalls sit at the core of the question of military transformation. This is true because GPS’ lethal combination of inexpensive precision, standoff range, adverse weather performance, and operational flexibility has prompted military forces the world over to adopt it with blinding speed.

Airman 1st Class Jason Fifield of the 393rd Bomb Squadron readies 2000-lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) for a B-2 bomber flight to Kosovo. Note the GPS antenna at base of each bomb. For many US servicemen, the introduction of precision stand-off weapons has changed warfare into a clinical affair conducted from the comfort of, say, Knob Knoster, Missouri.

USAF photo by Senior Airman Jessica Kochman.

Inexpensive Precision

THE MISSION OF THIS PROGRAM IS TO: 1. DROP 5 BOMBS IN THE SAME HOLE AND 2. BUILD A CHEAP SET THAT NAVIGATES

(<$10,000) [2]

Col. Bradford Parkinson, USAF First Director, GPS Joint Program Office (JPO)

Precision alone is perhaps the least astounding attribute of GPS. After all, laser guidance has provided pinpoint

accuracy since the 1970s, and as far back as the 1940s, the Luftwaffe and the US Army Air Forces had radio command link weapons. [3] What distinguishes GPS as a system is the tremendous decrease in cost required to achieve that precision. For a trivial price, GPS has made weapons truly autonomous – a feature that had not been achieved in any precision weapon short of a million dollar Tomahawk cruise missile – and has distributed this autonomy to a potentially unlimited number of users. To date, the most dramatic example of the value of this distributed precision has arguably been the famous ‘Left Hook’ of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Until this time, deep desert operations were considered too difficult to affect en masse. For example, T. E. Lawrence captured Aqaba in 1915 with a small force, but the general Anglo-Indian advance into Kuwait and Iraq in 1917 followed the Gulf coast and the Tigris -Euphrates Valley. In 1991, the Iraqis expected a similar route for the Coalition attack, and had largely not deployed west of the Wadi al Batin along the western Kuwaiti border. Coalition commander General Norman Schwartzkopf, however, ran around this force with the equivalent of eight US, British, and French armored divisions and two airmobile divisions. How could Schwartzkopf’s armor accomplish such a wide sweep without getting lost in the trackless desert? Tank units moving at 50 kilometers per hour could easily stumble into one another at ranges precluding visual identification, and fire on one another with deadly results. The answer was, of course, GPS.

Abrams tanks, Bradley troop carriers, and a Humvee light truck of the US 1st Armored Division speed across the Iraqi desert during the famous ‘Left Hook’ maneuver of February 1991. GPS was essential to navigating these trackless wastes in good order.

Photograph courtesy of US Army VII Corps.

The Iraqis had not expected that nearly all of these troops – down to company level – would be equipped with GPS receivers. The nearly ubiquitous distribution and use of these receivers (which required very little training) enabled the first mass, deep desert advance in military history. Shocked by the speed and direction of the attack, and by six weeks of continual bombardment by Coalition aircraft (many finding their targets with GPS), the Iraqi forces crumbled in one of the most lopsided exchanges in centuries. Unsurprisingly, many Coalition commanders cited GPS as one of the most important technologies of the war; General Sir Peter de la Billière, commander of all British forces in the Gulf, called it a war-winner. [4]


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While the Iraqis would not likely have successfully opposed an attack by a Coalition army without GPS, the one-sided nature of the outcome was entirely propelled by its widespread availability. More so, this capability could never have been achieved at a reasonable cost or accuracy with inertial navigation sets (INSs), and not with the same geographical sweep with LORAN. [5] Standoff range

[The revolution in military affairs is leading to] warfare where distance offers no protection, where if a target can be found it can be destroyed. [6]

The Rt. Hon. Ian McLachlan Former Australian Defence Minister

INS performance, of course, degrades with distance from launch. Since GPS performance does not, it is ideally suited for guiding long-range weapons. This capability has become essential in campaigns in which casualties are closely watched. In early September 1995, Lieutenant General Michael Ryan, USAF, Commander Allied Air Forces South, and the leader of NATO Operation Deliberate Force, needed to reduce the complex of Bosnian Serb air defenses and communications sites around the town of Banja Luka. Serbian 2K12 Kvadrat (SA-6 ‘Gainful’) batteries were thought to have congregated there in reaction to a drive by the Croatian Army towards the area; earlier in the year, one had ambushed Capt. Scott O’Grady, USAF, and his F-16. On the 8th, however, Ryan’s request for basing six F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers at Aviano was denied by the Italian Government. Although this was simply intended to retaliate for Washington’s failure to secure Rome a seat at the ‘Contact Group’ peace negotiations, by Ryan’s calculation, it placed Allied aviators at risk. On the 9th, 30 NATO aircraft fired 33 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs) at seven mobile SAM batteries in the Banja Luka area without a confirmed kill. [7,8] On the 10th, two of NATO’s five strike packages were unable to drop munitions because of deteriorating weather. [9] Later that day, the US Navy sent F-18C Hornets from the USS Theodore Roosevelt against the Lisina Mountain radio relay station with AGM-84E Stand-off Land Attack Missiles (SLAMs). [10] Simultaneously, the USAF sent F-15E Strike Eagles from Aviana against the Prnjavor relay station with GBU-15 televisually-guided glide bombs. Despite GPS midcourse guidance for the SLAMs, imagery from a USAF GPS-guided Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) the next morning showed only slight damage from one of the GBU-15s, and no results from the SLAMs. Simply put, Ryan needed a better answer.

NATO estimate of the Serb air defenses of northwestern Bosnia and the Krajina. Briefing slide courtesy of NATO Air Forces South.

NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Vincenza, Italy then tasked USS Normandy to destroy Lisina with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The cruiser launched thirteen weapons starting at 2043 local; eleven destroyed the ‘golf ball’ radome and toppled the relay tower between 2125 and 2130. Two missed, and one was recovered later – relatively intact – by Serbian defenders. All of these weapons simply flew to predetermined GPS coordinates, acquired the imagery expected for their digital scene matching and correlation (DSMAC) sensors, and then detonated their warheads.

Remnants of the Lisina Mountain radio relay tower after a strike by GPS-guided cruise missiles. Predator UAV imagery courtesy

of the US Air Force.

This mission matched the ease with which seven B-52G Stratofortresses used 39 AGM -86C Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles (CALCMs) to dispatch Iraqi power plants and communications sites on the opening night of the Persian Gulf air campaign. The non-stop flight from Barksdale AFB, Louisiana to northern Saudi Arabia was not so easy, but the distance demonstrated the


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range at which the US Air Force could strike with GPS weapons. Incidentally, a wave of F-18Cs later returned from to finish the job with more SLAMs. Again, they hit nothing, but this time the cause was known to be interference with their missile control datalinks: the pilots saw GBU-15 imagery on their screens, as another F-15E strike was going on simultaneously only a short distance away. The F-15Es, however, destroyed their target on this second try. [11] Paradoxically, for the Navy in this case, it was autonomous guidance that won the points for simplicity. What is less incidental is the reaction that these weapons had on the Serbian leadership. General Ryan and his associates did not consider the use of the Tomahawk at all escalatory. Some members of the North Atlantic Council, however, were upset that they had not been consulted in advance on the use of the weapon. More dramatically, one US diplomat noted that the use of cruise missiles “scared the shit out of the Serbs” with whom he was in contact, as they “did not have a clue where we would go next.” [12] One might reasonably wonder whether the campaign would have been concluded more quickly with a massive barrage of missiles on the first night. Adverse weather performance

We will weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not. [13]

Jamie Shea NATO Spokesman

In 1991, adverse weather severely complicated Coalition efforts to destroy Iraqi armor, as the targets generally required the use of laser-guided bombs. Conditions over Bosnia in 1995 were not much better as NATO aircraft largely concentrated on ammunition dumps and bridges. Though the targets were largely static, GPS-guided weapons were not available in large numbers for this conflict, so the precision strikes with LGBs were often scrubbed for weather. In 1999, however, the air planners did not consider the ground troops in Kosovo to be the center of gravity, and GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) were plentiful – at least at the start. There remains some question over what exactly brought Belgrade to terms, and over how much damage NATO really accomplished. What is clear, however, is that NATO’s object seems to have been to compel acceptance of some form of the Rambouillet Accords by threatening economic activity – particularly that of the Yugoslav elite. This focused the bombing on assets such as broadcast facilities, car factories, petroleum refineries, electrical transformers, and Slobodan Milosevic’s house. The threat was rather cheaply made good even through completely obscured skies by GPS guidance: virtually all these targets were attacked with GPS-guided weapons, sometimes half-a-dozen aim points at a time by B-2 Spirit

bombers with 2000-lb JDAMs. The bomber pilots, of course, could care little whether they saw their targets through the weather or not. The fate of their targets was sealed (short of an impressive interception of the stealth bomber) by knowledge of their geographical coordinates.

Cloud cover over southern Italy, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia on 3 April 1999. These conditions were typical during the NATO air

campaign over Kosovo. Defense Meteorological Support Program (DMSP) satellite image courtesy of the Pentagon.

GPS-guided weapons, however, have proven less useful against targets that move. NATO aircraft probably did scant damage to the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and Special Police (MUP), whatever the weather. Though E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (J-STARS) aircraft are quite impressive at finding the precise coordinates of moving ground targets, the VJ and MUP did little mass movement during the campaign. Thus, dispersed, fielded ground forces remain one of the most difficult targeting problems. GPS has also not solved the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ problem – an enemy ground attack in the face of overwhelming air superiority could succeed if the weather were bad enough. Close air support through low-altitude clouds is difficult without helicopters, and helicopters – flying low and slow enough to see their targets up close – scare those unused to casualties. Using armed UAVs for this sort of work would not go over well with the Infantry. Indeed, in Kosovo, the USAF resorted to man-in-the-loop (MITL) AGM -130 missiles to fly below the weather after targets. Some of these $300,000 weapons were reportedly dropped on trucks.


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Operational flexibility The theory is that two factors – information technology and precision strike – are bringing about a basic change in the way wars are fought. [14]

Andrew W. Marshall Director of the Office of Net Assessment

Each of these preceding three, critical attributes had become available with the fielding of the conventionally-armed Block II Tomahawk cruise missile in the early 1980s. Though impressive, the capability was not revolutionary in that operational limitations prevented its widespread adoption. Specifically, the Tomahawk’s terrain contour matching (TERCOM) guidance system took weeks to program for new targets. Until the advent of the Block III missile, programming a flight path would have required building a complicated terrain profile of the ground to be overflown. This explains in part why the missiles were not used against Libya in Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986, why only 268 were used against Iraq in 1991, and why weeks passed between a US ultimatum and the Tomahawk strike on the Iraqi Zafraniyah nuclear fabrication plant in early 1993. After 1993, however, the GPS/INS-guided Block III missile became available, and Navy ships received the new Collaborative Contingency Targeting System (CCTS). The CCTS and GPS allowed planners simply to enter a series of GPS waypoints into the missile’s computer as a flight path. It is this sort of widely available operational flexibility that makes GPS so revolutionary. For example, UAVs have been available since the 1970s, but navigation and control problems precluded their widespread use until recently. Today, GPS-guided UAVs allow air forces to reconnoiter enemy territory at low altitude without much worry about losses. In Kosovo, the loss of twenty-one NATO UAVs hardly affected operations. The French Army lost five of the thirteen that it deployed: had these been losses of manned aircraft, reconnaissance operations might very well have been curtailed. [15] Indeed, it was a USAF Predator UAV gave NATO its first real-time remote targeting success. On 26 March 1999, a Predator found a MiG-29 parked alongside a runway at the Batajnica airfield (home to the Yugoslav MiG-29 squadron). The control crew informed NATO’s Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) in Vincenze, Italy, which in turn decided on a cruise missile strike, since the weather was getting difficult for manned aircraft. [16] The CAOC transmitted the required data to USS Philippine Sea, waiting in the Adriatic Sea about 50 miles off the Dalmatian coast. The cruiser needed 101 minutes to process the data with its CCTS (including passing its own GPS coordinates to the firing solution) and to launch a missile. The missile then flew a relatively

straight and level flight path (for ease of programming) for 61 minutes over Croatia and western Serbia towards Batajnia. Air defenses did not respond effectively, and at the exact GPS coordinates of the target, the missile discharged 166 Combined Effects Munitions (CEM) bomblets right over the sitting aircraft. Although more than just GPS accuracy determined the accuracy of the missile, the GPS constellation provided that day a circular error probable (CEP) that was about one-third the width of the MiG’s fuselage. [17] The cloud of submunitions completely destroyed the MiG-29 parked below, and the results were immediately and remotely observed by the still-circling Predator.

A MiG-29 positioned near the Batajnica airfield in Yugoslavia as some villagers look on. Or is it? Although this was the genuine article, plenty of supposed Yugoslav aircraft, armored vehicles, and guns were actually high-fidelity decoys. Photograph from an

anonymous Yugoslav source.

In this regard, one might reasonably consider weapons like the Tomahawk , the Boeing CALCM, and the new French SCALP-EG (Système de Croisière Longue Portée – Emploi Géneral) missile represent Mr. Marshall’s rather basic change in the ways of war. Ships and aircraft now quietly hurl weapons hundreds of miles towards their targets while keeping their crews out of harm’s way. THE UNFULFILLABLE PROMISE

…even if the Americans threaten force… Let me tell you, the state of Iraq is one of the most experienced in the region, maybe in the world, in terms of war… Iraq knows that a couple of missiles will not win a war. We know their effectiveness, and also their limitations. [18]

Tariq Aziz Iraqi Foreign Minister

The past few short, untaxing wars have suggested that US is (to quote the French press) a “hyperpower” with overwhelming military capabilities. At the same time, the US continues to fight brush-fire wars, since some corners


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of the world remain unconvinced that these GPS-equipped precision legions are truly invincible. This is because GPS technology is not a military panacea, and indeed, because its overuse is strategically self-limiting. We group the reasons for this into matters of maskirovka; collateral damage, fratricide, and the ‘empty building syndrome’; interdiction; proliferation; and political abuse. Maskirovka

We had one big amusement… we made fake tanks out of cardboard and NATO aimed at these and bombed them all the time. [19]

Anonymous Yugoslav Army conscript First, was the target destroyed that day on Batajnica Field really a MiG-29? The Tomahawk strike was a brilliant technical feat of arms, but the prominence of the target – sitting parked next to a runway for perhaps three hours – should call into question the validity of the strike. Since the Yugoslav Air Force possessed only thirteen MiG-29s, who would place one in open view? A sophisticated hoaxster would do so, since the aircraft was probably no real MiG-29. This is because thirteen fake MiG-29s were constructed of welded steel frames and wooden ribbing, wrapped in cloth, and painted in full Yugoslav Air Force regalia before the war. Steel radar reflectors complemented steel tubing and jet engine exhaust nozzles, and internal heat generators simulated an aircraft’s thermal signatures. Tins of gasoline and smoke pots mimicked secondary explosions if the decoy was hit. [20] Major General Charles Wald, USAF, then Joint Staff Vice Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, suggested incredulously during the war that “if that's a decoy, he's putting a lot of money into decoys.” [21] Indeed, it seems that in quite a few cases, he was. Maskirovka is the Russian word loosely designating military deception, concealment, and dispersion. While GPS guidance and computer technologies have enabled NATO air forces to destroy just about any fixed target they wish, maskirovka complicates the question of what the target really is. GPS-equipped weaponry is optimized for coordinate attack: weapons navigating to GPS coordinates do not care what they are destroying, so to speak, so long as they are detonating in the right geographic spot at the right time. Adding autonomous terminal sensors to weaponry can help, but it is expensive and not entirely proven against relocatable forces. Adding MITL guidance to a weapon is a more certain approach, but it is far from infallible, adds the expense of additional systems, and removes much of the autonomy and flexibility gained from of GPS guidance in the first place. Maskirovka becomes easier when one’s opponent is either unable or unwilling to root out the deception. Without significant Allied ground forces in Kosovo, the VJ and the MUP had rather free reign to hide their materiel very

effectively from the bombers which stayed about 15,000 feet. However, the allure of war without casualties enticed many NATO governments to shrink from the ground option. Thus, only a handful of commandos and the Kosovar guerrillas were on hand to flush the quarry out. In the end, this seduction and unchallenged air superiority dictated the indirect strategy of the campaign. Unable to significantly attrite VJ and MUP forces in Kosovo, NATO resorted to economic coercion. So, equipping entire air forces with GPS weapons may or may not have made the jet fighter bomber the decisive weapon of war. It has certainly, however, made it an extremely effective coercive instrument of economical economic destruction.

A high-fidelity MiG-29 decoy under construction at the LIFAM Factory in Nova Pazova. Photograph by Djordje Ivanov.

Wrong buildings, empty buildings, wrong people

It was the right address applied to the wrong building. [22]

Anonymous Senior US Intelligence Official On the bombing of the Chinese Embassy

Just before midnight on 7 May 1999, a B-2 bomber struck that Federal Military Supply Directorate Headquarters with five, GPS-guided, $27,000 JDAMs. With impressive accuracy, the attack demolished an entire wing of the building. The problem was that the building was not the headquarters at all, but the Mainland Chinese Embassy. Though tragic, the bombing is explainable: • The street map of Belgrade used in finding the target

dated from 1992, but the Embassy had only moved to its then-present location in 1996. In any case, the map was of too small a scale to be useful in precision weapons targeting

• The intelligence databases used to check for this sort

of error had been updated in 1997 and 1998, but the error had not been detected


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• No one familiar with the city had been consulted in

the construction of the target databases, or of ‘no-hit’ databases of buildings to scrupulously avoid bombing (hospitals, orphanages, embassies, etc.) [23]

Ground level photograph of the Chinese Embassy in Novi Beograd, Yugoslavia, after an inadvertent JDAM attack.

Photograph courtesy of an anonymous Yugoslav photographer.

None of this placated Beijing, whose European intelligence gathering headquarters was somehow the wing of the building targeted in the only strike of the campaign nominated by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Assuming this to have been a shocking coincidence (rather than a brilliantly devious scheme), the moral here is that smart weapons wielded by not-so-smart targeters are likely to induce embarrassing consequences. More so, while GPS is very good at guiding weapons to street addresses, no technology seems available for telling the targeters whether the building at that address is actually occupied. In the words of one Pentagon official, the Iraqis have, after ten years of desultory bombardment, become “professional cruise missile recipients”. Indeed, the national security business around the world has some reasonably clever people who can figure out how to do

business very effectively without every showing up at the office. It is doubtful that destroying barracks and secret police headquarters will have any effect on military operations, but these seem to remain favored targets for GPS-guided weaponry. Expectations of what they can accomplish, however, have somewhat outrun reality. In 1995, a senior Pentagon political appointee reportedly delayed work briefly on the Block IV Tomahawk missile program out of concerns about the collateral damage that the weapon could cause. The individual in question was stunned to discover that the weapon had not been designed to rule out any possibility of collateral damage. After a lesson or two about the fog of war, the program proceeded. Fratricide is a tragedy that would seem tailor made for prevention by GPS, and much has been done in this area. [24] Still, GPS cannot prevent all occurrences of it, as people will continue to do regrettable things under pressure.

Casualties from a mistaken NATO air attack on Kosovar refugees. Photograph courtesy of Radio Television Serbia

Consider the NATO air attack near Djakovica, Kosovo, on 15 April 1999. The pilot of the attacking aircraft thought that he was attacking a VJ or MUP truck column; his target was actually a convoy of farm tractors ferrying refugees out of the province. Over 80 civilians were killed or wounded when USAF F-16s attacked them with 500-lb GBU-12 laser-guided bombs (LGBs). These, of course, were the very people that NATO was claiming to be helping by its bombing. GPS, of course, is not particularly useful for distinguishing farm tractors from tank columns at 15,000 feet from the cockpit of a jet fighter-bomber, so visual identification of targets will remain essential for quite a while. For finding targets, and for avoiding the wrong targets, operators using GPS-guided weapons need considerably more intelligence and targeting support than in the past. Even if entire theaters can be constantly, visually scoured by UAVs flying beneath the clouds, trained analysts will be needed to classify suspects, prioritize targets, and


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schedule missions of both manned and unmanned weapons systems. This may be neither a quick nor inexpensive process. Interdiction

We know that Russia or former Russian republics are selling, in effect, hand-held jammers that can jam satellite signals.

The Hon. Donald Rumsfeld US Defense Secretary (at Confirmation Hearing)

This also assumes that those weapons will continue to work. It is widely known today that the vulnerability of GPS receivers to jamming ranges from the extreme (e.g., a handheld C/A code device) to the slight (a Y-code device with an integrated INS and a null-steering antenna). What is surprising is that jamming has not apparently been attempted with greater vigor. Still, a glimpse of what could happen was seen in a combined British-American raid on Iraqi air defenses on 16 February 2001. The force consisted of USAF F-15E Strike Eagles with AGM -130s; US Navy F-18C Hornets with AGM -154A Joint Stand-Off Weapons (JSOWs), HARMs, and SLAMs; and RAF Tornadoes with Paveway LGBs. The Paveways, SLAMs, HARMs, and AGM -130s elicited no complaints. The 28 GPS-guided JSOW glide bombs, however, were another matter. About half their targets escaped damage when 26 of them systematically discharged their CEM payloads about 100 feet off. This miss distance is not dreadful from the launch range of up to 40 miles, but does indicate possible performance under jamming, should the weapons have been forced to rely on their INSs. Note also that it is roughly the miss distance expected of a C/A code weapon operating under Selective Availability (SA). Jamming, however, was considered unlikely in this case. The bombs likely encountered strong, low-level winds around the targets, but their flight paths did not include a sufficiently long straight-and-level run with which to correct their courses before fusing. This incident, however, illustrates how targeters, planners, and politicians may assume that GPS is an ever-present ether whose function is guaranteed, but a mystery. GPS, of course, is a technology, but one whose functioning – and whose limitations and vulnerabilities – are probably not sufficiently well understood by those who call upon it to perform in combat. If jamming is a local matter, with localized rewards, destruction of the satellites would be a far more general matter. In the late 1980s, US Navy officers and quartermasters were usually taught to avoid over-reliance on GPS as a navigation system. Many (at least outside the JPO) simply assumed that a global war would see most navigation and communications constellations blasted by nuclear anti-satellite weapons. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this concern has receded – although it has

been replaced by considerable conscientious effort to increase the robustness of the system to jamming and spoofing. Still, several recent US Space Command wargames have illustrated how widespread dependence on GPS for all precision warfighting matters makes GPS an enticing target.

The famous “soda can” jammer built by the Naval Weapons Test Center China Lake. This one-watt device can effectively terminate GPS reception for most commercial receivers within line of sight.

Photograph courtesy of the GPS Joint Program Office.

Proliferation

Every nation, in one fashion or another, is planning to use the GPS signals.

Col. Michael Wiedemer, USAF past GPS Program Manager

Why destroy GPS, though, when one can use it for one’s own purposes? In October 1997, USAF Space Command conducted an experiment to test the ease with which adversaries could locate deploying air units. Using only open-source information and commercial satellite imagery, a team tracked the deployment of an Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) to Bahrain. With no special access to sites in the .mil domain, the team discovered the AEF’s location, mission, and composition. The team tasked the French SPOT (Satellite Probatoire pour l’Observation de Terre) satellite to photograph the AEF’s bed-down locations. Image analysts located the AEF’s headquarters, its hardened aircraft shelters, refueling areas, and the tents housing the crews. [25]


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Yugoslav troops leaving Kosovo on 11 June 1999. Would the result have been the same had these forces been capable of

threatening NATO bases in Italy and Hungary with autonomous precision weapons? Photograph courtesy of an anonymous

Yugoslav photographer

Today, over 70 nations possess antiship cruise missiles; converting these to GPS-guided coordinate attack weapons is not a technically difficult matter. For Iranian missile crews to have fired on the AEF effectively would not have been difficult. Indeed, since the new American way of war depends on repeated sorties by fighter-bombers from fixed bases, adversaries have a strong incentive to develop the means to attack those bases – which are easily located on commercial satellite imagery. Thus, while GPS has encouraged reliance on aviation, it has also provided the means for countering it. Since there is little to stop an adversary from having the same impact on the American leadership that cruise missile usage had on the Serbian leadership in 1995, we should assume that weapons as these will be used against US troops. Whether the system guiding these missiles is GPS, a better-populated GLONASS constellation, an eventual pan-European Galileo system, or a fully operational Chinese Beidou system is a secondary question. Abuse

The Americans have once again launched a futile and cowardly attack upon us, hiding behind their great technology which God has given them.

Saddam Hussein [26]

In fact, some remember a time when casualties were assumed to be a part of war. As recently as 1986, the use of Tomahawk cruise missiles against targets in Libya was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for fear that the technology would slip into Soviet hands. Rather, manned aircraft were used, and two USAF crewmen of an F-111 Aardvark died in the strike. Their sacrifice was deemed necessary for preserving future security. The 1990s, however, saw much of the mystique of US air power squandered in the short-term interest of casualty

limitation. [27] That over-reliance caused President Clinton to dispatch at least 864 cruise missiles on seven different occasions against Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and the Sudan. The politically expedient behavior may have largely served to encourage potential opponents to master the very same technology on which the US depends so heavily. This “missile boat diplomacy” rather defined military operations in the 1990s. The first attack entirely conducted with GPS-guided weapons was Operation Desert Strike, a raid on Iraq on 3 and 4 September 1996. Four US Navy surface ships, one submarine, and two USAF B-52 Stratofortresses launched 31 Tomahawks and 13 CALCMs at Iraqi targets in retaliation for attacks on Kurdish rebels. Despite almost no threat of casualties to Americans, and the impressive technology involved, it is entirely unclear what Iraqi behavior this prevented. The pattern, however, did not reach its nadir until Operation Infinite Reach on 20 August 1998. In this attack, two US Navy surface ships fired 13 GPS-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles at the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, while four surface ships and a submarine fired 66 Tomahawks at suspected terrorist training camps 150 miles southeast of Kabul. Regrettably, Infinite Reach would have been more appropriately titled Ultimate Futility. The attack destroyed the pharmaceutical plant, and killed the night watchman, but no plausible evidence ever emerged to corroborate the story that the facility was actually a nerve gas plant. A spokesman for bin Laden stated that 34 of his people had been killed including one top lieutenant. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger’s claim that the attack had “significantly disrupted the capability to use these camps as terrorist facilities” is a little more difficult to believe. [28] Bin Laden’s underground bunkers survived, and his mud huts above ground could be easily rebuilt. The overall operation, however, cost roughly $80 million in munitions alone. There is even reason to believe that the entire thing was a stunt designed to deflect public attention from the President’s domestic political tribulations. Speaking from Martha’s Vineyard eight days later, Mr. Clinton said:

“I was here on this island up till 2:30 in the morning, trying to make absolutely sure that at that chemical plant there was no night shift. I believed I had to take the action I did, but I didn't want some person who was a nobody to me — but who may have a family to feed and a life to live and probably had no earthly idea what else was going on there — to die needlessly.” [29]

Who could imagine that a nerve gas plant would lack a substantial night watch? Why would workers at a nerve gas factory not be desirable military targets? While Mr. Clinton’s statement was transparently deceptive, his


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behavior is the sort which access to long-range, push-button weaponry encourages.

A B-52 Stratofortress drops a GPS-guided AGM-86C CALCM. For now, seemingly low -risk precision firepower is on call for NATO

leaders round-the-clock. Photograph courtesy of the USAF.

THE NEXT TEN YEARS

A country that has cruise missiles retains control over how they are used, but on the other hand, a country that doesn’t have any can find itself excluded from part of the decision-making process on strikes. [30]

French Defense Ministry Report on Kosovo Even if the Infinite Reach strikes had an objective linked to national security, they certainly were of negligible political value. Earlier, a dozen cruise missiles had frightened the Bosnian Serbs, but it is likely that future adversaries will be no more impressed by this than were hostile Arab tribesmen by the RAF’s aerial control of the 1920s. After a fashion, adversaries who do not too dearly value tangible assets learn to endure: Osama bin-Laden is still making bombs, and Saddam Hussein remains in Baghdad. This, as Colonel Douglas MacGregor, USA (Ret.), puts it, is because while air forces attack targets, only ground forces change governments. [31] Yet satellite-guided autonomous weapons continue to capture the imagination worldwide. The French Defense Ministry has recently announced that it is forgoing construction of a second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to match the Charles de Gaulle. Instead, funds will be focused on new frigates and nuclear-powered submarines armed with a naval version of the satellite-guided SCALP-EG cruise missile. Seven of the frigates would cost as much as the carrier, but it is assumed that these ships and their missiles could stand in for the single carrier if it is laid up during a crisis. [32] Not much thought, it seems, has yet been given to the question of

integrating massed precision strikes with the more immediate capabilities of ground forces. When no one is willing to engage in a knife-fight, however, possession of a rapier, however ineffectual, is the price of admission. In the US, the ease of precision strike that GPS has enabled has led to a doctrinal dissonance amongst the military services. In the early 1980s, faced with the very real threat of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the US Army and Air Force cooperated to articulate the AirLand Battle doctrine of synergistic employment of aviation and ground troops. Today, air power enthusiasts write with some derision about the contributions of their ground forces comrades, and extol the virtues of these rather unvirtuous, bloodless wars. After relative successes in Bosnia and Yugoslavia, many planners simply assume that massed coordinate attacks by GPS-guided weapons will be enough to compel virtually any opponent to accede to the (sometimes) reasonable terms that the United States is willing to offer. Dependence on space-based systems like GPS, however, begs two questions central to the matter of military transformation: • First, when will attacks against fixed infrastructure be

enough to compel compliance? Our theories of deterrence and compellence with precision conventional weapons have generally lagged the development of those systems. If the US cannot resolve this issue, then will its soldiers continue to be “permitted to kill, but not to die?” [33] If so, how circumscribed will national goals become should this pattern become a habit?

• Second, as central as GPS technology is to the new

means of warfighting, how far will potential opponents go to interdict it? Will major adversaries restrict themselves to their own satellite systems (to guard against reimposition of Selective Availability), or will they use their high earth orbit lift capabilities to target the GPS constellation directly? If so, how far towards militarization of outer space should the US proceed to protect this essential military asset?

In short, the US military needs to think about its dependence on satellite applications systematically. Considering the capabilities of GPS (or GLONASS, Galileo, or Beidou) without considering the vulnerabilities that over-dependence engenders is a dangerously piecemeal approach. Military thinking about GPS could use more maturity, and less euphoria.


11

A Chinese Long March rocket lifts the first Beidou (Northern Dipper) navigation satellite from the Xichang launch center into orbit on Halloween Night, 2000. Photograph by the Xinhua News

Agency.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to acknowledge the sponsorship of Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, Maryland) in the publication of their upcoming book, The Precision Revolution: the GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare (November 2001). They would also like to thank Michigan State University Press (East Lansing, Michigan) for its assistance in the development of their next project, Just a Little Bombing: NATO’s Balkan Air Wars and the Question of Military Transformation.

REFERENCES 1. Tech. Sgt. T. Hoffman, “Vice Chief Cites Importance

of Space”, Air Force Space Command Public Affairs, 1 September 1999.

2. Bradford W. Parkinson, et al., “A History of Satellite Navigation,” NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation (Spring 1995), Vol. 42, No. 1, p. 138.

3. See Chapter 2, “A Short History of Military Air Navigation,” of M. Rip and J. Hasik, The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare (Naval Institute Press, December 2001).

4. General Sir Peter de la Billière, Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War (Harper Collins, 1992), p. 348.

5. The US 101st Airmobile Division was partially equipped with LORAN receivers, but this was an entirely adequate substitute, as Saudi Arabia had an excellent LORAN network. The French 6th Light Armored Division neither GPS nor LORAN receivers, but used Gazelle helicopters of its 1st and 3rd Combat Helicopter Regiments as pathfinder units immediately behind their lead units. These aircraft were not equipped with GPS either, but used the Nadir Doppler-radar navigation system and an established system of waypoints behind the French advance. M. Hammick, “Gazelle HOTs extend French anti-armour reach,” International Defence Review, May 1991, p. 456.

6. “Interview: Ian McLachlan, Australian Minister for Defence,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 7 August 1996, p. 40.

7. Lt. Col. Richard L. Sargent, USAF, “Deliberate Force Targeting”, in Col. Robert C. Owen, USAF, ed., Deliberate Force – A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning: Final Report of the Air University Balkan Air Campaign Study (Air University Press, 2000), p 315 (hereafter, BACS).

8. Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force: The UN and NATO Campaign in Bosnia, 1995 (Centre for Defence and International Studies, 1999), p. 279.

9. Lt. Col. Mark J. Conversino, USAF, “Executing Deliberate Force, 30 August – 14 September 1995”, in BACS, p 155.

10. See Chapter 5, “NAVSTAR’s Storm Across the Desert – the Second War in the Persian Gulf, 1990-91,” in Rip & Hasik, op. cit. Seven SLAMs had been used against Iraq in 1991, and four had hit their targets.

11. Ripley, op. cit., p 285.


12

12. Col. Robert C. Owen, “Summary”, in BACS, p. 492.

Admiral Leighton Smith, USN, Commander of Allied Forces South, related this story to Col. Owen.

13. NATO Press Conference, Brussels, 14 April 1999.

14. Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, May 1995.

15. These aircraft were the Crecerelle and Piver drones deployed by the French 7e Régiment d’Artillerie in Macedonia. Interestingly, as an older system, the Piver did not carry a GPS receiver, but only an INS, an altimeter, and a Doppler radar. Rip & Hasik, Chapter 5, op. cit.

16. See Chapter 12, Rip & Hasik, op cit.

17. Analysis performed by the authors courtesy of Richard Langley, Geodetic Research Laboratory, Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton, New Brunswick).

18. Scott Ritter, Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem – Once and for All (Simon & Schuster, 1999), p. 141. Aziz was meeting with Rolf Ekeus, the United Nations Special Commission’s first executive chairman in Baghdad, on 19 June 1996, following the Iraqi government’s refusal to permit an inspection team access to three Special Republican Guard facilities.

19. B. Maddox et al., “The 80 Days War,” The Times (London), 15 July 1999.

20. M. Stekovic, “Yugoslavia’s Wooden Fulcrums,” Air Forces Monthly, November 1999, pp. 34-35.

21. Wald has since been promoted to Lieutenant General, and been given command of the US 9th Air Force. His particular comments were about an S-125 Pechora (NATO codename: SA-3) surface-to-air missile site that had to have been real, since the attack shown in the gun camera video indicated massive secondary explosions. The Yugoslavs, of course, were rigging their decoys to do just that. US Department of Defense Briefing on Operation Allied Force, The Pentagon, 24 May 1999, Pentagon Deputy Spokesman Mike Doubleday and Maj. Gen. Charles Wald briefers.

22. ABC News, 11 May 1999.

23. US State Department, Report on Accidental Bombing of Chinese Embassy, 6 July 1999.

24. See elsewhere at this conference: Thomas Loeffler, “International HARM Precision Navigation Upgrade

- A GPS/INS Application to Improve Effectiveness and Minimize the Possibility of Fratricide”

25. Lt. Col. Beth M. Kaspar, USAF, The End of Secrecy? Military Competitiveness in the Age of Transparency (Thesis, Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, April 2000). Kaspar cites a report by US Air Force Space Command, “Operation Seek Gunfighter: Aggressor Space Applications Project Operational Report”, Falcon AFB, Colorado, 23 January 1998.

26. Address on Iraqi television, 3 September 1996.

27. For more on this line of thought, see Eliot Cohen, “The Mystique of American Air Power,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, 1994. One might argue, however, that the opportunity for restraint has somewhat passed.

28. M. Sappenfield, “What Cruise Missiles Accomplished,” The Christian Science Monitor, 28 August 1998, p. 4.

29. See Christopher Hitchens, “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” Vanity Fair, March 1999. Mr. Hitchens is not normally considered temperate in his opinions, but this argument is a strong one. Also, the occurrence of this event so close to the release of the film Wag the Dog was oddly fascinating.

30. Craig R. Whitney, “U.S. Military Acted Outside NATO Framework During Kosovo Conflict, France Says,” The New York Times, 11 November 1999.

31. Col. Douglas Macgregor, USA (Ret.), Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Land Power in the Twenty-first Century (Praeger: 1997).

32. J. A. C. Lewis, “France rules out second aircraft carrier,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 18 June 2001, p. 12. The seven frigates are assumed to cost about as much without their missiles as the carrier would cost without its aircraft. It remains to be seen whether Paris will equip its weapons – in the long run – with GPS, or will insist on developing the Galileo system for guidance not subject to US cooperation.

33. Comment by Lt. Gen. Philippe Morillon, former commander of UN Forces in the Former Yugoslavia. See Col. Peter F. Herrly, USA (Ret.), “The Plight of Joint Doctrine after Kosovo,” Joint Forces Quarterly, Summer 1999, pp. 99-104.

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