GPS Declassified

by Richard D. Easton

31. Easton, Space Applications Branch Technical Memorandum No. 1, 3.

  32. Jonathan Eberhart, “The Time Web ,” Science News, July 13, 1974, 27.

  33. Whitlock and McCaskill, NRL GPS Bibliography, 11.

  34. J. B. Woodford and H. Nakamura, Briefing-Navigation Satellite Study (Los Angeles: Air Systems Command, August 24, 1966), 7; Ivan Getting “The Global Positioning System ,” IEEE Spectrum, December 1993, 44. The study chronology shows that Ivan Getting’s comment in his IEEE Spectrum article that the Air Force’s satellite work “stimulated additional satellite-based position-location and navigation by the Navy ” is incorrect because the Navy’s work began contemporaneously and neither service was initially aware of the other’s projects.

  35. Woodford and Nakamura, Briefing-Navigation Satellite Study; Getting, “Global Positioning System ,” 56.

  36. J. B. Woodford, W. C. Melton, and R. L. Dutcher, “Satellite Systems for Navigation Using 24-Hour Orbits ,” paper presented at Electronics and Aerospace Systems Convention (EASCON), Washington DC, 1969, 184.

  37. Encyclopedia of Science, s.v. “SECOR ,” http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/SECOR.html (accessed July 29, 2011).

  4. One System, Two Narratives

  1. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, “December 1692 Trial of John Glen-don ,” June 12, 2011, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?foo=bar&path=sessionsPapers/16921207.xml&div=t16921207-7.

  2. Bradford Parkinson, “GPS for Humanity ,” lecture, Stanford University, Stanford CA, April 30, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6i6wFf-X_c (accessed July 8, 2012); Edward H. Martin, “The Early Days [of GPS] ,” lecture, Ohio State University, March 17, 2011, http://www.gps.gov/multimedia/presentations/2011/03/

  ohio/martin.pdf (accessed July 8, 2012). Martin did not mention Timation, and his only mention of the Naval Research Laboratory and Roger Easton referred to the NRL’s role as a new customer for Magnavox Research Labs.

  3. U.S. General Accounting Office, Joint Major System Acquisition by the Military Services: An Elusive Strategy, GAO/NSIAD-84-22 (Washington DC, December 23, 1983).

  4. Harry Sonnemann, memorandum to Eric Frazier, April 30, 2010.

  5. Ron Beard, letter to the editor, GPS World, December 2010.

  6. Tom McCaskill, conversation with Richard Easton, April 28, 2007.

  7. Harry Sonnemann, memorandum to Roger Easton, August 28, 1994.

  8. Rick W. Sturdevant, “NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact ,” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, ed. Stephen J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (Washington DC: NASA, 2007), 331.

  9. Sonnemann, memorandum to Frazier.

  10. Ron Beard, letter to the editor, GPS World, December 2010.

  11. Keith D. McDonald, “Global Positioning System: Origins, Early Concepts, Development, and Design Success ,” in Sachdev, Success Stories in Satellite Systems, 250.

  12. Timation Development Plan, 10.

  13. Bradford W. Parkinson and Stephen W. Gilbert, “NAVSTAR: Global Positioning System—Ten Years Later ,” Proceedings of the IEEE 71, no. 10 (October 1983): 1177: “The Timation concept was essentially a two-dimensional system and lacked the ability to provide continuous position updates in a high-dynamic aircraft environment. ” Bradford W. Parkinson, letter to the editor, Inside GNSS, May 2010: “His method was obviously two-dimensional (called for ‘Lines of Position’). Had he tried for more, his signal would have interfered with itself. ” Bradford W. Parkinson and Stephen T. Powers, “Fighting to Survive: Five Challenges, One Key Technology, the Political Battlefield—and a GPS Mafia ,” GPS World, June 2010, 14: “Both the description and the accompanying diagram in the patent clearly refer to two-dimensional navigation, using lines of position. ” Art McCoubrey, who with Bob Kern designed the first cesium atomic clocks in orbit, launched in NTS-2 in 1977, in an August 26, 2011, e-mail to Richard Easton made the apt comment, “Dimensionality of Timation: I do not remember any discussions of dimensionality. I think that I may have regarded this issue as not very important because, given enough viewable satellites in the system, I thought it should be possible to get all of the position information as well as the system time. ” Speculation about side-tone signal interference has obscured the fact that Timation plans also specified using spread spectrum signals. See also Whitlock and McCaskill, NRL GPS Bibliography, 29: “NRL formulated and implemented a solution to the problem of instantaneous navigation using artificial satellites by passive ranging. ” The Navy already had a two-dimensional space-based navigation system in Transit. It made no sense to build another two-dimensional system.

  14. Roger Easton, “Timation Navigation Satellite ,” in Proceedings of the Second Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Strategic Planning Meeting (Washington DC: Naval Research Laboratory, December 10–11, 1970), 2:15.

  15. Bob Kern, memorandum to Art McCoubrey, September 27, 1972. Kern mentioned that Easton was “ecstatic about the Efratom performance during a centrifuge test that went as far as 10 Gs. Roger is obviously abandoning his favoritism towards quartz and is talking about atomic resonances for use in satellites. ”

  16. David C. Holmes, interview by John H. Bryant, July 13, 1994, copy of transcript of unpublished IEEE interview in the possession of the authors.

  17. Brad Parkinson, “True Origins and Major Original Challenges for GPS Success, 1962–1978 ,” PowerPoint presentation, October 2009, slide 25, http://scpnt.stanford.edu/pnt/PNT09/

  presentation_slides/13_Parkinson_Creating_GPS.pdf (accessed June16, 2013) mentions that at Lonely Halls, only JPO and Aerospace personnel were in attendance, about twelve in total. Attendees included Parkinson, Maj. Gaylord Green, and Maj. Mel Birnbaum. In his 2012 presentation “GPS for Humanity ,” Parkinson added Frank Butterfield of Aerospace, Bill Huston of the Navy, and Steve Gilbert of the Air Force to the list of people at Lonely Halls. However, Bill Huston was appointed as Navy deputy program manager to the GPS JPO on January 15, 1974. Thus, he was not officially part of the JPO in September 1973.

  18. Roger Easton, “Memoir ,” March 29, 2005, http://www.gpsinventor.com/?page=memoir.

  19. Ron Beard, conversation with Richard Easton, September 2, 2011.

  20. Ron Beard, e-mail to Richard Easton, August 4, 2011.

  21. Sonnemann, memorandum to Frazier.

  22. McDonald, “Global Positioning System ,” 241; Keith D. McDonald, telephone interview by Eric Frazier, July 23, 2010.

  23. Parkinson and Gilbert, “NAVSTAR: Global Positioning System. ”

  24. Brad Parkinson, oral history conducted November 2, 1999, by Michael Geselowitz, IEEE History Center, New Brunswick NJ, http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/OralHistory:Brad_Parkinson.

  25. David C. Holmes, “NAVSTAR Global Positioning System: Navigation for the Future ,” Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), April 1977, 101.

  26. Phillip J. Klass, “Compromise Reached on Navsat ,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, November 26, 1973, 46.

  27. Sonnemann, memorandum to Easton.

  28. Easton, interview by van Keuren and Tugman.

  29. Sonnemann, memorandum to Frazier.

  30. Richard Rhodes, Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (New York: Doubleday, 2011), 209.

  31. David Holmes, “Navstar Technology ,” Countermeasures 2, no. 12 (December 1976): 53–54.

  32. “NavStar Achieves Goals in First Test of Concept ,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 17, 1977, 159.

  33. Peter Galison, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). His evidence has been questioned by Alberto A. Martinez in Science Secrets: The Truth about Darwin’s Finches, Einstein’s Wife, and Other Myths (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 206–15. Even if one accepts that Galison overstates the evidence, thought experiments about clock synchronization helped inspire Einstein’s formulation of the special theory of relativity.

  34. So
nnemann, memorandum to Frazier.

  5. Invisible Stars

  1. A. D. Richardson, “Making Watches by Machinery ,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 39 (June–November 1869): 169–82.

  2. H. H. Turner, “Greenwich Time ,” Cornhill Magazine 95 (January 1907): 55–69.

  3. Parliament.uk, “Living Heritage: Religion and Belief: Witchcraft ,” http://www.parliament.uk/about/livingheritage/

  transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/overview/witchcraft (accessed July 5, 2012).

  4. Frederick Knight Hunt, “The Planet Watchers of Greenwich ,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 1 (June–November 1850): 233–37 (reprinted from Household Words).

  5. Hunt, “Planet Watchers of Greenwich. ”

  6. Philip Edwards, ed., James Cook: The Journals (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 422.

  7. J. C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 364.

  8. U.S. Air Force, “Global Positioning System Fact Sheet ,” September 15, 2010, http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=119.

  9. U.S. Air Force, “Global Positioning System Fact Sheet. ”

  10. U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center, “GPS Constellation Status for 03/28/2013 ,” March 28, 2013, http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?Do=constellationStatus; Boeing, “Boeing Satellites: Chronology of Launches ,” April 27, 2012, http://www.boeing.com/defensespace/

  space/bss/launch/launched2.html.

  11. “GPS to Reach Historic High of 30 Operational Spacecraft ,” Aerospace Daily and Defense Report, November 9, 2004, 5, LexisNexis Academic.

  12. Garmin, “The GPS Satellite System ,” http://www8.garmin.com/about GPS (accessed July 10, 2012).

  13. SatTrackCam Leiden, “A Flashing GPS Satellite (Navstar 39, USA 128) ,” June 27, 2012, http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2012/06/flashing-gps-satellite-navstar-39-usa.html.

  14. NASA.gov, “J-Track 3D Satellite Tracking ,” http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html (accessed July 10, 2012).

  15. GPS.gov, “Space Segment ,” June 5, 2012, http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/space.

  16. “OCS Legacy History ,” GPS World, June 2008, 28.

  17. U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center, “ICD-GPS-870, Revision A ,” 6–7, www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/gps/ICD_GPS_870_IRN001.pdf (accessed July 10, 2012).

  18. GPS.gov, “Control Segment ,” June 5, 2012, http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/control.

  19. Craig Covault, “Calling All Global Positioning Sats ,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 3, 2005, 30, LexisNexis Academic; GPS.gov, “Control Segment. ”

  20. Covault, “Calling All Global Positioning Sats. ”

  21. Don Branum, “50th Space Wing Completes Transition to New GPS Control System ,” Air Force Print News, September 19, 2007, http://www.afspc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123068750; GPS.gov, “Control Segment. ”

  22. IEEE Global History Network, “Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) ,” http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Heinrich_Hertz_%281857-1894%29 (accessed July 15, 2012).

  23. DonRathJr.com, “Audible Range of Human Hearing—Acoustics of Music—Part 2 ,” http://donrathjr.com/audible-range-human-hearing/ (accessed July 15, 2012).

  24. DonRathJr.com, “Audible Range of Human Hearing. ”

  25. Federal Communications Commission, “FM Radio ,” http://www.fcc.gov/topic/fm-radio (accessed July 15, 2012).

  26. Department of Defense, Global Positioning System Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard, 4th ed. (Washington DC, September 2008), 4, http://www.gps.gov/technical/ps/2008-SPS-performance-standard.pdf.

  27. Robert C. Dixon, Spread Spectrum Systems with Commercial Applications, 3rd. ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 439.

  28. Rob Walters, Spread Spectrum: Hedy Lamarr and the Mobile Phone (Charleston SC: Book Surge, 2005), 241–42.

  29. Walters, Spread Spectrum, 158.

  30. Department of Defense, Global Positioning System Standard Positioning Service, 4.

  31. James Bao-Yen Tsui, Fundamentals of Global Positioning System Receivers: A Software Approach (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 77.

  32. GPS.gov, “GPS Accuracy ,” http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ (accessed July 17, 2012).

  33. James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of Just about Everything (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 7.

  34. Margaret Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom ,” Invention & Technology (Winter 1998): 43–48.

  35. Michael A. Lombardi, Thomas P. Heavner, and Steven R. Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards and the Realization of the SI Second ,” Journal of Measurement Science 2, no. 4 (December 2007): 74–89, http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/2039.pdf; Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom. ”

  36. Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom. ”

  37. Lombardi, Heavner, and Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards ”; Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom. ”

  38. Lombardi, Heavner, and Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards. ”

  39. Lombardi, Heavner, and Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards. ”

  40. William L. Laurence, “Cosmic Pendulum for Clock Planned ,” New York Times, January 21, 1945, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20614F8385E1B7A93C3AB178AD85F418485F9.

  41. James Jespersen and Jane Fitz-Randolph, From Sundials to Atomic Clocks: Understanding Time and Frequency (Washington DC: National Institute of Standards and Technology, March 1999), http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/1796.pdf; Lombardi, Heavner, and Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards ”; Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom. ”

  42. Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom. ”

  43. Lombardi, Heavner, and Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards. ”

  44. Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom. ”

  45. Coel, “Keeping Time by the Atom ”; Lombardi, Heavner, and Jefferts, “NIST Primary Frequency Standards. ” The General Conference on Weight and Measures defined the second as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom. ” The astronomical second, established in 1820, was defined as one “86,400th part of the mean solar day. ”

  46. U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center, “GPS Constellation Status ,” http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?Do=constellationStatus (accessed July 18, 2012).

  47. Marvin Epstein, Gerald Freed, and John Rajan, “GPS IIR Rubidium Clocks: In-Orbit Performance Aspects ,” paper presented at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Meeting, San Diego CA, December 2003, http://www.pttimeeting.org/archivemeetings/2003papers/paper15.pdf.

  48. Department of Defense, Global Positioning System Standard Positioning Service, 23.

  49. Trimble Navigation Ltd., “Code-Phase vs. Carrier Phase GPS ,” http://www.trimble.com/gps_tutorial/sub_phases.aspx (accessed July 17, 2012).

  6. Going Public

  1. Murray Sayle, “KE007: A Conspiracy of Circumstance ,” New York Review of Books, April 25, 1985.

  2. Murray Sayle, “Closing the File on Flight 007 ,” New Yorker, December 13, 1993, 90–101.

  3. Sayle, “KE007. ”

  4. Asaf Degani, “The Crash of Korean Airlines Flight 007 ,” in Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces beyond 2001 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003), 60–62.

  5. “U.S. Response to Soviet Destruction of KAL Airliner ,” National Security Decision Directive 102, September 5, 1983, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-102.htm, also available in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley CA.

  6. Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, March 8, 1983 ,” Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/30883b.htm.

  7. Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Defense and National Security, March 23, 1983 ,” Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan,
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/32383d.htm.

  8. Sharon Watkins Lang, U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense Command/ Army Forces Strategic Command (SMD/ARSTRAT) Historical Office, “Where Do We Get ‘Star Wars?’ ” Eagle, March 2007, http://www.smdc.army.mil/2008/Historical/

  Eagle/WheredowegetStarWars.pdf.

  9. Kaylene Hughes, “The Army’s Precision ‘Sunday Punch’: The Pershing II and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty ,” Army History (Fall 2009): 6–16; Federation of American Scientists, “Pershing 2 ,” September 23, 2011, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/theater/pershing2.htm.

  10. National Priorities Project, “Federal Spending ,” September 23, 2011, http://nationalpriorities.org/en/resources/federal-budget-101/budget-briefs/federal-spending.

  11. Alexander Dallin, Black Box: KAL 007 and the Superpowers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 107.

  12. Strobe Talbott et al., “Atrocity in the Skies: KAL Flight 007 Shot Down ,” Time, September 12, 1983, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926169,00.html; Sayle, “KE007. ”

  13. A September 7, 2011, Google search of the term “Reagan declassified GPS ” yielded 319 results.

  14. YouTube.com, “Tim O’Reilly on the SXSW 2011 Stage ” (an interview with Jason Calacanis, March 11, 2011, at the South by Southwest interactive, music, and film festival), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xVR5yxjzqU&feature=related (accessed August 30, 2011).

  15. Foursquare, “What Is Foursquare? ” https://foursquare.com/about (accessed September 8, 2011).

  16. Rip and Hasik, Precision Revolution, 429. The authors neither cite sources nor provide any explanation for their claim to know the contents of this classified material.

  17. Ronald Reagan, “Address before the 38th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York, September 26, 1983 ,” Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/

  1983/92683a.htmhttp://www.reagan.utexas.edu/