President Trump’s proposed $54 billion defense spending increase has sparked predictable debate, and rightly so. It’s accompanied by drastic cuts for programs that help the poor, protect the environment, fund medical research and support diplomacy. The “guns versus butter” debate…
Tag: GPS
C-SPAN to Air GPS History Presentation
C-SPAN will broadcast a talk about GPS that I presented with my coauthor, Richard D. Easton, May 5 at the New York Military Affairs Symposium (NYMAS) in New York City. The first airing will be at 2 p.m., Saturday, June…
Driverless Car Bombs Pose Threat
GPS satellites broadcast passive one-way signals that by themselves can do no harm. But bad actors can use the power of GPS in frightening ways. “Driverless vehicles could easily be perverted into a ghastly weapon—a guided missile making full use…
Privacy in the Age of Cellphones
Although the paranoid among us fear a long-running government conspiracy to track our every move à la Orwell’s 1984—and to be sure, technology now makes that possible—the path to having GPS in every pocket was more uncertain, less coordinated and…
GPS Turns 40
December 2013 brought two important anniversaries for GPS, a technology that has changed the world, yet both milestones have gone unnoticed in the media. The Pentagon authorized GPS development 40 years ago on Dec. 17, 1973. If GPS were a…
Tracking Baby Jesus
One of the oddest uses of GPS tracking I found while doing research for the book, GPS Declassified, was the case of a community center in Wellington, Florida, that used it to catch a thief who stole baby Jesus from…
“Gravity” Highlights Space Debris Issue
More than twenty-four hours after watching the new movie “Gravity” in IMAX 3-D, images from the film continue hurtling periodically through my mental machinery, and like the orbital debris that drives the plot, they keep puncturing and shredding whatever task…