The Global Positioning System (GPS):
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based infrastructure developed by the United States Department of Defense to provide an invaluable navigation service to the military; GPS has since been proven to be an incomparable asset to the civilian public as well. What GPS does is provide a precise, readily available signal for navigation that can be used to position anyone or anything, anywhere on the planet.1 GPS therefore represents, quite simply, bar none the best positioning tool humankind has ever devised.
Human beings have always been preoccupied with the attendant problems of navigation. Landmarks on the horizon, stars in the heavens, a compass, an intuitionùall of these have alternatively guided and confounded those that have relied upon them. As a consequence, human ventures ranging from ocean crossings to military marches to weekend road trips to afternoon hikes have been impacted by the elusiveness of reliable navigation techniques. The advent of GPS technology may forever obviate these traditional concerns for modern day navigators of all types.
More crucially, the nature of warfare has been fundamentally impacted and forever altered. For the purposes of this discussion, it is this aspect of the debate that will be explored. The implications GPS has for the US military are and have been many; that the benefits of GPS have been adopted to a wide range of commercial uses is of little consequence when one considers that virtually every vestige of the US militaryù"armored vehicles, aircraft, ships, missiles, troops, tons of ordnance"ùrely on GPS for guidance, tracking and targetting.2
The prospect of a lapsed GPS program is too horrific to consider, yet consider it we must: whether GPS advances or atrophies is a matter of policy, and trends in recent history have not sufficiently assuaged well-founded concerns that the GPS system is growing outdated. Fur...