The New Warfare

This will probably be short. I don't know all that much about it. I get frequent email updates from the space flight now web site. It's quite informative and I like it because I can get information that tells me when I can go up on my roof and see rockets launched from Cape Canaveral, more than a hundred miles away.

Early this morning (no, I didn't see this one) a GPS satellite was launced atop a Delta 2 rocket at 12:39 AM EST. So no big deal, right? Well, if your life revolves around baking cookies, then no, maybe it wouldn't be a big deal. Or just maybe it would! Who is it you're baking those cookies for? Is he going to be a jet pilot some time in the not too distant future? Or maybe he's going to be depending on one? It turns out that using GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) technology is helping us, the economy, and also the everyday jet pilots that fight our wars for us. And it's helping right now. No pie in the sky future "Gee, I hope this is going to help" kind of thing. Not at all. It's RIGHT NOW.

According to Lt. Col. L.C. Coffey, the Air Force launch director,

"Deploying this GPS satellite will improve the constellation, and consequently our war fighting capability, as we continue to combat global terrorism,"

The constellation, he's refering to is the huge array of GPS satellites that are above us all the time. In civilian life, the GPS system is probably most familiar to boaters, truckers, or GM customers who are using OnStar. It wasn't really developed for those reasons though. They would be spin-offs. It was developed to help fight and win wars.

The most amazing thing to me in the article referenced above is;

"America relies heavily on space and missile forces for its national defense. Military leaders can destroy a target with one GPS-guided bomb that took an average of 648 bombs to destroy in World War II," added Col. Mark Owen, 45th Space Wing commander at Cape Canaveral and Patrick Air Force Base. "This satellite will join a constellation that is playing a stellar role in ensuring U.S. war fighters have the tools needed to continue to fight and win today and in the years ahead."

Six hundred forty eight bombs? Whoa... That's a lot of bombs. How do I know that? I used to be a worker bee for a bunch of F-4C's dropping bombs over North Vietnam. An F-4 could carry eighteen 500 pound, seventeen 750 pound, or eight 1000 pound bombs. The F-4 was often compared to the WWII B-17 bomber (think 12 O'Clock High, although those were B-24's). The F-4 carried slightly bigger, but similar bomb loads to the B-17. To carry a single bomb that would replace 648 bombs carried in a WWII plane like the B-17 would mean that for dropping 500 or 750 pound bombs, there would be about one thirty-sixth of the flights required. That's huge. We flew flights day and night, dropping as many bombs as we could (until we ran low). Many of them may have been just for effect, but that's what we did.

I'm glad these guys are on my side.