[Az-Geocaching] (LONG) Shamelessly Purloined from the New York Times

[Regan Smith]

lo-jack

explained :)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Team Tierra Buena" <teamtierrabuena@earthlink.net>
To: "Arizona Geocaching" <az-geocaching@listserv.azgeocaching.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 11:24 PM
Subject: [Az-Geocaching] (LONG) Shamelessly Purloined from the New York
Times


> I believe access to the link of the "Times" article below is by
> subscription only, so forgive me if my posting the entire item is
> hogging your bandwidth. At least it's nominally on-topic.
>
> Every time I violate copyright law in this way I am reminded of this
> wonderful lyric:
>
> "Plagiarize!
> Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
> Remember why the Good Lord made your eyes, so don't shade your eyes,
> But plagiarize! Plagiarize! Plagiarize!
>
> Only be sure you should call it, please... research."
>
> Tom Lehrer
> "Lobachevsky"
>
> Steve
> Team Tierra Buena
>
> ========================================================================
> =
>
> April 17, 2003
> On the Ground in Iraq, the Best Compass Is in the Sky
> By SETH SCHIESEL
>
>
> On an afternoon early this month, in the desert near Najaf, Iraq,
> elements of an elite United States Army unit received word of a column
> of almost 60 vehicles, including about two dozen tanks, moving along a
> nearby road.
>
> Some of the soldiers thought it could be Saddam Hussein's Republican
> Guard.
>
> Then a general in his Humvee leaned over to a computer console that is
> part of a satellite-based navigation system called FBCB2. He tapped in
> the military grid coordinates where the mystery force was located. Then
> on the screen, up popped the little blue symbols that represent friendly
> units, rather than the red icons that the United States military uses to
> designate enemy forces.
>
> It was not the Republican Guard. It was a separate United States
> division.
>
> During the cold war and even the 1991 Persian Gulf war, satellite
> technology was not an everyday part of the lives of foot soldiers or
> even generals. But in the Iraqi desert, satellite technology -
> specifically the Global Positioning System, or G.P.S. - has become a
> fundamental and pervasive navigation tool for ground forces.
>
> G.P.S. gadgetry has become almost as much a part of army life as shovels
> and cigarettes - whether integrated into vehicles in advanced systems
> like FBCB2 (often referred to as "blue-force tracker"), used in the
> hand-held receiver known to soldiers as the Plugger, or even bought off
> the shelf.
>
> "Primarily the way that G.P.S. technologies have changed the way the
> army can perform its mission is it has given us a more accurate way to
> navigate the battle space," said Lt. Col. William S. Harborth, the
> Army's product manager for Global Positioning System technology.
>
> That means the devices simply help soldiers figure out where they are.
> Perhaps even more important, the ability to define location precisely
> can help soldiers figure out where other units are.
>
> "Increased accuracy is more important because if you know better where
> you are, you can ensure that you reduce fratricide," Colonel Harborth
> said. "In the old days, there was some human error in determining your
> location on the ground."
>
> Satellite navigation continues to be crucial for long-range weapons like
> cruise missiles, and G.P.S. is essential in the sort of unmanned
> aircraft that saw their first broad deployment in Afghanistan. In
> contrast, the main such tool among ground troops, the Plugger, is in
> some ways less sophisticated than gear found at Wal-Mart or in rental
> cars - its utility in traversing the open desert diminished as forces
> entered urban areas, for example, since roads and landmarks are not
> programmed into it.
>
> Still, the increasing use of satellite-based systems for navigation -
> and for "situational awareness," in military parlance - is one of the
> biggest changes in United States ground operations since the 1991 gulf
> war.
>
> During that war, the Global Positioning Satellite network was in its
> infancy, and among front-line units, a single G.P.S. receiver might be
> allotted to an army company, perhaps numbering 180 soldiers in the
> infantry. Now the Army says that it has more than 100,000 Pluggers (the
> name is derived from the initials for their full name, PLGR for
> Precision Lightweight G.P.S. Receiver). In Iraq, the leader of each
> combat squad, which might include nine soldiers, often has a Plugger at
> hand; in some Army units, Pluggers are even more numerous.
>
> The Marines have adopted the technology more cautiously. Matthew Brandt,
> the Marines' project manager for G.P.S., said the corps had purchased
> only about 5,400 of the units and generally deployed them at the platoon
> level. (A platoon might include three to five squads.)
>
> That may be one reason that at least some marines are carrying their own
> civilian-grade G.P.S. devices from home. The civilian devices, made by
> companies including Garmin International, are typically smaller than
> Pluggers and, though not quite as precise as Pluggers, are apparently
> sufficient for everyday purposes.
>
> Those purposes can be as trivial as finding the chow line. Before the
> shooting started in Iraq, some soldiers in front-line units were using
> their Pluggers to navigate through the dark and sand to the mess tent.
>
> As with most technologies, however, satellite navigation is only as
> useful as the human intelligence guiding its use. For instance, in late
> March an American military detachment was sent to pick up some prisoners
> near Najaf. The soldiers were told the coordinates of the captives.
>
> Their Plugger unit worked fine and the soldiers reached the coordinates.
> But they did not find the prisoners there. Instead, they came close to a
> mortar attack. The human intelligence had failed, not the device.
>
> And even with the growing use of satellite navigation devices, there are
> gaps. A prominent setback for the Army in the early days of the war was
> the ambush of members of the 507th Maintenance Company near Nasiriya,
> Iraq, in which eight soldiers were killed. A private captured in the
> confrontation, Jessica D. Lynch, was later rescued, and five others
> taken prisoner were found alive north of Baghdad on Sunday.
>
> The Nasiriya episode, which occurred while the soldiers were traveling
> in a convoy of trucks and other vehicles, was initially attributed to
> their having taken a wrong turn off a major highway. The Army has
> refused to comment publicly on precise details of the incident, and more
> recent accounts indicate that the convoy was ambushed after having
> stopped to repair vehicles.
>
> But a technology expert with the American forces in the region and a
> civilian expert on military G.P.S. both said it was unlikely in any case
> that the captured unit had a G.P.S. device on board.
>
> While Plugger units are almost ubiquitous among front-line combat units,
> they remain less common among units like maintenance companies, which
> are not generally meant to engage the enemy.
>
> Even soldiers who have Pluggers are relying on devices that are in some
> ways primitive compared with their civilian counterparts. It is a
> curious position for the Pentagon, the driving force behind the creation
> of the constellation of 24 G.P.S. satellites in the 1980's and 90's.
>
> The Plugger devices remain largely unchanged since their initial
> deployment in 1994 (although their cost has fallen from about $2,000
> each to less than $1,000), and for many purposes, the relatively scant
> information they provide is sufficient. Soldiers can specify their
> destination, and the unit will tell them what direction to go. Using
> encrypted satellite signals reserved for government use, they are
> accurate to within roughly 10 yards, compared with 20 to 25 yards for
> civilian devices.
>
> Built for resilience in combat, they are big (roughly the size of a
> small shoebox), heavy (about 2.75 pounds) and have a small text-based
> display incapable of showing maps or other information. In general, the
> units, which are made by Rockwell Collins, display only location,
> velocity (if the unit is moving) and time.
>
> Civilian G.P.S. devices like the NeverLost system in Hertz rental cars,
> in contrast, are often able to display maps and other information.
>
> The advanced graphical FBCB2 system used in Army combat vehicles, in
> contrast, allows commanders to electronically "see" broad swaths of a
> battlefield. In the version of FBCB2 known as "blue-force tracker,"
> far-flung United States units not only receive their location
> information from G.P.S. but also communicate with one another using
> other classified satellite systems. Other versions of FBCB2 units
> receive their location from G.P.S. but communicate with one another
> using land-based radio.
>
> (In either case, the system is connected by cable to a Plugger, which
> serves as the actual location-detection device. In fact, more than half
> of the Pluggers in the Army are not used in a hand-held mode. Rather
> they are used as "slave'' location-detection devices for other systems,
> which include air-defense batteries in addition to FBCB2.)
>
> FBCB2, which has been in development since 1997, has been deployed in
> practically every tank and Bradley fighting vehicle in the Fourth
> Infantry Division, said Michael Lebrun, deputy director in the Army's
> command, control, communication and computers office. Elements of the
> Fourth Infantry, which in some ways is the most technically advanced of
> the army's infantry divisions, are on the way to Iraq.
>
> The FBCB2 system displays the location of similarly equipped units in
> the area as blue icons. When any of the units spot enemy forces, they
> enter their location into the system. They are then displayed as red
> icons, and that information is relayed to other FBCB2 trackers.
>
> Mr. Lebrun said that over the last seven or eight months, FBCB2 was
> deployed to other army divisions, though generally company by company. A
> tank company might include three platoons, each with four tanks.
>
> For foot soldiers without access to the FBCB2, however, satellite
> navigation usually means getting their location from the Plugger and
> then using a paper map to plot their location manually.
>
> That is why the Pentagon is ordering a new generation of hand-held
> G.P.S. devices, to be known as DAGR, pronounced "Dagger," for Defense
> Advanced G.P.S. Receiver. Rockwell Collins is competing with Raytheon
> for the right to produce the new system, which is scheduled to reach
> everyday soldiers next year. The Pentagon is to pick the winning company
> in September.
>
> "Plugger is about 12 years old, and if you can make an analogy to the
> commercial electronics marketplace, just think about your cordless phone
> you had at home 10 years ago versus now," said Mark Youhanaie,
> Raytheon's strategy director for G.P.S. products. "Now, we can make
> these receivers more accurate. We can acquire the satellite signal more
> quickly. It has higher jam immunity, and we can give you that all in a
> package that is a quarter of the size of the old Plugger system."
>
> For now, it appears that the Rockwell Collins contender is a bit smaller
> than Raytheon's, while Raytheon's boasts a bigger screen. Whichever
> company wins, however, the Dagger will weigh only about a pound and will
> be much smaller than the Plugger. Perhaps most important, the new
> devices will allow soldiers to see not just lines of coordinate numbers,
> but also a map that shows their location in relation to objects like
> minefields, rivers and enemy positions. The units will also incorporate
> graphical user interfaces.
>
> Drawing a comparison to generations of computer operating systems, Steve
> Jones, the Rockwell Collins marketing manager for land navigation
> products, said that "Plugger is DOS, and Dagger is Windows."
>
> By plugging the Dagger system into a military radio, soldiers may be
> able to display their location on the screens of nearby Dagger units or
> more advanced FBCB2 systems, Mr. Jones said.
>
> The Dagger devices, which are meant to initially cost about $2,000 each,
> will be more advanced than the Plugger in other ways as well. While the
> Plugger receives its encrypted signals at 1,575 megahertz, the band also
> used for civilian G.P.S. devices, the Dagger will also be able to pick
> up signals at the government-only 1,227-megahertz band, allowing for
> additional accuracy. The 1,227 band is now used largely for military
> aircraft, cruise missiles and other airborne systems, military officials
> say.
>
> The new system will also track all 12 G.P.S. satellites in each
> hemisphere at once. The old units can only track five satellites at
> once, and signals from four satellites are required to establish a
> three-dimensional position. In addition, current G.P.S. receivers are
> somewhat vulnerable to enemy equipment that beams false G.P.S. signals
> to indicate the wrong location, a technique known as spoofing.
>
> The Dagger is meant to include classified technology that will help the
> device verify that the signal it is receiving is actually coming from a
> United States G.P.S. satellite.
>
> It is still unclear just how many of the new devices will reach United
> States soldiers. "The plan was to replace all of the Pluggers in one
> year,'' said Mr. Brandt of the Marines, "and of course that depends on
> how much money Congress decides to give us, which is never certain."
>
> But no matter how many are ultimately deployed, the new devices are
> meant to give the soldiers perhaps the most precious commodity on the
> modern battlefield besides life itself: information.
>
> "The key is greater situational awareness for our soldiers so we bring
> them home alive," Colonel Harborth said. "That's it."
>
>
>
> Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
>
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