GPS, or Global Positioning System, has become for the 21st century what bloodhounds and used to be for police forces and bread crumbs were for Hansel and Gretel: both a way to find a person or target, and a way for a person to keep from becoming lost. GPS uses its “eyes in the sky”, a group of twenty-one operating and three backup satellites in orbit nearly twelve thousand miles above the Earth, to interpret the signals sent from GPS devices down below.

GPS translates those signals into information about the latitude, longitude, and altitude of the device that sent it, and beams the information back to a GPS receiver in the same device. The whole operation is done in split seconds, accurate to within five meters, and is the result of over three decades and twelve billion (and rising) dollars spent by the US Department of Defense.

Military GPS Applications

While the DoD initially installed GPS systems in their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to help them locate their targets with pinpoint accuracy, the GPS technology has now fund applications far beyond its use in weapons systems. The US military used it once again in 1991, during the first Gulf War, when GPS was essential for the mapping of huge uncharted tracts of desert.

Because GPS information can be provided as a readout, interpreted, and printed as a map of the target terrain, it saved the military countless man-hours and risk to the personnel who would otherwise have had to map the desert while airborne. GPS has its defensive purposes as well; it allows a country to monitor the movements of military troops in another country across the globe and to prepare for an attack well lin advance.

Commercial GPS Application

The first non-military use of sGPS was for marine applications; those lost at sea and unable to navigate by traditional means could simply push a button to signal the GPS satellites and have their latitude and longitude appearing on a screen in a matter of seconds. Today GPS is most widely used in the aviation industry, as an aid to routing aircraft.

GPS technology has advanced so much, in fact, that it is now possible for ships’ computers to be linked to a GPS system which automatically navigates to a preprogrammed destination. GPS can function as both s ship’s navigator and captain, although it is highly improbable that it will replace them.

GPS, in both its military and commercial applications, has made the world a much smaller and safe, place!

By: David Faulkner