Schriever houses the master control station used to determine U.S. Air Force Space Command based at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. Anthony Mastalir, vice commander of the 50th Space Wing, U.S. forces in the Gulf War, primarily to address the age-old question of where am I, and where am I going?” says Col. “The introduction of GPS was particularly timely for U.S.

Clearing Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait, however, required ground fighting, a daunting prospect for the Coalition members unaccustomed to desert warfare. The weeks-long air offensive unleashed stealth bombers, cruise missiles and laser-guided “smart” bombs on Iraq’s communications networks, weapons plants and oil refineries. and more than a dozen other countries launched Operation Desert Storm. In January 1991, months after Iraq’s invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait put the international community on alert, the U. GPS’s relatively weak signals are often unreliable and susceptible to interference, also known as “ jamming.” This has prompted the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to begin developing navigational aids that function when satellite access is unavailable. The navigation system has become so ubiquitous, in fact, that the Pentagon has come full circle and is investing tens of millions of dollars to help the military overcome its heavy dependence on the technology. GPS would change warfare and soon became an indispensible asset for adventurers, athletes and commuters as well. troops in particular would have had a much more difficult time navigating, communicating and guiding their weapons across the hundreds of kilometers of inhospitable, windswept desert battlefields in Kuwait and Iraq. Without their orbiting eyes in the sky U.S. Although the actual fighting did not take place in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS) played a critical role in the Coalition’s rapid dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s military during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Twenty-five years ago U.S.-led Coalition forces launched the world’s first “ space war” when they drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait.

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