Avionics News - September 2023 - 26

HOW BRAD PARKINSON SAVED GPS
Continued from page 24
simplify the GPS user receiver if atomic clocks could be
modified to fly in the high-radiation environment of space.
It wasn't going to be easy to do, but space-qualifying atomic
clocks turned out to be possible. NRL had tried to orbit a
laboratory atomic clock, but it had quickly failed under the
intensity of space radiation.
To move forward with the program, Parkinson wanted
to recruit a hand-picked cadre of about 10 young Air Force
officers/engineers he mostly knew personally. Anyone
familiar with military personnel bureaucracy knows this
would be no easy task. It helps when your boss is a threestar
general who is on a first-name basis with the three-star
Air Force director of personnel. With General Shultz's help,
Parkinson got those 10 officers. Six of the new officers had a
master's degree and four had an engineering Ph.D.
By August 1973, Parkinson was invited to the Pentagon's
DoD Acquisition Review Council, chaired by Dr. Currie, for
an up or down vote on the program. The goal was to gain
approval from the acquisition council composed of senior
officers and civilians. Parkinson stood on a raised podium
and explained the original 621B concept. Once it was over,
he waited for a judgement. Not only was the answer no,
but it was unanimous and looked like the program would
be canceled. Parkinson thought his Air Force career might
be over. The 621B program had advocated a demonstration
configuration using ground-based atomic clocks that would
only service U.S. longitudes. The demonstrator was not to be
the final configuration.
After the meeting, Dr. Currie invited Parkinson to his
office. He told Parkinson to go back and modify the proposal
to the best design he could craft, exploiting technology and
ideas from all sources. He was directed to bring this proposal
back as quickly as possible. Dr. Currie thought it would be
approved. Within two weeks, Parkinson convened a meeting
with his small, hand-selected Air Force team in the isolated
halls of the Pentagon over Labor Day weekend. This became
known as the Lonely Halls Meeting. He did not invite a
representative from NRL.
On that Labor Day holiday weekend in 1973, the
Pentagon parking lot was nearly empty. The air conditioning
was turned off in the largest office building in the world.
Parkinson and his team of a dozen people met in a sweltering
fifth floor office and worked around the clock, eating stale
cheeseburgers dispensed from vending machines.
The principal goal of the meeting was to create a sevenpage
summary for a modified GPS design. Deputy Secretary
of Defense David Packard had recently directed the sevenpage
memo format for major program approvals as part of the
26 avionics news * september 2023
streamlining of Pentagon acquisition processes. Packard was
well known for earlier founding a company called HewlettPackard
in his garage in California.
Parkinson's team had the right stuff - in-depth technical
knowledge of the tradeoffs involved, and insights needed
to make the right choices. Parkinson made the final calls.
The system they invented is flying today, 50 years later,
with the same basic design they described in the Lonely
Halls Meeting:
*
*
There would be 24 satellites orbiting the Earth at
12,000 nautical miles in sidereal-synchronous orbits.
User's position could be derived from four satellites
in view from anywhere in the world. It would be a
passive system with signals sent to user equipment
but no required return signals so the user could not be
detected.
* CDMA would give each satellite a unique identity so
24 satellites could broadcast on the same frequency.
*
*
There would be atomic clocks on the satellites, not on
the user equipment on the ground.
The military would get accuracy of about 3 meters,
and civilians would have initial accuracy of 30 meters.
With so-called differential techniques, these errors
would shrink to about a meter.
With these modified concepts all defined, Parkinson spent
the next three months trying to, at least, convince the key
players in DoD not to say no. In December 1973, the Defense
System Acquisition Review Council reconvened and voted
yes. It was not that everyone in the military liked what they
saw. Many navigation officials in the services liked the
systems they had such as TACAN, VOR, DME, LORAN, etc.
The Air Force was particularly opposed to GPS and no doubt
preferred more airplanes.
By January 1974, GPS had become a Joint Program
Office at the direction of Currie. It was the first all-service
development program in the Pentagon. Parkinson had deputy
program managers from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps,
Defense Mapping Agency and Air Force. He gave each one
a significant task so they would be doing more than just
watching what was happening. Then he drew gasps from his
Air Force colleagues when he invited all his deputies from
the other services to his first major program review by the
Air Force at Andrews Air Force Base. Outsiders had never
been allowed at such a meeting before. The GPS program
was continuing to break new ground for the Department of
Defense.
He had developed a motto that succinctly described the
program's purpose: " Drop five bombs in the same hole and
build a cheap set that navigates. " No one who worked for him
could be confused about the program's objectives.
In all, the program had about 30 officers, supported by a
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