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GPS System to Undergo Jamming Tests
The satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) is becoming ubiquitous for precision position-finding around the world. The latest use, according to an article in the November 23rd issue of The New York Times is an improved navigation system for airplanes. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had planned to replace all ground-based navigation aids with GPS. But to address concerns about reliability, the agency is concerning retaining at least a third of the old system - a network of radio beacons called VHF omnidirectional radio. "VHF Omni" is currently the primary navigation system for both long range navigation and instrument landing.
If GPS were to be widely adopted for civilian navigation, planes could fly much closer together. Small airports would have the same guidance capabilities as larger airports since GPS navigation does not depend on ground-based equipment. But, according to the Times, civilian GPS satellites are vulnerable to jamming. Civilian GPS satellites emit a signal that is much weaker and less spread out than military GPS satellites. Civilian GPS navigation systems have already been accidently jammed several times. [Several sources have advised Data Quality News that the Iraqi military jammed U.S. military GPS during the Gulf War]. Military cruise missiles carry not only GPS navigation systems but inertial navigation platforms and terrain-following radar. Military commanders can also send two or three cruise missiles to destroy a target.
It appears that no one in civil aviation in the United States knows the effect a concerted jamming effort would have upon civil aviation. Civil aviation authorities are planning tests of military jamming capabilities versus civilian GPS but U.S. military and intelligence agencies are not being cooperative. (GPS is also used for precision timekeeping applications, which was not mentioned in the Times article). The article was written by Matthew Wald and appeared on page C1.
FDA Will Require Child Drug Test Data
According to a front-page article in the November 28th issue of The New York Times, on November 27th the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new rules that require drug companies to conduct much wider testing of drugs in children, so the companies can write labels that provide detailed information to doctors and parents. The rules were a top priority for President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton but met strenuous objections from many drug companies, which said the new rules are impractial and burdensome.
The White House replied that drug companies have rarely conducted studies to assess the safety and proper dosage of drugs widely used to treat childhood illnesses. Under the new FDA rules, pharmaceutical companies must study the safety and effectiveness of drugs in children if the product is likely to be used in a substantial number of pediatric patients or if it provides a meaningful theraputic benefit over existing treatements for children of similar ages. The FDA's position is that it is treacherous to extrapolate data from adults. The FDA also determined that the percentage of new pediatric drugs entering the marketplace during the past decade with adequate safety and effectiveness data had not increased.
The new FDA rules (which will go into effect on April 1, 1999) are broad and flexible. Not all new pharmaceuticals will have to undergo clinical trials with children. And unless the drug has an immediate pediatric use, drug companies may defer testing in children until after the completion of adult clinical trials. But the FDA can also compel pediatric testing by age group and may order pharmaceutical companies to develop special pediatric formulations (liquid, chewable, or injectable forms of their products). The article was written by Robert Pear.
DOE Seeks Better Data About Nuclear Weapons
A front page report in the November 28th issue of The Washington Post discussed the U.S. Department of Energy's quest for old and new data about the performance of nuclear weapons, especially for ageing nuclear weapons stored in the nation's stockpiles. With the end of the Cold War, the mission of DOE engineers and scientists changed dramatically. According to the Post, the United States stopped developing nuclear weapons in 1989 and ceased underground testing in 1992. Thousands of Cold War nuclear weapons have been "retired," their non-nuclear components scrapped and nuclear material (uranium and plutonium) stored in special "secure" facilities. There are about 8,000 nuclear warheads in U.S. stockpiles today. The U.S. government is spending about $4.5 billion each year to preserve them.
A major portion of the yearly federal expenditure will go to maintaining the reliability of the remaining weapons. The DOE is taking several approaches, ranging from interviewing the now-elderly scientists who designed most of them to purchasing supercomputers to simulate the implosion - and explosion - of ageing nuclear bombs and warheads.
The DOE currently has at least three mainframes on-line that are capable of performing about 3 trillion calculations (3 teraflops) per second. The ultimate goal is to produce a 100 teraflop system by 2004. The contractor for the DOE's latest 3 teraflop machine (code-named "Blue Mountain") is Silicon Graphics, Inc. This mainframe consumes a large amount of floor space, memory, power, and cooling water, according to the Post. [Editors Note: It is obvious that such mainframes, and their successors, can be used to produce synthetic feature-length motion pictures, to decrypt messages encrypted with "keys" hundreds of characters in length, to accurately model worldwide weather systems, to model complex molecular, biomolecular, and genetic processes, and to design advanced nuclear and conventional weapons].
In addition to constructing advanced computers, DOE physicists and engineers at Los Alamos, Sandia, and elsewhere are attempting to determine exactly what decisions were made by those who developed the nuclear weapons currently in stockpiles, are preserving and enhancing test data from decades of nuclear weapons tests, and are simulating data about how stockpiled nuclear weapons would detonate after years in storage. The article was written by Post staff writer Mark Leibovich.
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Comments: dqemail@aol.com (1998-11-22)