Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Hoog, director of the air planning element for operations in Iraq, says that the time it takes coalition forces to “generate GPS-level accurate coordinates” is classified but “it’s measured in minutes.” Hoog briefed reporters in Baghdad late last week on the specifics of the June 7 F-16 air strike on the safe house of terror leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, saying that the lead F-16 dropped both the GBU-12 laser-guided bomb and the follow-on GBU-38 GPS-aided bomb. With the first bomb, the pilot steered the laser spot onto the target; with the second, the pilot entered the satellite coordinates and the GBU-38 did the rest. Hoog noted that it’s routine for F-16s on patrol over Iraq to carry both munitions. He added that it took perhaps 24 seconds for the bombs to travel the three to 3.5 nautical miles to “successfully hit their target.”
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…