The Pentagon?????s Brain An Uncensored History of DARPA

[_richardMdBorn]

Has anyone read this book? I reviewed the section on GPS, and she gets almost everything wrong.

[_ludwigm]

Link?

[_richardMdBorn]

Link?

The amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-U ... %27s+brain

Her earlier books on Area 51 and Operation Paperclip were criticized strongly by space historians. Dwayne Day wrote:

Although many reviewers claim that her research on atomic weapons tests and classified aircraft projects in the Nevada desert is well-researched and informative (it isn’t), the part of her book that the critics end up tripping over comes near the end of the 523-page book. That is where Jacobsen claims that children, perhaps as young as 13 years old and genetically or surgically altered by Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele, flew a Nazi “flying disk” into the United States as part of a plan by Joseph Stalin to cause mass panic of an alien invasion. The plane crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The United States then engaged in unethical Mengele-like research at Area 51.

Read that paragraph again. I’ll wait.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1852/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2769/1

I found many errors in the few pages I read from her new book. I've submitted a book review on Steven Johnson's Where Do Good Ideas Come From and Jacobsen's new book to an online space magazine but have not heard if they're interested in it. Here's part of my review:

On pages 249-250, she makes many incorrect statements:

“DARPA’s pioneering GPS program was called TRANSIT.” As mentioned earlier, Transit was the first satellite based navigation system. GPS refers to a later program begun in 1973. Transit was NEVER called GPS.

“After several failed launches, TRANSIT finally took up residence in space in June 1963. To deny enemy access to this kind of precise targeting information, the system was originally designed with an offset built in, called selective availability (SA).” Selective availability was a degradation of the civilian signal for GPS. It was not used on Transit, which was much less precise.

“In 1973, the Pentagon ordered DARPA to create a single system shared by all the military services.” On April 17, 1973, Deputy Secretary of Defense William P. Clements, Jr., ordered the Air Force to assign a Program manager for a Joint Program Office for the Defense Navigation Satellite Development Plan (later called GPS). It was to be a joint Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force Program Office. DARPA was not mentioned because it played no role in the 1973 JPO. Later, DARPA played a role in funding development of miniaturized receivers, but it DID NOT create the 1973 synthesis of the Navy’s Timation and the Air Force’s 621B programs.

I can give more details if there's interest. She repeated the incorrect assertion that DARPA created GPS in a talk given at the Spy Museum in DC. It's at about 28 minutes into the program
http://www.spymuseum.org/multimedia/spy ... ch-agency/