PREFACE One day soon you may see a commercial on television advertising a career which promises to offer you exciting opportunities to travel the world, meet new and interesting people, and take pride in serving your country. No, this isn't an ad for the Army or Marines - it's for JOINT STARS!

CHAPTER 1 - THE CALL TO ARMS The Call to Arms came right before Christmas. It ignited a flurry of activity by the Field Support Office to get the GSMs prepared for deployment to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Desert Storm. The tantamount job of deploying these systems in a very short time was accomplished by the hard work and teamwork of the Motorola Joint STARS personnel, field support team, depot, field engineers, technicians, secretaries, contracts and all others involved.

CHAPTER 2 - THE DEPLOYMENT By the second week in January, four IGSMs were on their way to Saudi Arabia. A 5th IGSM was deployed from England. Along with the GSMs, a group of courageous field engineers was deployed to support the operation and maintenance of these systems during the war. Motorola personnel who were deployed to Saudi included: John Blasi, Jim Cook, Steve Fannon, Todd Frech, David Jacobs, Rick Lasiuk, Ron Nagel, Leonard Pennock, Marty Pietz, Chuck Roose, Brad Sanders, Robert Smith, Ron Staalberg and Jerry Vorwald. Gene Thale and Carey Weiner supported the in-theatre depot operations.

The GSMs were deployed with various strategic operations including the 18th Corps at Rafhah (10 miles south of IRAQ), 7th Corps at Hafir Al Batin (25 miles south of IRAQ), Marine Central Command (just south of Kuwait), and the Army Central Command and TACC centers in Riyadh.

Once the GSMs were operating in the desert theatre, there were many requests by our customer to provide field upgrades to the system. These changes included free text capability, auto-volume search, GDT status display, satellite transmission of SCDL data between GSMs, and others. A team of engineers worked on these upgrades and was subsequently deployed to implement the enhanced operations in-theatre. These engineers included David Jacobs, Todd Frech, John Blasi, Brad Sanders and Ron Nagel. Bambi Carrieres and Bruce Barclay supported the development of these enhancements back at Motorola.

CHAPTER 3 - OUR STORY It was a cold, dreary night in that threatening land of siege. The barren, ominous desert swirled its fine, choking dust among the group of Motorolans who sat anxiously under the foreboding Saudi moon planning their next attack on the IRAQI bunkers. This was the big night - to get Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard Henchmen. "Tonight we must steal the JSTARS aircraft and go in deep" said the lead Motorolan. "Fine" said one engineer, "but we don't have enough parachutes". "Don't need 'em" the rest of the team bravely replied. "Well, just get in quick and kill anything that moves" the leader said. "No Problem, Boss" the team replied in concert, "we're the Motorola Urgent Action Response Combat Team - GSM operators by day, combat trained killers by night".

CHAPTER 4 - OK, THE REAL STORY The trip to Saudi Arabia began with several days of training to prepare us for living in a wartime environment. The guys in Florida were trained at Patrick AFB, but the majority of us were sent through ABERDEEN Proving Ground in Maryland. While at Aberdeen, we were given lectures on subjects like Arab customs and history, counter-terrorism, diseases, poisonous creatures, etc... They clearly emphasized that the Saudi women were hands-off and that there would be no alcohol there (this is where we almost lost half our crew). We received a handful of shots in the arms and elsewhere and were given Malaria pills. They issued Civilian ID cards and Geneva Convention Cards, followed by some lessons on key Arab phrases (We assumed it was in case we were captured and held prisoner. What else would you think given a phrase like 'Tikeh Nuneh Ba Ob Khreleh Bezorg Va Khrube Boyast Ino Begeram' which translates into 'The water soaked bread crumbs are delicious, thank you. I must have the recipe'). Finally, we were issued our military gear, gas masks and chemical suits, and were given training in chemical and biological warfare. We were given three sets of spring-loaded, auto-injection nerve agent shots which we were told to jab into our thighs in the event that we were subjected to chemical attack. "Should we inject it through our clothes?" someone asked. "Yes" the instructor replied, "in fact these injectors will go through anything, except a civilian's wallet, of course".

Upon our graduation from training, we were sent to the MAC (Military Airlift Command) terminal at Dover for our flight to Saudi Arabia. Some of us traveled on C-5 cargo transport planes and others on C141's, but anyway you spell it, MAC is MAC. The noise in the plane was so loud that you had to wear earplugs. There was no movie, so everyone spent their time contorting their bodies to minimize the physical pain of sitting in the jump seats. Some people were lucky and got to lie on the steel floor. We were also disappointed with the in-flight service - we had a stewardess named Bruno who threw box lunches at us and refused to get us beer. So much for Business Class travel.

One engineer reported that upon descent into the Persian Gulf, there was a Red Alert on the ground indicating a SCUD attack. The airplane circled the airport while the passengers were instructed to get their chemical gear out and be ready to use it. "Welcome to Saudi Arabia", the loadmaster said.

Once in Saudi Arabia, there was much work to do. The typical JOINT STARS mission was flown for 8-12 hours each evening. This meant that we worked on the GSM during the day and then conducted tests with the real-time flight at night. The work hours ranged from ~2 to 24 hours daily, with an average of about 16. The field engineers assigned to specific GSMs spent their days supporting and maintaining the operation of the GSM for the military users. Many of our guys worked in GSMs at forward sites near the Iraq and Kuwaiti borders, literally living in the dirt and exposed to potentially fatal circumstances. These men truly deserve an intangible amount of credit and recognition.

Living conditions were for the most part tolerable. Living in Riyadh was like a vacation - hot showers (most of the time), mess tent meals, and a roof over our heads. The time spent in the forward locations was a little more difficult. It meant living in crowded tents (if you had a tent), getting one shower a week (whether you needed it or not) and eating MRE's (Meals - Ready to Eat). The MRE was basically a Bag O' Food consisting of an entrée (for example, cold chicken tetrazine) with other delights of freeze dried fruit, drink mix, toilet paper, etc.. The best way to think about it is to imagine that we all began to crave Motorola cafeteria food. You knew you were sacrificing some element of gourmet cuisine when the MRE had a label stating that it was not for pre-flight consumption. Some of our guys reported inhaling pounds of dirt in their sleep from the blowing dust, but nonetheless claimed it was better than eating an MRE!

Enough of our hellish living conditions. The greatest experience that this trip offered was to see the GSM in action during the war. The GSMs performed almost flawlessly and delivered the promise to provide eye-opening intelligence and targeting capabilities to the military's wartime battlefield operations management. The capabilities which were added to the GSM in-theatre enhanced our success even more by showing our customer and military users our commitment to successfully responding to mission critical requirements as they arose.

The GSM was used mostly for intelligence, but there were times when it was used for targeting. One example occurred when the JSTARS plane was requested to scan an area prior to an offensive operation by helicopters. The GSM detected a battery of SAM (Surface to Air) missile sites via SAR imagery, which was subsequently targeted and destroyed by an MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) operation. The system was also instrumental in winning the war at Khafji where we able to report the numbers of enemy forces present, and also that there were no further reinforcements on the way. This allowed the commanders to properly wage the necessary battle campaign to win that battle with little to no losses.

The most impressive operation of the GSM came during the Ground War. We could actually observe the Ground War in action on the GSM display. You could see convoys of the Republican Guard fleeing to the north, while U.S. and Allied forces came in from the west and north to surround and engage them. A visiting General was given a hard copy of the display showing this activity and he proudly replied "Now that is a historical document". Shortly after that, they were making hard copy prints of the display for General Schwartzkopf. At the end of the war, there were military officers in the GSM painstakingly replaying data into the GSM and making multiple copies of the display. We were somewhat bothered at first that these guys were in our way, but then we found out that these prints were requested by Gen. Schwartzkopf to represent a clear chronology of the Ground War.

Several days later, the cease-fire was announced and we were directed to deploy back to the U.S. On our last evening, we had a cookout with the GSM military operators and most of our field engineers. We ate steaks, smoked cigars, drank warm NA beer (no alcohol) and told good war stories. If you are interested in hearing some of these war stories, just stop any of us in the hall - we offer embellishments by the hour.

The bottom line to this whole event was that the GSM performed beyond all expectations and was recognized by many important people including President Bush, Gen. Colin Powell, Gen. Schwartzkopf, the Congress, the Pentagon, and many others. Everyone who has worked on the JOINT STARS program here at Motorola should take pride in the fact that our system did make a difference. And when that relates to the reduction of lost U.S. and Allied lives - that's a BIG difference! Congratulations to everyone!