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Air Force pulls controversial TV spot

The Air Force has temporarily pulled a television advertisement depicting a missile destroying an American satellite.

The blogosphere lit up with criticism of the ad’s narration, which said that a single missile could knock out cell phone calls, television programming and GPS navigation. The ad, which ran on CNN and online, was part of the Air Force’s new “Above All” recruiting and public-relations campaign.

The service does not appear to be backing away from the ad’s fiery visual or its premise that Americans are more vulnerable than they realize to attacks on U.S. satellites. The Air Force plans to bring the ad back with a new story line, said Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Morshe Araujo.

“The Air Force stopped airing the spot due to a misleading statement about the ability of a single missile to take out multiple satellite capabilities,” Araujo said, adding that new language is under review. “We’re looking at the story board and making sure it doesn’t have any misleading statements.”

The service completed pulling the ad May 14.

In the ad, which still appears on the YouTube.com Web site, a satellite floats above the Earth while a narrator warns: “What if your cell-phone calls, your television, your GPS system, even your bank transactions could be taken out with a single missile? They can.” The satellite then explodes.

GPS experts said it is true that cellular-phone communications and bank transactions would crash without timing signals from the Air Force’s GPS constellation. The precise timing signals ensure that millions of communications do not collide with each other as they course along crowded airwaves and fiber-optic cables. But several GPS satellites would have to be destroyed to disrupt those services, they said. The same thing could be accomplished, though temporarily, if an enemy were to use ground transmitters to jam GPS signals at key communications installations.