@ Skyjob, and thanks for your support, Okie...
The whole point is if your actual movement across the earth is not the same as it should be with zero airmass movement, then the delta is the wind. That's how our nav system calculated the wind values we would provide to the ATC guys. In those days, we would frequently see over 100 knots of wind at 20,000 - 25,000 feet during the winter in the Washington Center area and somewhat south. Our system also calculated true airspeed using the same algorithms, although we had an air data computer that was supposed to do the same thing. So on crossing the pond with a tanker, the tanker nav would ask us for TAS and ground speed and such. He would also ask for lat/long at a time hack. A minute later, we would notice a slight heading change and cracked up. The whole time we were looking at our steering "bug" in the HUD that was slightly off of our heading. The new heading centered the "bug", LOL. Was amazing that our system was so advanced to what the tankers had at the time.
If we knew the movement of the airmass, then it was easy to calculate our speed thru the airmass Equations upon request, but haven't done a lot of this since 1996 or so. Granted, the value we get would not be very accurate for a few seconds, but what the hell. The inertial is extremely accurate for milliseconds of velocity/flight path data. But for nav ya gotta smooth it out, and that takes a second ot two for all the Kalman filters to do their magic.
Mach is harder to calculate even if you know speed thru the airmass, and a basic inertial/GPS will provide altitude within 100 feet or so. Problem is temperature, and mach is directly related to the OAT ( outside air temp), just talk to a SR-71 pilot or nav.
Just thot I would add to all the other proposed widgets to back up the pitot tubes.