Don't throw away your paper charts! - GPS failings to come

...courtesty of Sail World

A report just out by the Government Accountability Office(GAO) of the USA has revealed significant issues with the future of the GPS world wide system, currently provided free by the USA. The report is entitled 'Significant Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading Widely Used Capabilities' and was released last week.

The GAO was asked to do the study because of the crucial role that GPS plays in national security, apart from the key tool in commercial applications, including world wide shipping and in all forms of transport. While the air force is in the process of modernising the system, including the acquisition of GPS satellites and the associated ground control systems, the report casts doubt on their ability to carry out this process in a way that will maintain full efficiency.

The report, which is very lengthy, goes on to describe how the likely efficiency of the system will drop significantly in the coming years before suitable satellite modernisation has taken place.

Their report states:
It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new
satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected.

* In recent years, the Air Force has struggled to successfully build GPS satellites within cost and schedule goals; it encountered significant technical problems that still threaten its delivery schedule; and it struggled with a different contractor. As a result, the current IIF satellite program has overrun its original cost estimate by about $870 million and the launch of its first satellite has been delayed to November 2009—almost 3 years late.

* Further, while the Air Force is structuring the new GPS IIIA program to prevent mistakes made on the IIF program, the Air Force is aiming to deploy the next generation of GPS satellites 3 years faster than the IIF satellites. GAO’s analysis found that this schedule is optimistic, given the program’s late start, past trends in space acquisitions, and
challenges facing the new contractor. Of particular concern is leadership for GPS acquisition, as GAO and other studies have found the lack of a single point of authority for space programs and frequent turnover in program managers have hampered requirements setting, funding stability, and resource allocation.

* If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to. Such a gap in capability could have wide-ranging impacts on all GPS users, though there are measures the Air Force and others can take to plan for and
minimize these impacts.

In addition to risks facing the acquisition of new GPS satellites, the Air Force has not been fully successful in synchronizing the acquisition and development of the next generation of GPS satellites with the ground control and user equipment, thereby delaying the ability of military users to fully utilize new GPS satellite capabilities. Diffuse leadership has been a contributing factor, given that there is no single authority responsible for synchronizing all
procurements and fielding related to GPS, and funding has been diverted from ground programs to pay for problems in the space segment.

DOD and others involved in ensuring GPS can serve communities beyond the military have taken prudent steps to manage requirements and coordinate among the many organizations involved with GPS. However, GAO identified challenges to ensuring civilian requirements and ensuring GPS compatibility with other new, potentially competing global space-based positioning, navigation, and timing systems.

What GAO Recommends:

GAO’s recommendations include that the Secretary of Defense appoint a single authority to oversee development of GPS space, ground control, and user equipment assets, to ensure they are synchronized, well executed, and potential disruptions are minimized. DOD concurred with our recommendations.

For the full report, click here

 

You assume that a lot of these 'navigators' had paper charts or can navigate without buttons! LOL There are going to be some Mary Celeste's getting around the joint if GPS fails!

Won't this be interesting if it breaks!

 

so the americans ar not going to be able to guide missiles onto target or control a remote drone in afganistan from texas ....I doubt it

 

I don't know that maintaining the military side of the system necessarily means civilian access will be available.

 

This has been coming down the pipe for a few years now. Even the worst case puts real difficulty in about 5 years. Of course this assumes we'll not replace aging platforms (fast enough) with new satellites. This couldn't be further from reality. With the advent of GPS, there's no way the multitude of GPS dependant industries will permit this to occur, there's just too much money at stake, particularly with the number of delivery systems available world wide. Regardless of the military's inability to get it's head out of it butt with respect to over sight, new satellites will get launched.

In short, don't hold your breath and look for falling hardware. Real world GPS devices will do just fine, possibly with a few areas of less then great coverage. Now the military on the other hand has some real worrying to do, as it's accuracy and coordination requirements are much higher, but the general civilian use devices will fair well.

Yes, we'll be able to guide missiles to target, but they might hit the window sash, instead of flying right into the room.

 

I was told that the only difference between military and civilian GPS was that civilian units cannot decode and correct a random timing error that is thrown into the signal. This has the effect of limiting the civilian units accuracy to a given circumference from the reported location.

 

True, but over years they have increase civilian version to be almost as good as military. They can also vary accuracy of civil version by area so that in a war or crisis they can alter it. Since the beginning I realized how dumb it is to have most of our military gps based. It is so easy to block gps signals either from orbit or locally via ECM that it make no sense for military. I hope that ballistic missiles and strategic bombers are still inertial navigation based.

I hope to fit a vhf/am/fm direction finder on my boat some day as a backup. Sorry to see loran go. I can believe that it cost more to run thatn satellites. I always carry some paper charts to sit down and plan even with computer on my lap. I also use goggle earth alot. Wish I could download it all.

Does anyone make some kind of inertial navigation for boats?

 

I remember that in the first Gulf War they ran short of military spec units so they gave the guys civilian units and switch off "selective availability"... all of a sudden all our civi unit where pin point accurate! Selective availability does not really sound like it describes a "random timing error", but that's what the GPS suppliers told us....???!

 

Yeah, they can control it anyway they want. They can even use it to fool you into think your in wrong location. I have also heard that they are way to determine your location via .... Can't say more...

 

LOL... yeah right!

 

Yeah... really...

 

I mostly navigate by looking where I'm going and knowing about where I'm headed. Sure, GPS is a nice toy. But, I can't really imagine ever taking a long trip with that as my only form of navigation. That said, I usually carry three of the things (GPSs), and leave my sextant and charts in their nice waterproof boxes.

 

GPS doesn't transmit, how can they get a fix on it? Its not like a cell phone! Also if they are fooling with position they couldn't do it with any precision, they'd have to jigger with a whole satellite, which would effect a whole swath of people.

That is not making a whole lot of sense to me, you'd really need to explain the how before I buy that one.

Cheers
Z

 

You don't really need to move the satellite. If you think about it, you can vary the shape of the electromagnetic wave to make it "look" like the satellite is someplace a little different. This is how you spoof a GPS into thinking it's in a different place or time. Also, a GPS receiver will lock onto the strongest signals it hears - those might not be from a satellite at all - they might be from a transmitter on a plane, boat, spaceship, blimp, large bird, whatever.

You are right, your GPS receiver doesn't transmit anything, so a pure receiver is very hard to "detect" - not impossible but hard. However, the GPS in your cell phone is an entirely different matter. If you're really concerned, be certain to remove the battery from your cell phone, the "off" switch is just a bit of software that can do whatever the programmer tells it to.

B-)

 

Move the satellite? Cripes mate I was thinking about just altering the time data or something a nerd with a keyboard could do in a few secs. Still whatever they do will affect a whole swath of people... as far as I know GPS has no unique signature that it returns/broadcasts so identifying or doing anything with an individual unit (positioning?) is just not possible. A moblie phone on the other hand is as you say a different thing.

I need to have a spurt explain why I'm wrong.... cause my dumb bum can't figure my little GPS beaming position data back to a satellite or anything else that would be practically useful. I dunno, mebe my foil hat is just put on wrong?