Image: YouTube/”Animal House” by National Lampoon

• GPS is a great system. It is the cornerstone of our PNT architecture and will be for decades.

• We must do everything we can to protect GPS and ensure it performs as well as possible.

• We need more than GPS so it isn’t such a single point of failure and attractive target.

• Spinning GPS vulnerability issues harms policy discussions and the nation.

What’s New: A recent article in SpaceNews: “Lockheed Martin challenges narrative on GPS vulnerability – Company executives say the system is more resilient than many realize.”

Why It’s Important: The article downplays a lot of  of civil and military users’ serious concerns. This can impede discussions and decisions needed to make the nation safer.

What Else to Know:

• Lockheed Martin is a big company with lots of money, lobbyists, and lawyers.
• A combination of government and industry folks have, upon at least one occasion, successfully opposed and had cancelled government plans to establish a terrestrial backup and complementary capability for GPS.
• The article makes several questionable assertions and implications. So questionable they seem to us to be false.
  • The title of the article says “the narrative on GPS vulnerability” but the first sentence makes it clear they are only talking about “military users.” How small a percentage of all users are military? How important to the national economy and defense are non-military users?
  • Lockheed Martin (LM) folks say L-5, M-Code, R-GPS, and GPS IIIF satellites (which they make) will fix a lot of problems.
    • Space Force says L5 won’t be at IOC for two years, and FOC will take five years (2029).
    • M-Code has been around since the early 2000’s and military user equipment is still hard to come by.
    • R-GPS, if it is funded, will only start launching in 2028.
    • GPS-IIIF satellites, according to the article, won’t start launching until 2027.
  • Two questions about all these improvements:
    • Will they be enough to protect the nation and our forces from interference with GPS satellites and signals?
    • These programs have been around for a while, some of them for decades. Have our adversaries already adapted to them so the improvements will be countered or less effective than expected?

Lockheed Martin challenges narrative on GPS vulnerability

Company executives say the system is more resilient than many realize