Image: Shutterstock
What’s new: A Mark Berkowitz opinion piece on the way forward with GPS (hint – it is not R-GPS).
Why it’s important:
- R-GPS would be billions of dollars.
- What to do with the existing GPS constellation is also an expensive and current topic of the moment.
- GPS will be around and essential for decades, we must find the best way to maintain it, as we explore alternative and complementary technology that, when implemented, will take the bullseye off GPS and make satellites and signals much less attractive targets.
What else to know: Mark was the primary author of a National Security Space Association paper we sponsored: “America’s Asymmetric Vulnerability to Navigation Warfare: Leadership and Strategic Direction Needed to Mitigate Significant Threats.” It is available at our website Library or directly here.
Defense Opinion
Restoring the U.S. Advantage in Satellite Navigation
The United States has ceded its leadership position in space-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), with stark ramifications for most all U.S. critical infrastructures and the U.S. military.
The Global Positioning System (GPS), which is owned and operated by the U.S. government, is vital to America’s well-being, prosperity and security in an increasingly competitive and dangerous world. The majority of the current satellite constellation is comprised of old space vehicles, with the oldest launched in the 1990s. Of the 31 satellites in the current GPS constellation, only seven are the more advanced GPS IIIs with better accuracy and the civilian L1C signal, which enables interoperability between GPS and international satellite navigation systems.
China’s Beidou and Europe’s Galileo satellite systems not only have surpassed GPS, but GPS is vulnerable to a variety of threats such as jamming and spoofing –sending false signals to receivers in place of valid ones.
