Image: Copilot AI
What’s new: An article that highlights:
- How PNT is a tool in great power competition. In this case the new more capable BeiDou vs the widely adopted, older, and less capable GPS.
- China seeking and gaining influence at the expense of the West, especially the U.S.
- China’s much more proactive efforts to connect with users and advocate for BeiDou than the U.S. does for GPS
- How PNT is essential to infrastructure and the influence that gives providers.
Why it’s important:
- If BeiDou replaces GPS as the first reference/ benchmark for PNT the engineering and technical implications in receivers, systems, and applications will be significant. This will be accompanied with a less tangible but equally important loss of status and regard for U.S. industry generally.
- For four decades GPS has been a point of political pride and influence for the U.S. If it is significantly supplanted by BeiDou, this will contribute to China’s chipping away at the West’s hegemony.
What else to know:
- The article cites several events as contributing to China’s motivation to create BeiDou.
- The U.S. “Star Wars” initiative in 1983 (a Golden Dome-like project)
- The 1993 “Yinhe Incident“ when the U.S. jammed GPS for a Chinese ship suspected of carrying chemical weapons forcing it to anchor
- 1996’s “Unforgettable Humiliation“ in which China claimed the U.S. interfered with GPS causing it to lose two missiles it fired in an attempt to intimidate Taiwan.
- PNT is essential, and while current GNSS systems at MEO can be improved, these seem to have reached a point of diminishing returns. If the U.S. and the West is to counter China’s growing influence in this area, more innovated approaches are available and needed. Things like PNT from LEO and sovereign terrestrial systems that can work with GPS and Galileo, but also provide nations a degree of control and involvement in their PNT infrastructure.
- The article references a 2023 paper by the Harvard Belfer Center that discusses China’s PNT diplomacy more broadly.
China’s Push for Satellite Cooperation in the Middle East
By investing in relationships with scientists in the region, Beijing is seeking to fortify its own BeiDou system and drive growth, offering potential lessons for Washington.
In late September, China hosted the fifth China–Arab states BeiDou Cooperation Forum. Launched in 2017 with scientists from the Arab League and the China National Space Administration, the forum is designed to advance the compatibility and uptake of China’s BeiDou satellite system.
BeiDou is one of several such global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) in operation around the world today. Others include the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), India’s Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), and the European Union’s Galileo. These systems, while developed primarily for their defense capabilities, also have numerous important civilian applications for agriculture, fishing vessels, civil aviation, consumer electronics, and more.