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What’s new: The National Security Space Association posted a paper by RNTF board members Hon. Greg Winfree (chair), Gen. William Shelton, and CAPT Dana A. Goward about budget claims and decisions made in the 2000’s that still haunt and hurt the nation today
Why it’s important: The U.S. lags far behind our principal adversaries, China and Russia, in the ability to withstand loss of satnav signals. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Marc Berkowitz has written that this gives them significant strategic and tactical advantages, including the ability to use “GPS blackmail” against us.
What else to know: Winfree, Shelton, and Goward are retired from senior positions in the Department of Transportation, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security, respectively.
Decades-old budget lies still harming National Security
Retired DOD, DOT, and DHS senior officials warn about lack of GPS backup
It’s 1977 and the wild idea to build a Global Positioning System, GPS, is in trouble. The Navy is saying, “We already know where we are.” The Air Force says, “We have plenty of nav aids.” The Marine Corps and Army: “Don’t need it.” The Undersecretary for Research and Engineering at the Department of Defense is a believer, though, so the first of many sizable budget requests to build GPS is on Capitol Hill. Appropriations staff are confused by mixed messages coming from the Pentagon.
They approach a young House Intelligence Committee staffer, Martin Faga, who has just left an intelligence collection job with the CIA. What does he think? Faga observes that the same satellites will also have the nation’s sensor network to detect a nuclear detonation anywhere on the planet. So “yes,” definitely needed. GPS goes forward to be a roaring success for both the military and the nation’s economic prosperity—not to mention being one of America’s best gifts to the world.
Nearly 50 years later GPS has become an indispensable utility supporting not only transportation but invisibly underpinning virtually every technology and application with its timing and location data. It is so indispensable, a member of the National Security Council called it “a single point of failure” for America.
Over-dependency on GPS should be a grave concern to policy makers, indeed, for every American. GPS signals are weak and easily jammed. And, because we wanted GPS to be our gift to the world, we published the signal specification. This wasn’t a big problem initially, but today any reasonably skilled hacker can imitate or spoof GPS signals and make you think you are somewhere you are not. Conflict zones see daily jamming and spoofing. And it’s happening in the U.S. more and more.
None of these vulnerabilities and problems are a surprise to those involved in the early days of GPS. “We knew the weak signal would be a problem, probably sooner rather than later. And we knew that eventually our adversaries would be able to spoof the signal,” said one prominent figure. “It was inevitable and unavoidable.”
