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Europe Building Their Own GPS
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that Europe is planning to build their own satellite-navigation network that will be backward and forward compatible. There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)! Provision is also being made for a search and rescue mode where a signal can be sent to confirm that help is on the way. The system will supposedly even work with existing US network after upgrades to the network."
Galileo is not a new development, its been under development for a few years and both the Russians and the Chinese are involved. The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it in the event they need to disable it during military action against someone. Great eh?
I like one of the systems..
" Public regulated Encrypted; Continuous availability even in time of crisis; Government agencies will be main users "
So they can shut down the public free systems.. or degrade them "in times of crisis" or they wouldn't put this in the system.
I wonder who will decide this?
Ofcourse, now the US has the control to disallow access in a warlike state with any country depending on the GPS tech for warfare or anything really. Which gives them ultimate control.
The US always has been nervous with anyone being able to dominate them or to get from under their control, even if such a move of the EU wouldn't be directly motivated by military purposes (the EU has been going away from an offensive army a long time ago and formed towards defensive and humanistic purposes), but maybe more by independance from US's powers. It's a pure dominating position the US strives to embody it seems. If it'd be looked like that (a military move) the US really should start to do some self-reflecting.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Uh...no, I don't recall that... would you care to back that up with a reference? Otherwise I'll just assume you trolling.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
While I agree largely with what you've said, it does raise some issues. First, it's not just Europeans that need Galileo. Everyone in the world will reap the benefits of a civil-run positioning system that isn't controlled by the Pentagon. Second, I think it is well within the bounds of sanity to question if it is needed. Yes, the reason you quoted is quite valid: the US government could mess with the GPS in the future and it's always nice to have an alternative system to balance it. But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while. Think of it like you think of a computer purchase (since this is Slashdot). With Dell, you have two notebook options: the Inspiron which is cheaper and less reliable, and the Latitude which is more expensive and more reliable. Which do you buy? For my use of GPS (which is limited to car navigation), it's not a big deal if the accuracy degrades and it really isn't even that big a deal if it is turned off - so, I'd have to go back to Mapquest like most of the world (or is it Google Maps that everyone's using today). I, as well as most people I would suspect, would choose price over the small possibility of degraded accuracy or a system lockout. While Galileo is free, nothing is free. It's being paid for with government money and the government money comes from people. Oh, and the article does mention that Galileo might be degraded or shut off in the most extreme circumstances and, to my knowledge, the United States hasn't been messing with GPS much if any. I hate a US hegemony as much as anyone, but Galileo is expensive (I think those billions could be better spent on thins like, say, treating Aids) and the US hasn't done anything (to my knowledge) with the GPS yet to make me too worried and even if the US does mess with it for non-mission critical things (like my car's nav system) temporarally, it isn't a big deal (not a big enough deal for me to want to spend $3-4bn on it). Yeah, using the GPS puts us all at the will of the Pentagon for our navigation needs, but creating an alternative is expensive and in my opinion more expensive than the freedom from the Pentagon's management is worth.
The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it
(To stop all US comments about why we Europeans don't need this) Galileo will be a civil system. It will be run by a private consortium and will offer guaranteed levels of service
Such statements are either naive or deceptive. I expect more from you sophisticates. What do you think China will do with 1 cm accuracy? Track Pandas? No, they will develop Galileo guided weapons and giving them further options in Taiwan, Kashmir, and even Siberia. All possible for a pitance of a few $100M. Galileo creates a strategic threat to the US and countermeasures will have to be developed. I can assure you there will be nothing guaranteed about service levels if the system is used to attack US interests.
an ill wind that blows no good
The United States is unlikely to change or shut down GPS, because of the vast market penetration it has. The "but they could so we should build our own" is a little silly. We could unleash our nuclear arsenal and flatten Europe. We could withdraw all our trade and let Europe flounder on its own. We could even invade and take control of Europe. The only thing is we just don't do crazy things like that (shame on the first person to replay using Iraq as an example). As with ICANN, we've been running GPS for quite awhile and it hasn't been a problem yet. While we could shut the internet off at any time, its a bit silly to count that as anything more than the most remote of possibilities.
Wow... lots of good info on the subjects of US militarization of space and on the US's opposition to an unjammable version of Galileo (which was eventually changed as you point out in one of your links). Actually what I was looking for was a reference that the US would specificly shoot down Galileo satellites merely for being deployed, which is what the GGP seemed to be suggesting. Interesting, another comment in this thread found an article that was pretty close.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Talk about the ultimate terror weapon "country X, give up ________ or our GPS guided weapon will hit elementary school Y", etc., etc. Somehow I don't think that the free world --or even the non-free countries of the world, for that matter -- has much worry that the US military is going to ever do or be allowed to do something like that, do you?
;-)
US: "Iraq, give up your WMD or our GPS guided weapons will hit everything".
Iraq: "Dude, We don't have any! You've had people here looking for 10 years! We'd gladly turn them over if we had them but we don't. PLEASE DON'T BOMB US!!!!
US: "Whatever! You have till the count of three! one..two..BAMMMMM!
Nope, your right nothing to worry about. The US would NEVER do anything like that
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
I don't know if it is easily hackable, but with a 1m accuracy for the free version I have difficult to find the ones who see a market in hacking this. Of course it's a question of price of the commercial grade version also, but still.
OK let me start by saying that the two parents are being a bit absolutist and silly. YES, an EU-controlled GPS rival is a strategic threat to the US. This doesn't mean that we need to jam it or destroy it. French nuclear weapons are a strategic threat as well, but we don't propose to destroy them, either. We're the strongest power, but not the only power, and the EU (quite rightly) is working to increase their power relative to ours.
Similarly, this isn't some ham-handed reaction to the current administration. European attempts to counter and triangulate against American power date back to, well, the beginnings of American power. Even during the Cold War, European interests occassionally clashed with American interests. France's withdrawal from the NATO command structure in 1966, the Suez crisis, German attempts at appeasement vs the USSR, the "European Approach" to terrorism pre-9/11, conflicts over flyover rights during the Libyan attack, approaches to mid-east peace.... any of these sound familiar? In the 80's, American and Italian soldiers had an armed standoff on a NATO base. We stuck together and papered over our differences because of a larger enemy, but things haven't always been roses.
Post-Cold War, things have changed a bit. In the past, a larger common enemy (the USSR) kept the US and EU mostly at common purposes. Lacking that, ties began to fray. The Clinton Administration didn't initiate any major new foreign policy changes other than good relations for their own sake (for which the EU nations extracted diplomatic and trade concessions). Even then, however, a long-term goal of the franco-german alliance was to assemble a counterbalance to the US.
What's developing isn't emnity; it's just the kind of wary maneuvering that friendly nations normally practice. So of course the EU is rolling their own GPS system. And of course we'll invent countermeasures. This isn't because we hate them, or they hate us, or either of us expects to ever fight. This is the normal hedging of bets and accretion of power that nations practice. The structural issues of power are far more important than disputes of the moment.
You can get this kind of high accuracy from GPS, if you do a little bit of engineering. The more satellites that you can hear, the more accurately you can fix your position. If you incorporate a ground station into your network, you get more substantial improvements in accuracy.
The main problem that I see with GPS is the same with Galileo, or any other satellite system: it doesn't work when the sky is obscured. You really want line of sight to a satellite to communicate with it. That's why GPS has issues in vehicles, cities, and dense forests. To compensate for the forest and vehicle issue, you need to either boost transmit power, or use more sensitive receivers. To deal with the city issue, you need to have more satellite in your constellation. This will work better, until you're in a dense area where the only visible sky is directly above you. The EU isn't going to be able to transmit through buildings...
If Galileo was really about public use, there wouldn't be a private subscriber channel. The system would just put out accurate data to begin with. Why would the EU citizens accept paying billions for this network, just to have to pay for a subscription to actually use its full capabilities?
The US is just like any other country: if at war, it's going to attempt to disable whatever weapons the enemy is using. This is not an unreasonable stance to take, really - in fact, it's sort of the definition of the word "war."
With this in mind, if the EU puts up a GPS constellation that can't be jammed/shut off without simultaneously doing the same damage to the US' GPS constellation, and if the European GPS system is being used by an enemy during an active military campaign, then the US would shoot down the satellites. Alternatively, the EU can design the system such that its use can be denied an enemy without actually destroying the system.
Which do you suppose is preferable?
Is this a "demand?" Sure it is: it amounts to "we can do this the easy way, or the hard way." But the demand is just a reflection of reality, not of malice. If actual open war broke out, the US would do everything within its capacity to win. One of the things in its capacity is shooting down satellites.
By contrast, the alternate position is not reflective of reality. That is: we're going to make available to everyone this neat weapon, and if it's used against you, we expect you to just grin and bear it despite being able to prevent it, because the rules say you should.
Of course, if rules were being followed, there wouldn't be any war...so expecting the combatants to follow rules while engaged is a bit Pollyana-ish.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
It's really amazing how all this cold war rhetorics is dug up again (or has it never died?). Only Russia is no big threat atm so now it's China. I mean, what is it, is it paranoia or is it that US-Politics needs that big evil enemy to distract their people from the problems at home? It's a never ending story, China, Terrorists, evil Communists ... did anything change since McCarthy or do we need to relive all that crap because of 9/11?
Sure, 9/11 was a tragic event, but even more tragic is what was done to the american ideals of freedom and democracy in the name of the "war on terror".
Now what has all this to do with Galileo vs. GPS you may ask. Well, GPS is under US-military control. ATM they're acting like they could throw a fit of paranoia anytime and switch off all civil GPS functionality. Sory, but that's the picture the US government is sending out into the world: self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.
Now you wouldn't trust someone like that with a system your life depends on, but that's exactly what we need: GPS- (or Galileo-) guided navigation systems for planes and ships, fully automated systems relying on accurate GPS-coordinates for positioning, you name it. If it isn't lives depending on these systems it's at least big money.
And no, noone trusts the US to provide a reliable GPS service. They might switch off the system without prior warning because of some perceived terrorist threat (thereby doing more damage worldwide than any terrorist could), they might do it to damage european economy or threaten to do it in some kind of blackmail-scheme, who knows.
And that's why we need Galileo.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
We have come to rely on GPS for so many purposes that turning it off would for practical purposes be an act of terrorism. Ships would lose their way and founder. GPS based emergency services would be crippled. Not to mention tremendous economic impact on systems that are based on having real time positional information for proper operation.
The main thing you'd get with the new system is greater precision on consumer devices.
In a GPS guided bomb, this would enable precision attacks. Typical consumer unit RMS error according to manufacturer specs is within 17m 50% of the time, although in practice 10m is typical with a clear sky (may not happen in urban situations). In most cases, since terrorists are going after relatively soft targets such as civilian buildings or public places with many unprotected civilians, this probably doesn't make much difference.
If you did have a system that needed this accuracy on the order of 1m, you can get it in most places with a free differential signal, by getting a slightly more expensive unit.
Even if GPS is turned off completely, there are many other ways to do the attack, the simplest being a suicide attack. Another method that has been perfected by Iraqi insurgents is using what amounts to a forward observer who triggers the bomb by a cell phone.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to one meter accuracy?
May be we should also shutdown internet, spy phone talks, and stop scientific research - since that research can be used for evil purposes.
Trust?
Thinking forward, what happens when the US decides to do to their GPS what they're trying to do to the Internet, i.e. dictate all possible uses and laws, from music downloading to what you're allowed to say on Wikipedia? What if the US disapproves of a war that the EU takes part in (in the same way that some EU nations disapproved of the Iraq war)? Would the US demand that the war stop or else they'd turn off their GPS system?
Were the situation reversed, would the US pay the EU for such a contract? Not a chance in hell.
Secondly, if you're going to use GPS for it's primary purpose (military), you want redundancy, not a single point of failure for all allied nations. If you'd be willing to pay another country for it, you'd be better off putting that money into another identical system.
And yet again, why should EU companies that require GPS to perform their business be paying a GPS tax to America when they could be paying that tax to the EU instead?
BTW, thought I'd pick apart your post (even though it is irrelevant to my point about need to worry about US use of GPS).
kept up a pretense of having WMD for over ten years
If by "kept up pretense of having WMD" you mean he repeatedly stated he had gotten rid of all the WMD the US gave him and Iraq no longer has any WMD then you may have a point.
and it was Hussein's unwillingness to submit to the UN resolutions to open up his former WMD plants, etc. for inspection that triggered the invasion.
The best rebuttal to this has to be the UN Quarterly report on weapon inspections just before the invasion. Have a read. Not saying Saddam never had some fun screwing with the inspectors, but if the threat of invasion was enough to get him to stop and all this was going forward so well, why invade?
Had the prior Iraqi regime complied without even the months long final warning process (let alone the ten plus years prior), no bombs, tanks, or other assorted objects that go boom would have ever been needed.
According to your own president, this isn't true. Even though they now know there was no WMD, the invasion was still needed because some day Saddam might have decided to maybe make more WMD.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
This is news? This project is at least 2 years old,
codenamed Galileo.
The nerds did not notice?
Im guessing what will happen is that the US will deal with the EU - GPS will be turned off entirely or severely crippled over the EU and Galileo will be turned off or crippled over the US in return. There are gonna be allot more of these systems in the near future, as the technology becomes more commoditized people like Iridium are going to say 'hell why not'.
The only thing in their way will be government action. But even if satellite navigation is strictly controlled, there are so many other forms of navigation you might as well give up trying. Mobile phone networks are starting their own form of positioning (and no viable terrorist target is going to be outside of a mobile network anyway!), you've got aviation VOR/ADF beacons and we're more or less on the verge of a device that you can just program "these are transmitters, theses are their carrier frequencies, these are their co-ordinates, now tell me mine". In the near future everyone will be able to know their position within less than 1 meter using one system or another, there will be a dozen ways to do it, they will all be affordable and no government will be able to stop it. We have to just accept it and move on.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
When a nuclear-armed nutcase talks of turning his neighbors's countries into a "sea of fire", and then starts showing off the weapons capable of doing so, then starts developing ICBMs, I think we should take notice.
You mean when people like this say things like this?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
I'm really not sure where to start...
To begin with, the Galileo system is reputed to have better accuracy. Positional accuracy is, after all, the point of the whole system. So why wouldn't they do it. Furthermore, your reaction to them merely setting up a separate system not controlled by your own government seems to me to be good evidence that were the shoe on the other foot, you'd likely be extolling the virtues of a system not controlled by a foreign country with even more fervor.
As for unleashing our nuclear arsenal, I know you must be kidding. Mutually assured destruction, despite my admitted characterization of it as lunacy during the Cold War, works. France, Germany, England, Russia, etc. have nukes too my friend. All of that is, of course, an argument beyond the simple absurdity of your statement.
As for invading Europe, we can't even control a country with less land area than Texas. What makes you think we could successfully invade Europe and prevail?
And how would the U.S. shut down the internet? Cripple, sure. But I don't imagine there's a big red button in the White House that simply shuts down the internet. We may have developed the core of the internet; but I think that saying we control it is a bit ridiculous.
Finally, you can shake your finger and say "shame on you" all you like. We just did invade a country without provocation or necessity. I'm all for our presence in Afghanistan; but Iraq is a lark. It was the personal agenda of the President, misrepresented and sold to the larger public as a defense of our national security and freedom in general.
Really, take a pill. The Europeans are launching a satellite positioning network. It doesn't rate talk of nuclear war and ground invasions.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Lots of random allegations there. Don't suppose you have any facts to back them up?
.. an invasion of a another soverign nation right?
I'd say that in most Anglo-American legal jurisdictions, if you have the *intent* to inflict harm/kill someone, you can be charged with that as a crime and receive punishment.
Interesting point. Wouldn't you also say in most Anglo-American legal jurisdictions that there is a presumption of innocense until *proven* guilty? Some Iraqi dissitent who wants to be in power telling you rumors would be hersay and not admissable right? Actual concrete proof should be required before something like... I don't know
Now obviously, all the legal nicities of the Anglo-American legal systems cannot always fit in international relations like this in reality. However, if you want to use certain parts of such a system as an excuse for invasion are you allowed to just ignore the other parts?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
If someone goes around carrying something covered-up that looks like a machine gun, refuses to show it to anyone when asked, and gets tackled by police and arrested, it's their own damn fault. Especially if it's someone that broke into a house a while back.
I wouldn't really have a problem with that, but it doesn't really seem a very good fit for what we are talking about to me. With all the inspections and "collateral damage" which comes with an invasion it seems the following would be more fitting.
The guy is known to have been an arms dealer in the past, but every day for a year the police see him carrying this thing which looks like a machine gun and every day the check it and find that it in fact isn't a machine gun. He has also been under constant survalance for the past year and he has never been observed with a gun. Then one day a new rookie cop on the beat (think Dubya), sees this guy with the thing that looks like a gun and asks to see it. The guy is pissed 'cause he gets harrased like this every day and tells the rookie to go eat shit. So the rookie cop sprays down the entire street with gun fire killing tons of innocent people. Then he tackels the guy to arrest him.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Doesn't European industry have the same access to the U.S. GPS system that American industry does?
And wouldn't American industry have the same access to the Galileo system as European industry?
If the first is true, than Galileo will have no impact on the current competition situation, unless the second is untrue, in which case it would be Europeans that is trying to get an exclusive competitive advantage, not the Americans. If the second is also true, then Galileo ends up having zero net effect on the current competition situation.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Whoa, wait just a minute. Any student of modern European history would find this statement incredibly ironic. Pot, kettle, black. Get over your self-superior European selves.
News Flash: Americans do NOT want to flatten Europe with nuclear weapons. The funny thing here is, the OP brought it up as an example of an absurd idea. You did an excellent job of demonstrating how to overreact and take things out of context. Bravo.
Here's a better reason: 1cm accuracy combined with guaranteed service quality will mean that the system is a lot more useful in many industries than GPS. I'm a pilot, so I'll use that example: while the grandparent's car's nav system isn't critical the instrument system used to perform zero-visibility landings on 800-passenger airliners is. DGPS with WAAS is already being used to perform non-precision instrument approaches, but the Selective Availability (currently disabled by the pentagon, but could be turned back on at any moment) and accuracy are what's holding it back from being adopted for Cat. IIIC instrument landings. A system with Galileo's proposed features would be way cheaper to install and operate than the ILS systems currently used, would be more accurate, and could even be used on the ground for taxiing in zero-zero conditions (a current major weakness for airliners).
If one uses one's imagination, one can also imagine 1cm Galileo signals taking car navigation systems to the point where they are completely autonomous for highway driving...
O why is it suddenly against the rules to blow up a building housing the financial nerve centre of your enemy but its not against the rules to bomb car factories and TV studios in Serbia and hospitals in Iraq,Libya,Afghanistan and Sudan.
Americans are such pussies. When they are stomping on other peoples rights and generally being dicks it is OK but the first moment somebody hits back they start squaling " Mommy Mommy Terrorist!!"
Face the facts. In war everyone will use whatever they have available. The US has nukes. Their opponents have suicide bombers. The Americans changed the rules of war to win WW2( according to most estimates Japan had 80% of its army intact when the atom bomb was dropped. In a conventional invasion of Japan the US would have lost). The US knew to fight by the rules would lead to defeat and so do America's opponents so they are fighting to rules which benefit them specifically small unit actions behind enemy lines and with no clear rear areas which the enemy can hit. And this is a war America is losing. America can be as pigheaded as Japan and finally surrender or make peace right now. Making peace for America would be very simple. Give up on the artificial idea of Israel and let all the Jews settle in US. Problem solved in one stroke and the country would even save 4 Billion dollars a year which it gives to Israel as aid. Incidentally this is more than the cost of Galileo which people are saying is too expensive.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys
I think it's a bit unfair to assume this is simply about having the coolest toys. From the article you pointed to:
The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.
So even if Galileo were being used against the US, Europe has declared that they will not shut down the system. It shouldn't be too hard to understand that such an extreme position leaves little negotiation room for the US.
And for what's it's worth, I REALLY question this source of information. I don't think any reasonable person would believe that site offers a balanced perspective.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
I'd expect them lower the resolution of the Galileo system or even shut it down temporarily if
1) there is good reason for it
2) the US administration asks nicely
That's two issues right there :
1) Good reason :
It's not that we don't like Americans citizens; it's just that we don't trust your leaders to tell the truth next time around. (eg. I remember a rather embarrasing episode in the UN - Iraq debacle with sattelite imagery of supposed WMD installations.)
2) Asking nicely :
Politeness costs nothing.
Threatening to blow the Galileo sattelites out of orbit in times of conflict is not the best way to go about this imho.
The whole "Don't tread on me" act is not about having the biggest cojones but about respect, and that cuts both ways.
The US gov't can't expect the EU to build this neat positioning system and then just hand them the keys to the kingdom so they can shut it down whenever it pleases them.
In the end, they'll probably hammer out some kind of agreement/protocol after everybody has had a chance to beat their chest and make a lot of noise for the home front. Feh, politicians.
Greeks also took the evolution of their own language in hand. Homere's greek, while perfectly undestandable by Pericles citizens, is not Pericles' greek, the latter being much more rich in verbal forms as in vocabulary. Of course, I expect only people who would not say "It's Greek for me" to understand that :-D
Evolution of a language, whether a computer or natural one, should always be backwards-compatible for user-friendliness reasons. Because many other countries have already understood this, they grinded their own version of this institution. Oh, also we dropped the use of inches and feed a little more than 200 years ago. You might be interested... in some future; like all the rest of the planet, though with a little slowness, as usual ;-)
(Baladeur is a perfect word for french pronunciation, as well as informatique, télématique and logiciel. As far as I know, English has no word for informatique, as it seems to consider that data processing and computer science refer to very different disciplines; one of the reasons why Dassault's CATIA replaced Boeing's CADAM... including at Boeing!)
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Caveat: I'm an American, and a avowed capitalist.
Some points:
1. WAAS plus proper GPS equipment can be as good as Galileo, note that the article claims 10-35cms, not 1 cm accuracy. That's 6+ GPS satellites and WAAS levels of accuracy. Galileo satelites may start out better than GPS, but keep in mind that both constellations require (will require) constant replacement. GPS (and Galileo) will receive constant improvements, but higher accuracy is more a problem of physics (atmospheric interference) and computing power on your device (that 10 year old ARM chip in your handheld GPS can only do so much).
2. The U.S. government has sworn off Selective Avaliability. At the same time, the U.S. government has developed ability to do regional jaming of GPS. *shrug* This is a concern, but a marginal one; I doubt that they'll be turning off GPS signals over London, Paris, or New York anytime soon. Not without having grounded all the planes first.
Having said that:
Galileo is another "GPS-like" system that will be avaliable for FREE. The U.S. government will not have to spend a DIME on it, but we'll have TWICE as many positioning satellites avaliable for our use.
Uhh... Sweetness? Free-stuff? Be happy?
The real advantage will be dual-band receivers that are able to use the signals from both systems. In areas where you can only get 2-3 GPS satellites, you'll get 2-3 of each, which may (or may not) be enough to get you 10> or even 1> meter accuracy.
How, exactly, is this NOT in an American's interest?
And we don't have to pay for it?
Ummm... Groovey?
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!
Redundant, complimentary systems that don't cost us anything more are a godsend. I'm thrilled that Europe is doing this, and everyone not in Europe should be thrilled as well.
The Europeans should be thrilled, but they are permitted a (very slight) grumble at the cost, similar to the grumbles we (Americans) made when the GPS system was developed. Europe is providing a service to the entire global by putting up this system.
Would people complain the same way if Europe (or the U.S.) developed a world-wide free WiFi system?
I think not.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell