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Europe Building Their Own GPS

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the now-to-find-the-needle-in-the-political-haystack dept.

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."

12 of 536 comments (clear)

  1. Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After many years of trying to convince europe its unnecessary, the US still reserves the right to shoot the satellites down if it wants http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vie wArticle&code=20041026&articleId=557

  2. Security by parasonic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service. What sort of blocks are there? Will this be like DirecTV which becomes very easily decodeable after a few years and millions of deployments, or will this be like some of the military satellite signals whose keys change every day?

  3. very old news by Phil246 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We've known about this for at least a year...
    do people not remember the bush administration threatening to use anti-satellite weapons unless europe gave the US the power to interfere with it, jam the satellites and/or switch them off or to a lower resolution mode for certain areas of the globe which they were fighting in?

    1. Re:very old news by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course, people forget quickly. Before the start of Gulf War II, people were whining that Iraq had 6 Rooski-made GPS-jamming devices. Oooooh!

      A few hours and 6 radar-homing rockets later, they were gone.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  4. a VERY OLD dupe wtf? by deadweight · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not only is this a dupe, but I think it is one several times over and also several years old. BTW, if the EU wants to spend billions on a duplicate navigation system, all for the good. I will have a more accurate and more redundant nav system paid for by SOMEONE ELSE for once. Thanks!

  5. Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring? by duguk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Doesn't anyone else see why this would be useful to the Police when they're passively monitoring EVERY VEHICLE?

    See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/21 59244&tid=158&tid=219 if you don't remember!!

    I wonder if its worth building a GPS Spoofer like the one on http://gps.hackaday.com/entry/1234000843061178/

    DugUK

  6. Useful for Britain to Track its drivers per Mile by tezza · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Alistair Darling, the UK Transport Secretary has said that the future of driving is pay per mile.

    There has been a lot of comment about how to pull that off with the limitations of the current GPS.

    This new system will in my opinion be designed to have features to support this.

    Should haves:

    Double blind identification. Your receiver in your car will not be personally identifiable.
    Works better in cities with tall buildings
    Better accuracy
    European control.

    Nice to haves:

    Downloadable content:
    - Congestion alerts
    - Emergency Warnings a la radio interupt
    A government certified connection signal that must be displayed when they ARE tracking you.
    Triangulation compensation with terrestrial mobile masts. If we're gonna have big brother, why not make it accurate?

    My 2p.

    --
    [% slash_sig_val.text %]
  7. Re:please by nnnneedles · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "We could unleash our nuclear arsenal and flatten Europe."

    Well, your post (and others) actually makes it very clear that americans are still scary people and that we should build our own positioning system.

    --
    Will code a sig generator for food
  8. Re:... and the reason is: by franois-do · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Dream on, no major economy in the world, the US included, can decide to just "not do business" with another major economy.

    I am sure you have a demonstration at hand, so I shall wait for it. As a european, I have grown accustomed to people telling us that free trade was the solution for us, while taking severe protectionist measures from their own side, Japan and USA included. "Do what I say, not what I do !" ?

    Both would come crashing down. I'll assume you're European, so let me ask, why do you get off so hard fantasizing about screwing the US?

    Who cares about that ? We are just looking to protect our own interests. Dosn't everybody ?

    You can't do it, just as much as we can't do it to you.

    Well, that has been done with steel and foie gras, just to qote these two examples. Don't you agree ?

    Now let me point out your rampant unemployment, over 8% is it?

    Yes. Which is what you has, as far as I remember, at the beginning of the Reagan era. Unemployment rate come and go, and buying things elsewhere while selling one's capital (and/or making a huge debt, which is not very different) rather than employing one's own people can hardly be described as a good solution, or even as a solution at all.

    So much for planned economies, huh?

    I spent 25 years in a multinational corporation, and while I hate to deprive peoiple of their illusions, I have to inform you that none of them works withour not one, but two plans : a short-term (2 years sliding) plan and a strategic (5-year sliding) plan. As theses corporations are slightly taking the world over (I guess you saw the movie "The corporation"), we shoud assume that planned economy is efficient, when it occurs in a strongly darwinian world.

    I'm an American

    I guess you mean that you are a US citizen. "American" would refer as well to Canadians, Mexicans, Bresilian, people from Argentina and so on)

    and have nothing against the EU nor its citizens, and I think that's the sentiment of most of our population here (I even invest in your markets!)

    Join the club ;-) So do I (and in fact it does not mean much to say that a Corporation belong to one continent or another. Sooner or later, it will flee where the taxes are smallest, anyway). I am rather gald at the way Air Liquide has been performing in the last 30 years.

    The anti-American attitude coming out of Europe, though, is sickening.

    I shall not enter this arrière-garde fight. Please read "The Economist" of this week (Christmas special), and everything you could say and I could answer is already in it, pages 41-43. Thank you.

    You need us as much as we need you

    But you just do NOT need us. When there was no much cross-border trade between continental Europe and the USA, not only did the USA survive, but they got finally out of their crisis, remember. The only thing that is needed is international cooperation to achieve the right momentum for big investment, no matter with whom. Presently, the cash is in China, and the only reason we are not dealing only with them is their poor management, to say the least, of human rights. On this point, I a pretty sure you will agree this is a valuable reason.

    --
    Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
  9. GPS vs Galileo by kfstark · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The more interesting part of the story is the difference in accuracy between GPS and Galileo. By the time Galileo has enough birds in the sky in 2014, GPS will have included L1C ( GPS Modernization ) which will have accuracy on par with the galileo satellites. Having gone to the planning meetings on the L1C project almost 18 months ago, I can tell you that Galileo was a big topic of conversation and that it drove the choice of signal modulation for the new code.


    This is really old news and extremely complex. The galileo/GPS compatibility was negotiated between the EU and the US State Department over a very long period. The EU deliberately picked an incompatible code to force concessions from the US before the EU consented and went with the better frequency.


    This is a great example of technology driven politics.


    --Keith

  10. Re:... and the reason is: by Alioth · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You may like to accept the degraded (or non existent signal) if the US turns it off, but pilots aren't. Already, there are plans in the US to get rid of most ground-based navaids. Currently, in Europe, GPS is not valid for IFR (instrument flight rules) navigation, because no European country has any kind of guarantee on quality-of-service. It wouldn't be too great, for example, if you were on an instrument approach and >poof, GPS is degraded or turned off just when you really really need sub 5-meter accuracy. Until Europe has its own satellite navigation system, its commercial airlines and private aircraft must rely on many expensive and inaccurate ground-based navaids (for example, you still need an ADF receiver - truly pre-historic, inadequate and inaccurate - to fly IFR in Europe).

    --
    Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  11. Russian System by tomherbst · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The US vs Europe debate fails to notice that there exists an
    operational alternative to the US GPS system. Russia has had a
    working system for years. There are shipping chipsets that do both
    GPS and GLONASS.

    http://www.glonass-center.ru/

    Europe should just slip the Russians a few Euro to keep it running
    and get a contractual agreement on levels of service.