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Lockheed Martin Awarded GPS III
D Ninja writes "Yesterday, Lockheed Martin was awarded the $1.4 billion Air Force contract to build the next-generation global positioning satellite system. This occurred after a series of delays as the Air Force decided between Lockheed and the competing bidding contractor, Boeing Co. 'GPS III, will give new navigation warfare (NAVWAR) capabilities to shut off GPS service to a limited geographical location while providing GPS to US and allied forces. GPS III will offer significant improvements in navigation capabilities by improving interoperability and jam resistance. The procurement of the GPS III system is planned for multiple blocks, with the GPS IIIA portion currently underway. GPS IIIA includes all of the GPS IIF capability plus up to a ten-fold increase in signal power, a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system, and a new spacecraft bus that will allow a growth path to future blocks.'"
I thought that they were moving away from this. They're launching new satellites for the current system with this turned off.
What's the word on this?
Seriously - lost the in air refueler contract to Airbus (or NVS or whoever)- lost this contract to Lockhead - What is the deal?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Why didn't they have NASA build it? They're not for profit and always want more money to do stuff. Any company is obviously making money off it while NASA wouldn't be. Plus, they kinda know a bit about space and satellites.
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Used in the search for GPSIV!
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I think that translates to "ability to override the European Union's Galileo".
Do these sattelites have defences? Are their locations unknown by the enemy? No!
Day 1, 0900: War Declared
Day 1, 0915: All GPS satellites blasted out of the sky
Day 1, 0930: US surrenders due to lack of any ability to locate their troops and organise them
GPS in a military situation has always seemed to me kind of a bad idea to rely on too much. You put all this technology in your air crafts, your tanks, all your hummers, but when these precious badly defended satellites get knocked out the planes cant fly and tanks, ships and other operations are seriously impared. How secret can you keep a satellite and how do you defend them (short of shooting anything that comes near them)
Boeing has a surplus of Commercial and Military Contracts. In fact, if we could have a few more prominent startups for Defense Contracting the better.
The reason Europe decided to build Galileo as a direct civilian alternative to US' GPS was to prevent the US from shutting down all navigation in case of a conflict. TFA says that the new (US military) GPS now will have 500x transmit power, and also transmit a new civilian signal (L1C) to be fully compatible and interoperable with EU's Galileo.
I wonder if the capability to "interoperate" with the Galileo system also includes "Jamming". Seems like the satellite could produce a good military GPs signal while at the same time transmit a corrupt L1C signal to "interoperate" with the Galileo system.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA.
Disclaimer II: I'm sharply anti-military.
Perhaps I've been in the computer industry for far too long, but how could it possibly cost 1.4bn to essentially add access control and a bigger amplifier to existing tech ? Will it realistically provide 1.4bn back in value, either by gaining efficiency in war planning, or enabling new civilian tech to make our lives easier ?
1.4bn might seem small to the average American bureaucrat, but it's a chunk of change that can change hundreds of thousands of lives if spent wisely. A GPS upgrade simply doesn't sound very humanitarian to me.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
GPS outages that can be targeted to small geographic areas sure makes me reach for my tinfoil hat.
People not just in the U.S. but around the world have come to rely on it like it's public infrastructure.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I remember that from "The Harlem Globetrotters in Outer Space"!!!!
Mmmh. I'd better start selling counterfeit GPS satellites on E-bay then...
If you mean actual signal jamming then sure. They will be interoperable because they work in the same frequency range. That also means, of course, the same kind of jamming equipment work on them. However that isn't really a concern as that is a local phenomena.
What you are probably thinking about is actually turning it off for certain areas. That's the concern with GPS. It's a military project from start to finish, so the US military runs it. While they are pleased to let civilians use it, they do retain ultimate control and thus could shut down part or all of it if they wanted.
Galileo will, of course, not be subject to that. It will be subject to shutdown by whoever it's controlling body is. So while the US could ask that it be turned off somewhere, they wouldn't just be able to do it themselves.
Name a country that has any sort of real ASAT defenses, other than maybe Russia (I say maybe because who knows what their readiness is anymore). Right now, the US doesn't really have to worry about anyone being able to shoot down their satellites. I'm sure that'll change in time as China seems to be working on ASAT technology, but at the present time other than (possibly) Russia, there just isn't anywhere that has the systems it takes to shoot down the GPS network. Remember that to be an effective target, you'd have to be able to take out most-all of it. If you only have enough to take out a few satellites, some communication or recon sats would better targets, because GPS would still be largely functional, even with a few sats down.
I think it's an interesting problem to create a satellite that emits a radio signal that can only be used by some people, but not others, as in the "military" and "civilian" signals from these satellites.
I daresay at some point it would be considered a war crime to disrupt GPS signals, in any case, when civilization is much more dependent on them, as I think it is reasonable to expect in the future.
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Will this affect my driving in the future? If I'm in my car using my car's GPSIII nav and suddenly get zero signal, should I pull over immediately to 'duck and cover'? :)
Sorry - S1C was Boeing, Chrysler subcontracted for the tanks.
Brett
I am a little more concerned with my car being driven off a cliff by an automated traffic control system because some asshat decides to invade some other asshat, and to hell with the civilians using the system.
The insistence on a NAVWAR backdoor is rather stupid. In the last three wars in which it has been involved, the U.S. has pretty much had its rear kicked by enemies using what amounts to 1940s technology. The danger to US troops is not from WMDs, it's from IEDs made in peoples kitchens using easily obtained ordinance, generally with U.S. serial numbers on it.
If they want to blow me up, they're going to do it by setting up a bomb that reacts to the RFID in my "Real ID" card, U.S. Passport, or the pressure sensors in my tires, all of which are government mandated, and all of which go where I go, and so are really useful for targeting me both generally ("look, and American!") or personally. Or they'll use my IMEI on my cell phone, which on differs in that I'm not required to carry it, but probably will anyway.
If someone can build a missile that can get to me from where they are, then unless I am sitting in a bunker, a few hundred feet for going inertial or using airport beacons instead of GPS isn't going to matter much one way or another.
-- Terry
I bet GPSIII will be operational way before Galileo is. The way we handle big projects here in Europe is appalling.
-- Cheers!
"launch launch launch pop pop pop" could mean the following :
1) the EU possibly starts (possibly collaboration with the Chinese) to destroy all US satellite, including KH and GPS one.
2) all intellectual property of the US are forfeited
3) the US lose ANY support whatsoever. For a VERY long time. And it find itself isolated politically, and as much isolated economically as the world can bear (I doubt there is anything the US physically produce which could not be produced/built over a few month/years in another part of the world)
4) escalation of conflict in nuclear war. Remember, some country in EU still have the same nasty nuke that you have. Then we have 2 sets of loser (EU/US) and one winner : the rest of the world.
Anybody which think that the US can kill any satellite of the EU or China because they dislike it, should have its head examinated, because there would be pretty hefty consequence.
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See, this is the problem with the US. I was in Locatient 2007 where a representative of the US government for navigation gave a boat load of crap about how GPS 3 will be totally open and it will interoperate with all other navigation systems. He also emphasized that unlike GPS 2, it will not have the feature to be switched off by the US military. He was pushing for more hardware and software developers to use the GPS platform. This story is exactly the opposite of what he claimed. This switch and bait tactic is old and it is really taking whatever remains of the credibility of the US down the gutter.
I wonder why the Bus is being built to add future modules. I can't see them upgrading the satellites post-launch, and why over-build a bus to give capabilities that are not immediately needed when every ounce counts ?
Maybe I have the wrong idea, but I'm picturing an orbiting 19" rack with lots of blank panels and an over-sized power supply.
Nullius in verba
If the GPS is so unnecessary to your operations, why do you spend so much on it? Why do you need to reduce the accuracy of your enemies?
The US military could not possibly rule out jamming alternatives and can't allow somebody to have a bigger dick. GPS has to be about as good or better and that is part of the motivation (other than the usual reason; giving money to contractors.)
WHO can seriously believe for a second that they'd selectively block public GPS and allow alternative systems to function? They will be able to jam the others.
The USA can't break other satellites without risking retaliation. Space Flak is far far FAR more damaging than the antiaircraft kind.
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So what if the GPSIII sats transmit a Galileo signal that is just slightly off? Or even better have this happen for some of the time on some of the sats (so that errors are not reliably replicated)?
Well, the receiver gives a slightly worse result than the US based systems, because it uses good and bad data. Galileo gets a bad reputation. US firms capture most of the GPS market.
If you are sufficiently paranoid having a war is totally unnecessary.
Unless of course Galileo designers become just as paranoid and add digital signatures to their signals. Then receivers can implement a "use only Galileo satellites" option if necessary. It's really a case of paranoid vs paranoid.