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Lockheed Martin Awarded GPS III

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the turn-off-gp3-get-a-galileo dept.

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.'"

20 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. What is up with Boeing lately? by Gat0r30y · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously - lost the in air refueler contract to Airbus (or NVS or whoever)- lost this contract to Lockhead - What is the deal?

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    1. Re:What is up with Boeing lately? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      although... Boeing's loss of the tanker contract is not finalized, as Boeing has taken the Air Force to court due to unfair business practices.

      The Air Force's primary reason for choosing Airbus was that the A330 was a larger aircraft than the 767. This is interesting due to Boeing originally offering the 777, but the Air Force saying that they wanted a small aircraft, such as the 767. Had Boeing been allowed to use the 777 originally, it would of far exceeded the A330 using the Air Forces current reasons for choosing Airbus.

      just something to thing about on that contract...

      still doesn't explain the rest of the losses :P

      but as always... they will come back :D

    2. Re:What is up with Boeing lately? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting


      The GPS contract award is really simple. It was Lockheed's turn. Rockwell got the first contract, Lockheed the second, Rockwell/Boeing the third, and Lockheed the forth. Just like the Air Force supports two independent launch systems, Delta and Atlas, the Air Force wants two companies building GPS satellites.

  2. waste of money by ILuvRamen · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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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    1. Re:waste of money by icegreentea · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Lockheed also knows quite a lot about space and satellites. They built the satellite that the Hubble is housed in. They built the rocket upper stage that the Gemini went to space in, they built the Corona series spy satellites, and they built the Atlas V rocket. I'm sure there's more. As someone else pointed out, NASA generally doesn't build stuff. They contract out most things. Because paying companies who want to make money happens to be an excellent way to get stuff built.

  3. Quick translation... by victim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a ten-fold increase in signal power ... a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system

    I think that translates to "ability to override the European Union's Galileo".
    1. Re:Quick translation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, no, that translates to "GPSIII receivers can also receive Galileo signals so GPS doens't become obsolete". Galileo's public version is as accurate as current military GPS, and Galileo's commercial version is approximately 10x more accurate than current military GPS. In other words, as Galileo grows, less and less people would have any reason to continue supporting GPS.

      If you think anyone in Europe would trust US military programs or give the US any control over european satellites after the Bush junta, you must be out of your mind.

    2. Re:Quick translation... by flyingsquid · · Score: 4, Interesting
      OK, here's a hypothetical situation for you. One of the major EU countries wants to engage in military action, but the U.S. is against this.

      This sounds a bit far-fetched at first... if there's a conflict and it's sufficiently serious that the Europeans want to take up arms, wouldn't the U.S. want a piece of the action? But perhaps it involves a terrorist attack on an EU country, and to retaliate, the EU wants to drop some bombs or a few commando teams inside the territory of one of our close "allies" like Pakistan, where a lot of the terrorists currently hang out. But the U.S. doesn't want to risk upsetting the Pakistanis.

      As I understand things, the U.S. could just say, "Fine. Go ahead. And have fun, guys... but you should remember to bring a map and a good compass, because we're not going to let you guys use our GPS system for navigation, targeting or troop maneuvers." As I understand things, the Europeans would be pretty much fucked. We could call off one of their military actions just by denying them GPS capability or degrading the signal, right?. Even if they were 90% certain they didn't actually want to use a military strike, just taking that card out of their hand would really reduce their power in a negotiation in a conflict.

      In the past, I don't think this was so much of an issue. But with the fall of communism, it's less clear that the EU and US will stick together as closely as they have in the past. Furthermore, the U.S.'s foreign policy for the past 8 years, a belligerent "fuck you and get out of my way" attitude towards long-time allies like France and Germany, raises the possibility that U.S. and EU interests could come into direct conflict. Think about it this way. How would it change things if, say, France had control over the GPS system? Would the Iraq war even have been possible? The U.S. would never tolerate that state of affairs. Why should the EU?

    3. Re:Quick translation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      If that's how you see it, then lots of other countries also have control. It's only a little matter of it being a hostile act that stands in the way.

      The original poster was pointing out that there's a good reason to support the EU system. It's not intended to "counter" the US system at all. The US has it's satellites and gives US defence and civilians priority, which makes sense. But the rest of the world isn't just going to do without. China has theirs, the EU has theirs, you keep yours. Don't let it hurt your pride.

    4. Re:Quick translation... by Rich0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I doubt it would come to this. European leaders would most likely cooperate with the US if asked, and then publicly condemn whatever is going on for the sake of the masses. And if asked nicely by a European leader the US would probably go ahead and selectively degrade GPS in some region if that were strategically necessary for a European state.

      While there is a lot of political posturing going on, the fact is that Europeans and Americans have a lot more in common than they have in opposition.

      However, if the US were involved in World War III and nobody wanted to flip the switch on commercial navigation/recon/etc sats then they'd probably go ahead and start shooting them down. After the first 100M dollars/euros worth of investment become scrap metal the corporate interests running the show in space would fall in line pretty quickly. And yes, in a very serious war the US satellites would start falling from the sky as well - there's a reason US ships still stock astrolabes.

    5. Re:Quick translation... by lightversusdark · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You highlight here one of the more serious issues being discussed behind closed doors with regard to Turkish accession to the EU.

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    6. Re:Quick translation... by Black-Man · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you lived in the US you would know the 3 presidential candidates are basically on-record of saying they intend to MEND the relations which were damaged the past 8 years. And its why none of the US allies is alarmed - they know GWB is gone in 6 months and w/ him goes his warped policies.

    7. Re:Quick translation... by mofag · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh if only it were that simple: that GWB is the evil genius and its not all his father's henchmen. I'm gonna try to live in your world though - its much sunnier than mine :)

    8. Re:Quick translation... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Incorrect. From http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/jdam.htm
      "Guidance is accomplished via the tight coupling of an accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) with a 3-axis Inertial Navigation System (INS). The Guidance Control Unit (GCU) provides accurate guidance in both GPS-aided INS modes of operation (13 meter (m) Circular Error Probable (CEP)) and INS-only modes of operation (30 m CEP). INS only is defined as GPS quality hand-off from the aircraft with GPS unavailable to the weapon (e.g. GPS jammed). In the event JDAM is unable to receive GPS signals after launch for any reason, jamming or otherwise, the INS will provide rate and acceleration measurements which the weapon software will develop into a navigation solution."

      The military does not depend solely upon GPS for any navigational necessity. We had a half dozen GPS devices in my squad in Afghanistan, but we also had a map and compass and knew how to use them. It's like that all the way up to the B-2 Spirit: use GPS, but don't make it your only resource.

      --
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    9. Re:Quick translation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Galileo's fundamental goal is to reduce the dependency of the european economy on a service that the USA can turn off or degrade at will. It is not a military project, but it is very much a "counter" to US military control. And, as the last few years have shown, the US military are easily manipulated by a handful of corporations, which is why Galileo (which was almost abandoned 7 years ago because private funding wasn't enough and the union was reluctant to foot the bill) is once again a priority.

      Your faith in the USA's ability to "control every satellite" is naive at best. Sure, they could (try to) shoot them down with missiles, but that takes time, is very costly, and extremely visible (unlike a temporary degradation of GPS signals, that could be blamed on "technical problems"). With Galileo, an open attack would be the only way to disable it. And that would never happen (remember, several european countries have nukes and, more importantly, the EU has lots of money).

      Besides, Europe's current space launch ability (especially if you include Russia) is significantly greater than the USA's (thanks to NASA's ever-decreasing budget). And I'd hate to think what would happen if you shot down a chinese satellite by mistake; their response wouldn't be nearly as "civilized" as Europe's. They have something worse than nukes: they have a yuan-dollar peg. Release that and the "boom" will be heard in every stock exchange in the world.

  4. Does interoperate with Galileo also mean JAM? by viking80 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  5. Satellite DRM by rastoboy29 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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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  6. Re:What's the point? by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    GPS in a military situation has always seemed to me kind of a bad idea to rely on too much.

    What makes you think we are overly dependent upon them? Sure they are convenient, and if working why not use them, but do you really think that they have stopped teaching people how to use compasses at West Point and Quantico? I'm pretty sure ground commanders have considered this issue. Hell, in the Marines when recruits were introduced to the K-Bar, a 7 inch combat knife, they were told it was the most reliable weapon they will every carry because it has zero moving parts and zero electronics. I can't imagine this radically changing in the last decade or two. Last I heard that the Navy still plots positions with sextant and mechanical chronometers in addition to using various forms of fancy electronic navigation systems developed over the last 50 years.

  7. Re:GPS Shutoff by lostguru · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Except international airlines don't rely on gps, a lot don't even use it, due to the risk of selective availability. Don't know about ships, but I'm pretty sure there are other ship navigation systems in place. It is a very probably thing for the US to do and we have done it before.

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  8. Re:GPS Shutoff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Which, if I remember correctly, is why sailors in the US Navy still use a sextant to figure out their position. The newest example I could find in a quick search was this picture: http://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=41572 The practice is probably done out of tradition, but hell... if I was on a ship and some knucklehead was able to knock out the electronics (hopefully not easy to do), then I wouldn't mind if someone aboard had the capability of telling the Captain where the hell to point the boat to in order to get to safety.

    The thing that I wonder is this: if the GPS, the chronometer, and magnetic compass all go down, does that mean that they are in a condition where they're probably reduced to using oars for propulsion?