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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.'"
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.
You do realize that NASA is a hell of a lot like the Air Force, they pay a bunch of contractors like Lockheed to do most of the work? NASA isn't interested (and has no authority over) the warfare parts, they have very little that's classified by way of personnel and information, so it's a job much more suited to the Air Force, what with the NAVWAR and other capabilities they think it needs.
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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
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.
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It's something of a nuclear option. It's very hard to imagine any president actually authorizing this. I mean, think about it, you invade Iran or something and maybe you'd like to turn off their GPS. But nearby there are giant oil tankers being steered by GPS and airliners overhead (nearby) with GPS autopilots. Is it worth the risk of those crashing? I just don't see it happening in any situation short of a general world war.
I remember that from "The Harlem Globetrotters in Outer Space"!!!!
Yes, because lord knows there was no way for ships to navigate before GPS came along....
500x more power - essentially that requires a tremendously larger amount of power. Even with the best phased array bad ass military style antennas you arent going to get this sort of a power increase - you gotta put more out of the antenna at the source - which means you are lifting honking huge freaking batteries up into space and you are gonna have to stick some mad solar panels on the sucka too.
PS. I completely agree with the sentiment in your last sentence. - with that money you could probably mount a significant effort toward eliminating malaria in subtropical/tropical areas of the world, saving millions of children. Or you could provide an absurd amount of aid to prevent water born diseases in the 3rd world - or you could mount a tremendous anti-hunger campaign. Bottom line - bigger batteries on a satellite are more important to the people in charge.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I happen to have done some engineering work on GPS, and I can say that these additions are extremely non-trivial and cannot be done with existing hardware. The way the signals are transmitted must be changed entirely. The good news is that this system will allow for real-time ionospheric distortion mitigation (a problem for any non-DGPS receivers with the current system) and provide enough signal strength that even super-cheap receivers will be very accurate.
:-)
Also, this cost would likely have occurred anyway - the current satellite constellation won't live forever. The satellites will run out of orbital maintenance fuel, or their clocks will begin to drift erratically, and at some point in the foreseeable future, the constellation will lose enough satellites that it will be mostly unusable. So if we'll be launching new ones anyway, why not make them better?
I also understand your humanitarian question, however, the support that GPS provides in science and education (even though it was and is a military project in the USA) truly does humankind a great service. Oh, and it lets me find good pizza no matter where I am in the city, which is truly humanitarian
The same way it coses $400 million to drive a remote-controlled car across a red desert?
Because the 1.4bn is used for more than what you trivialize it to be for. The 1.4bn is for the entire contract but the initial goal is to only have 2 satellites launched with the option for 10 more. They will be integrating with the existing EU Galileo system and provides who knows what else in additional features. As one guy in the article said "'You are guaranteed a lot of business for the next 20 years. It may be enough to drive the losing competitor out of this market.'" In addition to the materials, you also have labor which, in many cases, can exceed the cost of the materials especially with contracts lasting as long as this one can. The article doesn't go into details but the contract sounds like it also includes operations and maintenance once the satellites have been launched which is icing on the cake for Lockheed.
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Always thought it was pretty obvious that Chris Columbus was using MapQuest since he ended up so far off course.
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Disclaimer: I'm not anti-military.
Turning off GPS doesn't give us any more ability to kill people. Simple keeps the enemy from killing us.
Don't underestimate the potential impact it could have on saving lives. Sure perhaps it's selfish to want to save our own lives, but hey I'm only human. If the enemy uses GPS technology to launch an attack on us we only have ourselves to blame.
US weapons are guided by INS with GPS augumenting that. Turn of GPS and you've still got a pretty accurate INS system to rely on.
"Freedom Through Vigilance"
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'? :)
Exactly. It seems silly for a military to spend all this money to gain a tactical advantage, and then leave it wide open for the enemy to use. This is the modern equivalent of blowing up your own bridges so the bad guys can't cross 'em.
We used to have "Selective Availability". That meant that the US military GPS signal was much more accurate than those found on civilian receivers. President Clinton had SA turned off worldwide meaning the civilian GPS signal is now as accurate as US military systems. Since GPS is so integrated into society now it will probably never be turned on again. I don't think (I seldom ever do any thinking) that the current system can currently be shut off by region but SA can be turned back on regionally.
"Freedom Through Vigilance"
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
The civilian signal is unencrypted.
The military signal is encrypted.
All they do is flip a switch and the civilian signal is gone 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. What?
A warcrime for a Sovereign Nation to control their property?
Why do you think the EU lofted their own GPS network?
Why do you think the Soviets began lofting GLONASS during the Cold War?
If you don't control it, don't depend on it.
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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.
I bet GPSIII will be operational way before Galileo is. The way we handle big projects here in Europe is appalling.
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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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"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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US weapons are guided by INS with GPS augumenting that. Turn of GPS and you've still got a pretty accurate INS system to rely on.
Unless the INS is too busy arresting Mexicans.
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?
There are still radio navigation systems such as LORAN available for ships. They aren't as accurate as GPS, but accuracy in this case means finding an airport, not finding one bolt on a chair in the airport office.
Even with GPS and Galileo and Beidou, it's still good to learn pilotage, dead reckoning, and celestial navigation. Sailing without them is similar to not knowing how to make change without the computer telling you.
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