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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.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
Name the last time the United States went to war with somebody with anti-satellite technology. When you are fighting an asymmetric battle, it is plenty useful.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
Yes, because lord knows there was no way for ships to navigate before GPS came along....
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