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The GPS Wars Have Begun (techcrunch.com)
Where are you? That's not just a metaphysical question, but increasingly a geopolitical challenge that is putting tech giants like Apple and Alphabet in a tough position. From a report: Countries around the world, including China, Japan, India and the United Kingdom plus the European Union are exploring, testing and deploying satellites to build out their own positioning capabilities. That's a massive change for the United States, which for decades has had a practical monopoly on determining the location of objects through its Global Positioning System (GPS), a military service of the Air Force built during the Cold War that has allowed commercial uses since mid-2000 (for a short history of GPS, check out this article, or for the comprehensive history, here's the book-length treatment).
Owning GPS has a number of advantages, but the first and most important is that global military and commercial users depend on this service of the U.S. government, putting location targeting ultimately at the mercy of the Pentagon. The development of the technology and the deployment of positioning satellites also provides a spillover advantage for the space industry. Today, the only global alternative to that system is Russia's GLONASS, which reached full global coverage a couple of years ago following an aggressive program by Russian president Vladimir Putin to rebuild it after it had degraded following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Now, a number of other countries want to reduce their dependency on the U.S. and get those economic benefits. Perhaps no where is that more obvious than with China, which has made building out a global alternative to GPS a top national priority. Its Beidou navigation system has been slowly building up since 2000, mostly focused on providing service in Asia.
Owning GPS has a number of advantages, but the first and most important is that global military and commercial users depend on this service of the U.S. government, putting location targeting ultimately at the mercy of the Pentagon. The development of the technology and the deployment of positioning satellites also provides a spillover advantage for the space industry. Today, the only global alternative to that system is Russia's GLONASS, which reached full global coverage a couple of years ago following an aggressive program by Russian president Vladimir Putin to rebuild it after it had degraded following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Now, a number of other countries want to reduce their dependency on the U.S. and get those economic benefits. Perhaps no where is that more obvious than with China, which has made building out a global alternative to GPS a top national priority. Its Beidou navigation system has been slowly building up since 2000, mostly focused on providing service in Asia.
Kind of funny that the Chinese don't trust the Russians either otherwise they'd be using theirs.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
We just pay for our own satellites with our taxes and use all the other ones for free, just like everybody else.
More satellites, more precision.
I miss the 'war' part of the article.
Begun, the GPS wars have...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yes, civilian (unencrypted) GPS could be turned off while the encrypted signal remains on. Unlikely, the civilians would be very unhappy. But if a large enough event occurred and the government thought it was a good idea, yes.
GPS has the ability to degrade or disable service to non-US military receivers. In the past the public version was always degraded but they quit doing that a while ago. I know they have regionally degraded the signal for big events like the olympics.
The synopsis left out a critical detail .. the fact that the US can either intentionally degrade the accuracy of the resulting signal by hundreds of meters.
Or they can disable its functionality completely over a certain area.
That's all on the whim of the US government. They haven't degraded the signal for decades, but they can and would in areas like a war theater or over an arbitrary "enemy" nation / region.
Under normal circumstances I would never expect the US to do so, but with the current government being as erratic as it is, you never know, and that uncertainty is certainly enough to have other nations redoubling their efforts to build competing systems.
"Sure, you can jam the clients... but that messes up both friend and foe." Jamming is local... and targetable in specific ways. Spoofing allows a lot of things that rely on GPS to be messed with. A lot of things.
Another fine example of how competition leads to duplication of effort: the world only needs one constellation of positioning satellites, but has more than that already, and with more to come (because WE can't trust THEM. Insert your own candidates for WE and THEM)
This also demonstrates how the idea of a nation state is not compatible with space faring civilisations: we need to have more that one of everything because we can't trust the other groups on this one planet.
How would that look when we occupy more than one planet? USA.Earth vs China.Earth vs Muskia.Mars vs Bezostan.Mars all fighting over the same space rock containing vast amounts of water ice?
Will all the nations of one planet band together to fight/compete with the nations of other planets? Everyone.Earth vs Everyone.Mars?
Yes the US mil can make sure long range repurpose dual use "consumer" products do not get the needed accuracy in time of war.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yes, of course there is an off switch. There is also a "degrade" switch that can make it less accurate for anyone without the proper encryption keys.. Furthermore, both of these switches can be geographically selective, so GPS could continue to work over most of the earth, but be degraded over, say, Southwest Asia.
GPS-guided munitions are much cheaper and more accurate than the laser-guided munitions they replaced. Furthermore, they are fire-and-forget. There is no need for an aircraft or vehicle to stay on station to guide it to the target.
That is just *so* incorrect! The satellites send precise timing signals, along with two sets of orbital details: the almanack, rough positional information so the receiver knows which satellites to search for if it knows its approximate location and time, and the ephemeris, precise orbital information, for the actual position calculation. It works by measuring the time taken from the satellites to the receiver and triangulating from that (it actually does that in 4 dimensions, needing at least 4 satellites, because the receiver's clock won't be accurate enough to use the timing signals directly to work out the distance from the satellites). When it was introduced, the DoD only made one of the frequencies, L1, available and deliberately degraded it (which was called "selective availability"). That degradation was turned off in May 2000, and further enhancements to the civilian availability have been made such as the introduction of further signals that are easier to detect, make the satellites easier to locate, and compensate better for atmospheric effects.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"Each GPS satellite continuously transmits a radio signal containing the current time and data about its position. Since the speed of radio waves is constant and independent of the satellite speed, the time delay between when the satellite transmits a signal and the receiver receives it is proportional to the distance from the satellite to the receiver. A GPS receiver monitors multiple satellites and solves equations to determine the precise position of the receiver and its deviation from true time. At a minimum, four satellites must be in view of the receiver for it to compute four unknown quantities (three position coordinates and clock deviation from satellite time)."
Do some research, please. GPS can both be made less precise and be switched off for a relative coarse target area.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are a brexiteer? Fascinating. It is rare to watch people commit economic suicide and be proud of it. Free-trade areas are something you move heaven and earth to get _into_. They are not something you ever want to leave.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Sure, we could build our own satellite navigation system, to rival Galileo. But it needs a bit more than just launching bits of hardware, and we certainly did not provide all of the satellite technology - the work was deliberately spread all around the EU. Still, I'm sure those EU-based companies will happily sell us back the technologies we already partially paid for anyway - and all because of May's fit of pique, in saying that we're not even to get the access the rest of the non-EU will get to Galileo.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I can slap four on a mast and drive around the desert broadcasting at a higher power while jamming out weaker signals. If you lock onto those you are wherever I say you are, according to your GPS.
I can also put them on the roof of buildings next to enemy embassies in case you think it is as simple as firing a missle at the source.
This reminds me of a famous quote:
As a patriotic American, I think my citizenship in France is unnecessary, so like any good Berliner, I oppose the building of walls, but as a true Scotsman I understand the need for the Protestant Reformation in the north, though my Irish roots make it clear the Catholic Church is right on the issues of the day now more than ever, so we must vote to kick the UK out of the EU and Brexit forever.
Allah ahkbar, God save the queen!
- George Washington, atheist king of the Confederation of Soviet Socialist China.
Yeah I agree, you WOULD have to be an idiot to say it was Clinton's idea - instead of reading it, where it directly says it was the direct recommendation from the Department of Defense which wrote up the entire thing and proposed it to him.
"Statement by the Press Secretary
RSS Feed White House News
Today, the President __ __ __accepted the _recommendation_ of the Department of Defense__ __ __ to end procurement of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that have the capability to intentionally degrade the accuracy of civil signals. This decision reflects the United States strong commitment to users of GPS that this free global utility can be counted on to support peaceful civil activities around the world.
This degradation capability, known as Selective Availability (SA), will no longer be present in GPS III satellites. Although the United States stopped the intentional degradation of GPS satellite signals in May 2000, this new action will result in the removal of SA capabilities, thereby eliminating a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide."
I suppose if Clinton were Trump (a total retard who didn't listen to expert advice from the Defense Dept generally) you could call it a significant decision to read and sign off on a complete and well-backed DOD proposal / request.
But Clinton, unlike the current idiot, knew he had to take recommendations from experts from time to time, that was part of the job - at that time, YMMV.
Well the UK put $1.4 billion pounds into the project which, apparently, isn't good enough to have any say or special access. If it were me I'd ask for the money back but apparently May isn't interested.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Iâ(TM)m sure various USSR satellite states would beg to differ.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The degrade/selective ability function was deleted from the design after Clinton signed the executive order turning it off. They can shut it off in certain regions, but that also harms military users.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Heheehe I just realized i said $1.4 billion pounds. I guess that's like £1.4 billion dollars.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
all of the systems currently are VERY easy to block
hopefully the UK system might have some Point to Point information or mitigation
being able to get to the raw sensor data on a receiver is crucial as well as calibration
you can see a list of android phones and their capability here :
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss
Apple need to step up in this regard and offer L5 Support, SBAS and BeiDou with offsets
Currently apple supports GPS (GALILEO which is compatible) GLONASS and augmentation from QZSS and wifi/bluetooth
regards
John Jones
Taking care of my four-year-old daughter costs about $25,000/year.
I spend about 25% of my salary on stuff for her ($25,000).
She spends 100% of her $12 income on herself.
By your reasoning, I'm not supporting her, she's supporting herself.
Dude, what is wrong with you?!? Go take a chill pill or seek some help.
Most people understand that a President or any leader isn't qualified in anything he is actually leading. That they don't make decisions in a vacuum.
So in that real world context, the poster's post on Clinton making the decision is far more accurate than your drivel. As a leader, he made a decision. This isn't a situation of Bush Sr raised taxes when it was actually Congress.
That's interesting. On the other hand, I'd rather be a senior software engineer than a subsistence farmer. Growing your own food is good if and only if it's better than what they had been spending their time and resources on.
You mentioned it's largely because of subsidies - the taxpayer paying them more than the value of the goods produced. That sounds like an inefficiency, a bad thing.
Because each new GPS satellite adds accuracy to the existing set of constellations, it’s technical cooperation, not war. The only reason why any country needs to add its own GPS constellation is to assure that it can never lose the ability to navigate, whatever other countries do.
GPS goes by signal strength...it doesn't read any data. Just uses multiple signals to do triangulation...
Even LORAN, an analog nagivational system that's been in use since the 1950's is more sophisticated than your belief of how GPS works. GPS signal timing is so precise that general relativity is used in the calculations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No, they would not. The USSR was not a free-trade area. But your attempt at cheap, dishonest propaganda is noted.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The assurances GPS gives are public. They are pretty bad. The usual reality you get is pretty good. Also there are documented instances of GPS having been degrades. So actual reality does handily destroy your theoretical argument. Not that it was really good in the first place.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The USSR was indeed a free-trade area, at least according to the USSR. Now whether agreement within the zone was coerced or if someone flexes their muscle to set prices (like the EU and US often tries to do as well) is another thing entirely, but then you can throw out pretty much every 'free trade zone', especially the EU where every country/area has been granted monopolies on 'their' exports.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Hahaha... How's your Healthcare? Kept your doctor? Premiums went up 200% or down?
How's your privacy? NSA weaponized against you? Ruled unanimously unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?
How's your unemployment rate? Best in over 50 years?
Fuck yourself.
> It's better to be inefficient then depending on a foreign power for your food.
Certainly you wouldn't want to be dependent on a single foreign power for the majority of your food. That does NOT mean it's bad to buy bananas from India and coffee from Brazil. The United States imports more food than it exports, we are not self-reliant. We are also not at the mercy of any other nation for our food. Choose any country and we could stop importing food from them and it wouldn't hurt us much - and it would probably hurt them a lot more.
If a country currently does a lot of technology and engineering work, outsourcing farming to poorer countries, reversing that is probably bad. The country that does engineering and technology development is probably better off than the country based on farming.
So while agree you wouldn't want to be dependent on a single foreign power, agricultural economies are frequently third world economies. You don't want to be more like them.
Politicians are involved. Laughably stupid for reason of pique is the most likely outcome.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You mean like Turkmenistan or Tajikistan that are far poorer than they have been during the Soviet times? Yep, go ahead, ask them. Almost all former Soviet republics and satellite states that are truly better off nowadays are EU members.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
No, they would not. The USSR was not a free-trade area. But your attempt at cheap, dishonest propaganda is noted.
USSR was theoretically[1] free-trade within the entirety of the USSR.
[1] They claimed it was, I wasn't living there at the time but for all anyone can tell, it was indeed free-trade.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Today, the only global alternative to [GPS] is Russia's GLONASS
Galileo hasn't deployed all satellites yet but is already operational worldwide. Beidou is planned to attain global reach in 2020.
It was not a free trade area, but a federation with planned economy.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You do realise that Ukraine never had a population this large? 50 millions Ukrainians killed due to starvation would be killing them all twice over. How is that even possible without resorting to necromancy?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It also occurs to me that sometimes the UK has a draught (comparatively, for the crops they grow), severe storms, or other other issues that cause a growing season to be largely unproductive. The land area devoted to farming in the UK is small enough that a bad season can affect most of it.
I would much rather have diverse food sources.
I should have worded that differently. I shouldn't have said "by your reasoning". I should have said "by percentage of her income".
Of course you're already aware of the problems with the "as a share of their economy" reasoning.
This is really about military applications. Weapons like missiles can use GPS for guidance to targets. Currently the US can and does turn off GPS or scrambles it over war zones, or to mess with NK and China.
And the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere really did bring prosperity to all, according to the Japanese.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, the GPS wars will begin with an enemy destroys GPS satellites, leaving driver-less cars stranded.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
https://45daufej2nx1wbya31rbi2... ?
Bog cheap Chinese GPS receivers that make use of ALL satellite systems are out there.
I wouldn't call them bog-cheap, but I know such receivers are available.
Australian scientists have worked out how to get precise measurements over 24 hours so they can watch the Australian continent move - how dare continental plate movements mess up accuracy!
20 years ago I was working on GPS fiducial networks that could do that. WGS84 coordinates are good enough for most applications, but fiducial networks have to deal with the coordinate system not being fixed for just that reason. They wouldn't work so well if the DoD decided to degrade the signals, though
More amazing is some mobile phone systems wont work without GPS signals,so some countries refused to by telco gear that could be so easily disabled.
A good question to ask is could foreign GPS systems broadcast packets that contained a payload to infect/disable dependent systems. And in a time of war, only the constellation in line with that country?
What if 5G networks received a GPS code that said shutdown at 3am?
A good question to ask, but the answer is an unequivocal "no". The packets are purely data, there is no executable content, and receivers don't have the capability of executing anything in the satellite broadcasts (at least as far as the civilian side goes - the DoD doesn't tell us what the military has). So there's no way properly designed 5G networks could receive a shutdown message. The nearest I could think of would be if some malformed packet could cause a data buffer overrun in buggy network software; that would be specific to the particular buggy software, so it's up to the developers to design robust systems.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
As Hognoxious implied, things can change making shipping food half way around the world very inefficient, and air lifting food for 10's of millions of people is not efficient. Even a small country like the UK has tons of land suitable for food production and I'm a firm believer in diversity when it comes to the economy.
America is a bad example as your well situated to feed yourself, perhaps without bananas but with stables including lots of vegies.
Doesn't hurt to keep trade open as droughts and such do happen. Eventually there is going to be something big, as in a huge volcanic eruption, which will really strain our food production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That doesn't make sense. A federation is a single country and there is no free trade in a planned economy.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Since airfreight apparently costs the same as sending stuff by sea, perhaps you can explain why we bother having all those container ship thingies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You were serious?
FYI the huns were absorbed into other conquering peoples in the sixth century. Most of their DNA seems to have ended up in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.
Seems a bit of a waste for each country to get their own gps system. There are about 200 countries. How many systems do we really need? One.
How hard can it be? Just make one international system, that simply sends out the highest precision signal, all the time - no signal degradation options whatsoever.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/