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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.
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.
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?
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)."
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?
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.
The EU has, quite properly, been looking after the EU's interests. May still doesn't seem to have worked out yet what she wants. And Galileo isn't scheduled to provide full operational capability yet, so it's no big deal that it doesn't.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Uh, what? Yes, the UK does net pay into the EU, as one would expect from one of its richer countries. Germany however, has a net contribution over twice that of the UK (larger as a share of its economy, too). France, too, gives more. This is largely due to the fact that the UK gets two-thirds of its net contribution back as a special rebate. In fact, if you look at net contribution as a share of the national economy, the UK comes in ninth.
The UK has not done that poorly with their deal with the EU. It is the countries in the Eurozone that are in the shitter. The UK is not in the Eurozone.
In fact the UK, since it joined the EU, has finally become independent in food production, thanks in no small part to EU farming subsidies. Which is quite a feat consider that was not the case like over a century.
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.
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.
The whole Brexit debacle is being handled by people that are bungling it purely out of spite. The UK is to the EU as the US is to NATO - pay for everything all the time but get bullied by your only reason and biggest dependent - Germany
Talk about deluded. The Brexit negotiations were done by professionals on the EU side and by unprepared amateurs on the UK side - no wonder they got their ass handed to them. And what you call "spite" and "being bullied" should have been the simple realisation that the EU negotiators act in the best interest of their member states - and the UK isn't one.
This is utterly incorrect. We import 3/4 of our food (the official figure is 66%) - which corresponds to 100% in the winder and 50% in the summer. Britain has not been self sufficient in food since the industrial revolution, and prior to then depended on large scale starvation to keep the population down. Our climate and geography make it impossible to grow food for much of the year.
Most of the imported food (by volume) comes from the EU (on account of the Americas and Australia being a long way away).
The main consequence of a no-deal Brexit will be no food in England. However, Boris and Rees-Mogg will be away in their holiday homes abroad, so they don't care. The impact on the rest of the EU will be fairly minimal except in a few industries. (Eg Farming in Spain will suffer a bit).
Disclaimer: I spend 10 years working in food distribution in the UK.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Politicians are involved. Laughably stupid for reason of pique is the most likely outcome.
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Even with professionals the UK couldn't have got a good deal from the negotiations, simply because of the political situation in the UK.
The UK didn't know what it voted for or what it wanted. All sorts of nonsense was proposed before the referendum, none of it at all realistic except for the "Norway model" that was immediately rejected within hours of the result. So all the UK had left was cakeism - the strategy document literally said "have our cake and eat it".
Naturally the EU simply stuck to the basic principals of the Single Market and the procedure laid out in Article 50 (which was written by a British guy). Given that the Single Market is vastly larger than the UK market they were never going to compromise it just to help the UK out. So the British government pissed away the two year negotiation period trying to find something that the EU would accept and that it could sell to its own MPs, failed and now we are in deep, deep shit with the clock ticking.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, the GPS wars will begin with an enemy destroys GPS satellites, leaving driver-less cars stranded.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM