Europe Abandons US Military-Controlled GPS for Civilian-Based System

In 2000, Russia and China signed documents on cooperation in the use and advancement of Russia's global navigational system Glonass. Glonass, which is a twin of the American GPS system, is able to determine the exact position of an object anywhere on the globe, determine speed, and check time with an error of as little as one millionth of a second. The system has important military applications and is especially important in delivering pinpoint military strikes.

The U.S. GPS system is currently the most popular system of its kind and is used for military and civilian purposes throughout the world. However, the U.S. government restricts the use of the signal and reserves the right to cut off its availability if dictated by national security interests. China plans to install Glonass terminals at airports and on planes, and Russia has allowed China to finance a group of Glonass satellites.

At the same time, The European Union and Ukraine agreed to cooperate in the creation of an all-European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to allow them, and others, to bypass the U.S. system. (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/gps-00h.html)

In response, in 2000, the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Sunnyvale, CA, a $53 million contract to begin development of modernization changes for up to 12 Global Positioning System (GPS) Block IIR satellites. Lockheed Martin has delivered 21 of these satellites; 12 satellites remain in storage for future launches. (http://www.losangeles.af.mil/SMC/PA/Fact_Sheets/gps_fs.htm)

A GPS satellite built by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Air Force, was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral in October 2003. The satellite, designated GPS IIR-9, was the eighth successful launch of the new-generation GPS IIR spacecraft, boasting improved global coverage and increased overall performance of the GPS constellation. (http://www.ilslaunch.com/newsarchives/newsreleases/rec93)

The satellite joined the GPS IIR-8 satellite launched on Jan. 29, 2003, along with the 26 other operational GPS satellites now on orbit.

President Bush, with our money, in concert with Lockheed, intends to outdo the Chinese, the Russians and the European Union in the space satellite tussle as these other countries move away from the our paternalistic control of our space positioning system. So, in effect, we're isolating ourselves over here with our defense systems and everyone else in the world is uniting on the other side. No wonder they're paranoid over at the Pentagon.

slowly but surely.

version. They have deliberately put in a deviation for civilian usage that makes GPS no more accurate than fifty meters. fifty meters is damn accurate for an airplane or boat but not for a missle..

I think the "dither" has not been turned back on yet.

"Hey! why are you putting Chinese GPS in your airliners?"

"Because, Madam Ambassador, we don't TRUST your Government anymore. What if that (excuse me) 'Shithouse Rat' Rumsfeld decides to turn the system OFF while my children are en route home from someplace?"

there's a russian system as well but I forget what it's called.

btw the civilian and military GPS are the same system/signal. its just that the military signal is more heavily encrypted. In the first Gulf war lots of people noticed their GPS got very accurate indeed because the coding was switched off because the shortfall in military systems was made up for by civilian versions. Thereby giving military accuracy to a civilian GPS unit.

Today's hand held GPS units are a lot more accurate than you might immagine. Any enhanced accuracy they add won't be for every day use, we have more accuracy than we need for that already really. It will be there for survey use.

If you have a GPS that was made in the last 2 years or so it will have a feature called WAAS. If you turn it on the battery life will go down just a little but the machine will become much more accurate. WAAS is a correction system the FAA paid for.

For whatever its worth the Russians had their own GPS system too. As far as I know its still up and running. It was as good as ours and it got a lot of use - particularly in europe and Australia.

Anyway the new system won't be up and running for another several years. I think they have 4 of their planned 30 or so birds up now.

On edit: Something else you should know. The signal accuracy of GPS used to be degraded by the military. Basically the inidcated location wondered around in a circle 100 meters in diameter and you never knew exactly where you were inside of that circle (given time constraints). That purposfuly degradation of the location (it was done by using a long and short version of what is called pseudo random code sent down from the birds) was removed by the stroke of a pen by President William Jefferson Clinton. It immediately improved the safety of transportation around the world. Just one more of the very good things that man did for our nation. Of course with the stroke of a pen someone of lessor character could turn the decreased accuracy (Called SA) back on.

making the need for Galileo moot. But, the point of developing and signing on to the new system is that the US (Rumsfeld) is intent on shutting it down ours whenever it feels its security is at issue. EU and others may not have the same interests as America at the time we choose to restrict access.