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> intended to mitigate the UK’s loss of access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system. I thought Galileo was an open system? Quoting Wikipedia “ The E

• Tomte 6y ago
  Everyone can use it, but Galileo is also a program to fund and support EU companies. British companies won't receive any orders for producing the satellites and other technology anymore. So the Johnson government is looking for ways to generate orders for British companies, as well. [edit: changed "their own" to British", because readers might misread it as "companies owned by government officials"]
  • M2Ys4U 6y ago
    >[edit: changed "their own" to British", because readers might misread it as "companies owned by government officials"] Perhaps not owned by government officials, but Cummings' pals are certainly getting a lot of government contracts without proper tendering recently...
• tialaramex 6y ago
  All the GNSS systems have a mixture of services intended for the general public and so keys are public - and systems for which the keys needed aren't public. Most of them (e.g. GPS) say the non-public keys are for the military, since the EU does not have a military it says these keys are for "Public regulated services" and highlights that Galileo is ostensibly 100% civilian. The UK won't have access to PRS service from Galileo. It isn't entitled to equivalent access to GPS, and obviously not to GLONASS or Beidou. So rather than say "We're a small unimportant island so that's fine" our government feels it absolutely must have equivalent capability.
  • hannibalhorn 6y ago
    I'm ignorant on the topic, but I'm really surprised the US wouldn't share that "equivalent access" to GPS with the UK? Certainly seems like we'd be happy to sell such access to a close ally for less than the $600+ million investment referenced here...
    • threeseed 6y ago
      The US may already do this under the Five Eyes agreement. But given how Trump has shaken alliances even countries like UK are realising the importance of being self-sufficient.
      • C1sc0cat 6y ago
        Especially as we are so degraded that we could probably not even make basic things like small arms Pistol / Rifle. Given that USA as an ally isn't looking as solid as she used to be and post Brexit will German arms manufacturers be happy to sell to us - better make sure we don't piss of Canada then.
        • hyko 6y ago
          Given that the UK is the second largest global defence exporter in the world–and most definitely do produce pistols and rifles– I think they will be just fine. They ceased membership of the EU, not all international trade.
          • rjsw 6y ago
            The UK doesn't produce military pistols and rifles in any meaningful numbers.
        • rjsw 6y ago
          > better make sure we don't piss of Canada then Diemaco was bought by Colt.
          • C1sc0cat 6y ago
  • threeseed 6y ago
    a) EU doesn't have a military. However there are active discussions driven by France to establish one and it is getting support e.g. Eastern European states who feel threatened by Russia. b) EU does have a Common Security and Defence Policy under which it coordinates overseas operations e.g. Libya, Iraq using the military from the member states. So Galileo is definitely a critical element of the future of the EU.
    • gdy 6y ago
      "a) EU doesn't have a military. However there are active discussions driven by France to establish one and it is getting support e.g. Eastern European states who feel threatened by Russia." Please do establish it. This way you will be independent from the US and won't need American military bases on your territory. Russia feels threatened by the US-led NATO expansion towards its borders just as much as Eastern European states feel threatened by Russia.
      • vetinari 6y ago
        > Please do establish it. This way you will be independent from the US and won't need American military bases on your territory Poles will be against (underlying reasons are outside of scope of this discussion) and US will exploit that.
        • gdy 6y ago
          True
      • strbean 6y ago
        Odd that Russia would feel threatened, considering they have been annexing territory rather than losing it for decades. Do they feel threatened that the US will try to stop them from aggressively seizing territory?
        • baq 6y ago
          They always feel threatened, that’s the only way the country can be kept mostly together. Whether they’re actually threatened is debatable, but in those matters if you really know, you’re likely working for an intelligence agency.
  • brandmeyer 6y ago
    Commercially, its not clear that there's very much value in the PRS. A dual band E1/E5 receiver can pick up dual-frequency GAL, GPS, and BDS3 and do very well that way. If receivers like that take off, then the PRS looks like a boondoggle.
  • growlist 6y ago
    > "We're a small unimportant island so that's fine" 5th or 6th biggest economy in the world, population of 70m+, nuclear weapons, globally influential in various different ways, in London has one of world's top cities and world's largest financial centre by some measures, has many world leading businesses, one of the world's most visited countries, so small and unimportant that some say the EU faces an existential crisis as a result of its departure... Small yes but unimportant is certainly debatable - and it makes me sad that people try to run this country down, when the fact that thousands of migrants are willing to risk death to get here tells a very different story.
    • foldr 6y ago
      We were important before we left the EU.
    • giantDinosaur 6y ago
      I assume the poster you're responding to (perhaps with some hyperbole) is thinking of the UK in the context of separate from the US, China, and the EU - in which case it is comparatively small, and while not unimportant, certainly less important.
    • 7952 6y ago
      I get where you are coming from. But to play devils advocate, a lot of us aspire to be less important on the world stage. There are lots of things I am proud about, but big power politics is not one of them. Nor does success in other areas require us to play those kind of games. We need to get over out inferiority complex. We are not exceptionally powerful or exceptionally week. We can have modest aspirations in one area whilst excelling in others.
      • Lio 6y ago
        Given that social media often has the affect of an echo chamber I think that "a lot of us aspire to be less important" is hard to take as anything more than "some of my friends aspire". You might feel that we have an "inferiority complex" but that's just your take on it. The UK is one of the world's leading military powers by most measurements. The left wing meme that Britain should accept a smaller role in the world or that our economy is too small to mater does not chime with reality. For the record I think that leaving the EU has made us weaker and more isolated.
  • beerandt 6y ago
    Besides "access" to the PRS/ non-public keys, there are operational considerations as well. Which are generally more aligned with the reasons "redundant" GNSS systems were invested in by other countries(/EU), even though NAVSTAR GPS (US) has nominally free, worldwide civilian access, in addition to the open nature of Galileo mentioned by GP. Because the civilian aspects of it has become so critically important and relied upon, we tend to forget that GNSS is primarily a military program/tool/weapon, which for NAVSTAR, is still under US Airforce custody and control. We, as John Q Public, just aren't generally aware that military capabilities go far beyond a more precise location fix , since the other non-public considerations: 1)are highly technical "how the sausage gets made" decisions and details, including how the [geodetic] network adjustments are made, dictating things like leap seconds, the internal coordinate system's x,y,z origin point & orientation, and grid movement with relation to plate tectonics, etc), 2) are back-end, non public facing, or secondary capabilities (ie emergency beacon/ EPIRB monitoring, signals intelligence gathering, ballistic missile launch/ ordinance explosion/ nuclear blast detection, or measuring deviation the sat vehicles' orbital parameters [and atomic clock relativistic shifts, and suspected absolute gravity measurements] to develop a precise geoid model- for aiming icbms, modeling missile defense, and navigating and/or detecting nuclear submarines) or 3) are wartime capabilities that are turned off normally, but require "admin" access to implement, like selective availability (SA) type degradation/ spoofing, turning off civilian bands/signals (either locally or worldwide), controlling signal strength and anti-jamming capabilities, etc. This would also include things like controlling spare sat vehicles, and determining what areas get 100% coverage in the event of a less than 100% coverage sat network. All of these aspects affect various military operations, and any country(/EU) that aspires to be a world superpower will not be able to rely on third parties to get all the military benefits of operating such a system. Also worth mentioning that civilian NAVSTAR GPS recievers have both an altitude and speed limit imposed on them client-side, so (over simplifying things here) foreign parties looking for space or missile guidance based on GPS have always -theoretically- needed to re-engineer/re-invent a client receiver if they wanted such capability. Somewhat ironically, or at least counterintuitively, the US military specifically avoids relying on GNSS for navigating ICBMs, smart-bombs, cruise missiles, or any other systems that must operate in contested airspace, specifically because they are aware both of how fragile the system can be (signal strength is already well below the noise levels), and how easy it is to purposefully turn off at will. Consider that in the event of a major war, NAVSTAR GPS is more likely to be turned off over the US than over enemy territory, as we wouldn't want to help the enemy navigate or locate targets.
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > The UK won't have access to PRS service from Galileo. It isn't entitled to equivalent access to GPS Do you have a cite for GPS claim? I would have assumed that UK would have access to GPS military services as a member of NATO.
    • CydeWeys 6y ago
      Militaries want to be independent and capable of waging wars on their own terms, not beholden to foreign powers. If the best they can do is piggyback on GPS, then it leaves them subservient to the US's military interests.
      • ardy42 6y ago
        >>> The UK won't have access to PRS service from Galileo. It isn't entitled to equivalent access to GPS >> Do you have a cite for GPS claim? I would have assumed that UK would have access to GPS military services as a member of NATO. > Militaries want to be independent and capable of waging wars on their own terms, not beholden to foreign powers. If the best they can do is piggyback on GPS, then it leaves them subservient to the US's military interests. Of course that's ideal, but it's not necessarily practical for any given country. The UK and the US are extremely close military allies, and the US is also very close to NATO. I'd be pretty surprised if the US actually blocked such allies from using the GPS military services, which is the GGP's claim.
• Nokinside 6y ago
  Galileo includes Public Regulated Service (PRS). PRS has both military and civilian uses. Civilian uses include safety critical applications like autonomous cars, energy grids, air traffic, military and commercial drones, trains, some emergency services and so on. It's jamming resistant highly secure system that many commercial future systems depend on (even the open services in Galileo are spoof resistant). Since UK will be closed out the development of PRS, UK thinks it's not going to serve their national interest to rely on EU.
• lloydatkinson 6y ago
  In brexitland it's not about common sense or reason. It's a self-isolationist, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, ideological stance. Does it mention EU or Europe? "It's bad, we can't use it, British empire better". It's absolutely embarrassing living in this country sometimes.