4 ms·
I used to work in a government org that tangentially supported the USAF GPS Directorate sometimes. When I left, the military was working on maybe a half-dozen s
by tekdude 5y ago
I used to work in a government org that tangentially supported the USAF GPS Directorate sometimes. When I left, the military was working on maybe a half-dozen serious GPS "alternatives"/"augmentations"/"backups"/"compliments", and maybe a dozen or so other highly experimental systems to provide similar capabilities.
The issue, as they saw it, was that up until relatively recently, GPS was the only option. Not only did the US military and civilians use it, but foreign forces probably used it as well... maybe even potential adversaries. In a conflict, they wouldn't attempt to disrupt GPS because doing so could actually hurt their own operations. That assumption changed once GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou (plus the other regional networks) started coming online, all at slightly different frequencies. And, just like the US gives military-grade GPS equipment to its allies, the operators of those systems were probably doing the same, making it more likely that in a conflict someone somewhere will be disrupting GPS because they have another option for themselves.
From a civilian perspective, I'm not all that worried about GPS jamming. Yes, it's disruptive, but most organizations and systems that rely on GPS for navigation or timing (GPS is just clocks in space) should have training or failsafe fallbacks by now, to at least provide a temporary alternative. What does worry me is GPS spoofing. This is why the military has encrypted signals for its own and allied use.
I'm sure the Economist article mentioned all or some of this, but I don't have a subscription.
Edit: Typo fix
- kccqzy 5y ago> That assumption changed once GLONASS, Galileo, and Baidu Baidu is the failing Chinese search engine. Beidou is the Chinese version of GPS.
- runlevel1 5y agoAt the risk of a tangent, Baidu is failing?
- danuker 5y agoI use Baidu for a "second opinion" on my searches. Also Yandex. As far as I'm concerned, Google is failing (since I need to do this).
- kccqzy 5y agoThis is really going off topic now, but yes, I don't see a bright future for Baidu. You have to realize most Chinese people no longer even do searches on the web; they almost completely live in walled gardens like Tencent WeChat (for general communication), Taobao (for commerce), etc. The web is no longer how most Chinese obtain information, news, or do online transactions. So a search engine for the web has become unnecessary.
- tekdude 5y agoHa, thank you. Fixed
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- derefr 5y agoSo... is there a reason that all powers involved wouldn't just use each-others' civilian navigation signals, as the "compliment" for their own military navigation signals? And, as far as they can manage to cryptanalyze them, use each-other's military navigation signals as well? I.e. why wouldn't you—for any value of "you"—just build your ICBM to be guided by GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou (if you can), cross-checking their results against one-another Mars-rover-processor-consensus style?
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoWhy would you rely on something like GPS for something as expensive as an ICBM, when you can have inertial guidance? Ring laser gyros, for instance.