Posted on 12/16/2004 7:04:56 AM PST by crushelits
WASHINGTON - President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.
Any shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only the most remarkable circumstances, said a Bush administration official who spoke to a small group of reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity.
The GPS system is vital to commercial aviation and marine shipping.
The president also instructed the Defense Department to develop plans to disable, in certain areas, an enemy's access to the U.S. navigational satellites and to similar systems operated by others. The European Union is developing a $4.8 billion program, called Galileo.
The military increasingly uses GPS technology to move troops across large areas and direct bombs and missiles. Any government-ordered shutdown or jamming of the GPS satellites would be done in ways to limit disruptions to navigation and related systems outside the affected area, the White House said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Maybe this info will get the attention of the "What do we need Loran for" crowd.
IIRC, the GPS isn't really "shut down" it's encrypted to ensure authorized use only.
I could be wrong but I'd swear that was what I was taught in 1992 when I first trained on the GPS.
OnStar ain't gonna like this!
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It's always great to be extra cautious, but I have a hard time believing that terrorists are smart enough to utilise GPS. I mean, the 9-11 attacks were a very crude undertaking. Effective, unfortunately, but crude. It is good not to underestimate the enemy though.
I still maintain the west will win this war because we are, and always will be, smarter than these people.
How will I ever find my fishing numbers. ;)
Always know how to use the map and compass - they will never fail.
How will the Army and Airforce's GPS guided bombs work if they shut it down completely?
GPS has some intentional noise introduced into its signal to limit the accuracy of receivers - a cheap GPS unit would be able to say "I'm within a 100-foot circle of here". Military gear had the capability of removing the noise, so GI's could be "here" within a much smaller circle of error.
In 2000 or so, the military removed the noise from the signal so everyone could be "here", closer together.
BTW, GPS stands for "gets people somewhere".
There are encrypted versions of GPS.
I believe that the 9-11 terrorists used GPS on the planes to find their targets. I bring my GPS on the plane whenever I travel & you can see actual streets. All they would have to do is mark waypoints on the ground and then fly toward them.
This would result in chaos among those aircraft aloft. More and more pilots are using GPS as their sole navigational device.
GPS was supposed to have been a add-on nav device. Predictably, it has become the sole nav device for most pilots.
I make my living selling GPS systems. Publishing old news like this to spook people will not help me make a living.
This kind of thing won't just cause some "minor inconvinences". It will shut down entire industries.
Government DOES NOT want to do this.
It's like closing all streets and roads, ALL OF THEM, because terrorists used roads to deliver truck bombs.
I still use my Loran C with joy. Other than those fickle changeover zones which you only hit every 600 miles or so for a brief unusable indication, I find my Northstar Loran to be as accurate as the GPS. As a matter of fact, the overlay of an NDB approach using all three finds the ADF to be the worst, the GPS to be second worse, and the LORAN C to be the best. Every time I switch it on I expect to get no signal acquisition, having been hearing about it being switched off for a decade now. I smile and love it when it's still up and running.
From the wobbly flight paths taken by the 911 terrorists, you are right, they were not using GPS equipment.
I read they practiced with Microsoft Flight Simulator though. Bill Gate's potential powers of observation are incredible. Unless a user turns it off, Media Player reports back to Bill's servers everything someone plays. I'd be curious to know what he knows. Also, Bill has gotten suspiciously talented at tracking down virus writers. Hmmmm.
Fortunately, checkrides include dead panels and thus make you still be somewhat aware of your position. I lost my tray except for one old sole Narco Nav11 standalone once. I kept having to switch back and forth on stations to get a fix. It was total recall from twenty five years ago, but it comes right back.
It is ALWAYS encrypted. The Military would have no problem shutting down only the parts civilians can decode while retaining all the other parts.
What did pilots use, say, fifty years ago? Are they not still trained in a more basic navigation system?
The GPS signal is not one signal but several. It is true that they removed some of the built in error to the civilian signals but no all of it because there are several types of error... I should not say much about it, but the short version is they can shut it down for everyone else but them.
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