Free Republic

The European Space Agency and the EU have decided to build a satellite navigation system, similar to the US Navstar/GPS system, called Galileo. Publicly, they claimed that they were doing so because they distrusted the US, and feared that the Pentagon might somehow disrupt the GPS signal. They also claimed that they needed to build this system in order to protect Europe’s independence from the US. Their plan, as it now stands, is to launch two test satellites that will begin transmitting, on frequencies allocated to the Europeans by the International Telecommunications Union, in 2006. In 2008, they hope to...