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China to Deploy Secure GPS by 2010
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu May 08, 2008 02:24 AM
from the in-space-nobody-can-hear-the-competition dept.
from the in-space-nobody-can-hear-the-competition dept.
hackingbear writes "Unsatisfied by the reliance on American GPS navigation systems and not feeling much security joining the European Galileo system, China will expand its 4-satellite Beidou navigation system to a full-fledged, competitive, and encrypted system by 2010."
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Will civilians be allowed to use it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Will civilians be allowed to use it (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Interference? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Interference? (Score:5, Funny)
How can you expect anybody to cite the lack of published specs?
Unless of course its in the Big Book of Unpublished Specifications, which causes any reader to disappear in a puff of paradoxical smoke.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Mmmm. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Good (Score:3, Funny)
Peace and Harmony (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder what else China will do... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wonder what else China will do... (Score:4, Interesting)
What we are looking at is that China is getting ready to attack, not defend.
Russia and India are now cooperating closer than ever, even while India is pulling closer to UK and America. They are getting worried about China's intention. I suspect that Russia will realize soon exactly why America is pushing their anti missle system. It is not about Iran, or even Russia.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I had to guess I'd say they'll ta
Re:I wonder what else China will do... (Score:5, Insightful)
China threat theory is sooooo out of favor among people who know their stuff that it boggles my mind how the rest of the world (except for US army leadership of course, who just want more toys to play with) keeps nagging on about it
'Heping jueqi' is the 21st century mantra for the chinese. They don't want to fight any serious wars, and aren't going to be able to project global power in any serious way for quite a long time.
China is a great power in name only, they are not willing and capable of acting like a great power yet. They're still on the edge of the world system in a lot of ways. What they want right now is to be accepted into it, and if anything, the west should accomodate them. You might want to read John Ikenberry's extremely insightful essay [foreignaffairs.org] in Foreign Affairs of Jan08.
Also, they walk a razors edge in their national politics, balancing economic freedom and political dictatorship. Nobody can expect them to 'go western' all of a sudden. It'd destroy their nation as a unit. All our complaints about human rights violations, morally right as they may be, are trumped by their national survival. China is preoccupied by raising its living standard right now. Deng Xiaoping got something very right when he allowed for just economical freedom, but also gave China a huge national problem.
All this crap about 'china's growing military' pails when compared to current US power. China is not 'getting ready to attack'. China is getting ready to be able to protect her trade-lanes in the east/south china sea. That may scare americans, who have regarded that little pond as their own back yard for a century, but it's only natural for a rapidly growing nation. Yes, China is indeed growing its army, but that does not mean they're pumping liquid oxygen into their DF-5 ICBM's just yet. Misinterpreting the goals of a rising power is the surest formula to kick off a war. As a Rising power, China is risk-averse and, for all intents and purposes, seems to have limited revisionist aims.
The biggest threat of war with China comes from self-fulfilling prophecies about war.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, US military power is at a seriously low ebb these days. We are locked into Iraq and Afganistan for the forseeable future. There's no way we could move equipment and material in a rapid manner from those theaters to a new one if another conflict came up, nor provide troops without a draft. It would have to be an EXTREMELY serious, direct threat to US or close allied soil
Analysis of Chinese military - now +future growth (Score:4, Interesting)
Excellent post! Informed, pragmatic rationalism based on facts - uncommon in /. discussions about international affairs.
See also a very informative article from the Atlantic Monthly: How We Would Fight China [theatlantic.com] by Robert Kaplan, an experienced journalist covering U.S. foreign affairs and the military. Detailed description of China's current military, with short- and long-term views of their military growth.
A tiny exceprt: (please keep in mind that Kaplan isn't advocating for confrontation, but doing a thorough analysis of what might happen if foolish politicians get us into such a mess).
" At the moment the challenges posed by a rising China may seem slight, even nonexistent. The U.S. Navy's warships have a collective "full-load displacement" of 2.86 million tons; the rest of the world's warships combined add up to only 3.04 million tons. The Chinese navy's warships have a full-load displacement of only 263,064 tons. The United States deploys twenty-four of the world's thirty-four aircraft carriers; the Chinese deploy none (a principal reason why they couldn't mount a rescue effort after the tsunami)."
"China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II...Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically...But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat."
"There are many ways in which the Chinese could use their less advanced military to achieve a sort of political-strategic parity with us. According to one former submarine commander and naval strategist I talked to, the Chinese have been poring over every detail of our recent wars in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, and they fully understand just how much our military power depends on naval projection--that is, on the ability of a carrier battle group to get within proximity of, say, Iraq, and fire a missile at a target deep inside the country. To adapt, the Chinese are putting their fiber-optic systems underground and moving defense capabilities deep into western China, out of naval missile range--all the while developing an offensive strategy based on missiles designed to be capable of striking that supreme icon of American wealth and power, the aircraft carrier. The effect of a single Chinese cruise missile's hitting a U.S. carrier, even if it did not sink the ship, would be politically and psychologically catastrophic, akin to al-Qaeda's attacks on the Twin Towers. China is focusing on missiles and submarines as a way to humiliate us in specific encounters. Their long-range-missile program should deeply concern U.S. policymakers."
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Also from the Atlantic Monthly:
Superiority Complex - Why America's growing nuclear supremacy may make war with China more likely [theatlantic.com] Again, detailed anaylsis of possible flashpoints and the resulting warfare. Section title: "Strategic Implications of the Nuclear Imbalance"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? In the mid 1930's Germany was producing hundreds of attack subs a year, hundreds of aircraft a year and thousands of tanks! Unless China has hundreds of secret military factories, they are not even coming close to matching Nazi Germany's militarism.
If you consider how old most of China's current military hardware is (nearly all thei
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? In the mid 1930's Germany was producing hundreds of attack subs a year, hundreds of aircraft a year and thousands of tanks! Unless China has hundreds of secret military factories, they are not even coming close to matching Nazi Germany's militarism.
It's kind of hard to compare military power between the eras. A single boomer doesn't weigh as much as a battleship nor look as impressive but it can toss 200 warheads and put a serious hurting on any country out there. (let's leave aside the consideration of the weapon actually being used.) A single modern fighter can cover more territory and engage targets further away than any WWII prop-job. So yes, inflation-adjusted, the modern aircraft costs 50x more. Is it an effective bang for the buck? That's how
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Weapons tech is drastically different from even 20 years ago. Even more so is personal body armor. Soldiers from even vietnam who had M-16's aren't comparable to modern soldiers with battle field communications so tight that a squad has more abilities than a platoon did in vietnam.
China is upgrading to match the USA's abilities. Like it or not we walked over t
Re:I wonder what else China will do... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
A new "feature" of their expanded GPS network will probably be to tell the police exactly where the user is
You wouldn't really need any changes to the GPS for that- the satellite has no knowledge about the position of anyone receiving its signal anyway; the positioning signal is one way. In theory, a receiver could of course send an ID and the location it computed from multiple satellites back to one of them- but you'd hardly use the GPS satellites for tracking millions of individual devices. Much more likely, it would work somewhat like the EU's Galileo extension to the COSPAS-SARSAT system. [europa.eu]
But, constantly
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A new "feature" of their expanded GPS network will probably be to tell the police exactly where the user is. It might even end up mandatory.
In itself, GPS won't do that, because a GPS receiver is just that -- a receiver, with no backchannel. I suppose the Chinese could build a backchannel into their system (perhaps under the pretext of negotiating the encryption) but there would be bandwidth issues (not insurmountable) and the slightly more significant issue that the government would only know where the receiver was, not where its owner was. I'm about 15 miles from my GPS receiver as I type this...
GPS is primarily a military application (Score:4, Insightful)
As my philsophical opponents say so often "This is'nt rocket science".
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The US has been preparing for this phase a little longer than China though
http://www.afspc.af.mil/units/ [af.mil]
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Re:GPS is primarily a military application (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Questions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Questions... (Score:5, Informative)
WAAS - wide area augmentation system begain deploying a few years back. It has 25 ground sations in the US that recieve the signal and then send corrected signals back up to the satellite.
The next one, is called LAAS, local area augmentations system, like the WAAS but much more local. It is designed specifically for aviation and is only good in a 20 mile proximity to the airport. It's supposed to be a cheaper replacement for ILS systems.
Take a look on wikipedia under WAAS GPS & LAAS GPS there are some pretty decent articles on them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You dont need anywhere near as many satellites.
Again, radio beacons have the same problem.
Whats cheaper? 30 or so satellites covering the entire globe or peppering radio towers *everywhere* (including the middle of oceans)?
Yes, this is what they have to do. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not Galileo? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is yet another lame move from the Chinese government. Instead of trying to reduce their huge inequality, or at least improving the quality of life for the billion living in poverty, they waste their relatively modest budget duplicating efforts just because they want to play big, as if they were some sort of Europe or USA. The problem
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
First and foremost, they want an independent system exclusively under their own control. They know that the EU will surrender the Galileo controls to the US whenever they demand it - there goes Galileo's sole big advantage. The sad story of how the EU bent US demands and crippled its system made that clear to the Chinese.
Lets deal with both your points (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the population, China really is two distinct countries when it comes to its people. Now I know you can divide up the population into various ethnic groups but it comes down to you are either part of the Communist system or your not. So you have a couple hundred million in the one camp, with all the benefits of modern life, and then the rest who are still essentially not much more progressed since the the beginning of the last century.
The problem is, China really could not give a rats ass what you, I, or the world thinks. Any attempt to tell them and they take it as an insult. The big concerns going forward are not what happens to China's people but what China attempts with its neighbors. This makes the GPS development interesting in that it increases their threat capability. Considering the fact that its nearly a monthly exercise their threats against Taiwan take on even more seriousness with this expanded capability. This allows them to accurately deliver weapons to targets far beyond their borders. This means they can simply ignore the pleas of the world should they decide to finally address Taiwan in a military manner. It provides a good threat projection versus the US as well.
We can hope they will use the technology to better the lives of their people but unless you part of the first group in China I doubt they can or want to. Simply put the numbers are too large and the territorial issues are extreme in many cases. Combine this with the fact many would just preferred to be left alone and its hard to imagine why the government would bother unless national interest were at stake.
China doesn't want to play big, they already are. They simply want the respect they feel they are not getting. The Olympics were a gesture by some feel good misdirected people on the world stage made to China. Unfortunately China didn't care about all the supposed conditions these people attached, they saw it only as a means to elevate their status in the world and redirect some attention from the unsavory side of their activities. Unfortunately too many in the world are willing to go along. Unfortunately too many people like to vilify the US for things that in China get a pass. Perhaps its because at least with the US there is a chance of changing the behavior.
My friend came back from China teaching English there for a few years, even with a native as a wife. Go figure, anyway what China has a problem with is that many of these highly educated young people don't want to stay. His view was that all this modern conveniences and such were like a bribe to keep the people the nation's leaders need to keep the country going. Basically buy the people off with shiny stuff.
Parent
Inevitable (Score:3, Insightful)
It is what it is. A desirable in the military program. Period.
Wiki: limited number of receivers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:1 words; Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:1 words; Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:1 words; Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I found an interesting article on this. The French invented a trick to make sure that the US would be unable to jam Galileo in a warzone. US allies like the UK and the Eastern Europeans forced them to not do this and so the Chinese decided to make their own fork.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/643/1 [thespacereview.com]
China's existing Beidou navigation network is a clumsy system based on three satellites, (two operational and one reserve) in geosynchronous orbit, launched between 2000 and 2003. Its military uses have been limited, but it is suspected that they include providing guidance for the ICBMs China has aimed at US targets. Above all, this system has given China hands-on operational experience with satellite navigation hardware. Combined with the sophisticated science and engineering data they have been able to obtain from Europe, they are now in a position to begin work on their own military satellite navigation system. Australia, the US, Japan, and India can thank the good folks at ESA and the EU for the subsequent increased instabilityâ"or worseâ"in the region.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With this new system things are getting pretty ridiculous. Enough countries have shown that they now have the ability to launch a GPS style system that no one is going to be able to disable all the available systems and there will be no military advantage on either side.
I'm hoping for someone to just open up the systems properly so we can get away from the waste of money this is becoming.
Kind of scary isn't it that China is spending billions building something which is only useful if they fight a major war with the US.
Also, stop the scare mongering. By your logic the US's ability to jam the civilian GPS signal and keep the military
FUD alert (Score:3, Insightful)
So China choose to rely on their own stuff, just like the Europeans, because in their view America doesn't seem like a very reliable partner; and who can blame them, after nearly 8 years of Bush and the neocons? I realize that it pisses a lot of people off on
And what is t
Re:war with the USA? Are you nuts? (Score:4, Interesting)
Right now, one of the sats has been coming up and down over this past year. IIRC, it is one of the sats past its prime and is high on the list of anticipated failures.
Frankly, the US needs new sats and the technology can be significantly improved. It is hard to imagine any country wanting to use the US' system when there is so much room for improvement, resolution, time precision, encryption, and associated military advancements (over the air encrypted rekeying/synchronization, etc).
Not to mention, it is foolish, from a national security perspective, to not be in control of such an important military technology.
If for no other reason, all of the countries creating their own GPS system are showing the world they are not stupid. Find me a person that believes the US would depend on a China controlled GPS system for much of its military capability and I will show you a moron. A country needs no other reason.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The US is ensuring that the economic output of Iraq benefits primarily the US. Iraq was economically, politically and even socially better off under Saddam than it is now, unless you measure welfare in a method that doesn't include death rates, disease proliferation, violent political instability and economic trauma.
As for South Korea, South Korean industry benefits the US, which is why the US allows SK self-de
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. North Korea has political stability. So did Russia under Stalin. Perhaps political stability isn't such a wonderful thing, at least not if the stable situation is a boot stomping on a h
Re:Encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much "bad" as a waste of time. The unencrypted accuracy is still very useful for most purposes, and there are historical records of the US system being scuppered so that over certain parts of the globe at certain times, even the unencrypted signal was deliberately highly inaccurate but the military knew how to "compensate" for the bad data using a key. However, if China are doing this to stop the effects of a US/EU turnoff from affecting them, this is pretty much vital, I would say. The rest of the world's GPS has exactly the same features, so I don't see how China are doing anything "bad" by this. That's not to say that their overall motives are good, but no worse than the EU/US.
Parent
Re:Encryption (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple military tactics - make sure your weapons and systems are under your control. Make sure they are redundant enough to survive a war. Make sure your enemies can't interfere even via the intervention of other nations. Make sure that political decisions don't get your only source of GPS information turned off.
I don't think that scaremongering over a