Lockheed Martin Awarded GPS III

D Ninja writes "Yesterday, Lockheed Martin was awarded the $1.4 billion Air Force contract to build the next-generation global positioning satellite system. This occurred after a series of delays as the Air Force decided between Lockheed and the competing bidding contractor, Boeing Co. 'GPS III, will give new navigation warfare (NAVWAR) capabilities to shut off GPS service to a limited geographical location while providing GPS to US and allied forces. GPS III will offer significant improvements in navigation capabilities by improving interoperability and jam resistance. The procurement of the GPS III system is planned for multiple blocks, with the GPS IIIA portion currently underway. GPS IIIA includes all of the GPS IIF capability plus up to a ten-fold increase in signal power, a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system, and a new spacecraft bus that will allow a growth path to future blocks.'"

What is up with Boeing lately?

Seriously - lost the in air refueler contract to Airbus (or NVS or whoever)- lost this contract to Lockhead - What is the deal?

Re:What is up with Boeing lately?

Seriously - lost the in air refueler contract to Airbus (or NVS or whoever)- lost this contract to Lockhead - What is the deal?

Pretty simple actually... About two years ago, Boeing awarded all its print services to Lexmark.

Quick translation...

a ten-fold increase in signal power ... a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system

I think that translates to "ability to override the European Union's Galileo".

Re:Quick translation...

Actually, no, that translates to "GPSIII receivers can also receive Galileo signals so GPS doens't become obsolete". Galileo's public version is as accurate as current military GPS, and Galileo's commercial version is approximately 10x more accurate than current military GPS. In other words, as Galileo grows, less and less people would have any reason to continue supporting GPS.

If you think anyone in Europe would trust US military programs or give the US any control over european satellites after the Bush junta, you must be out of your mind.

Re:Quick translation...

OK, here's a hypothetical situation for you. One of the major EU countries wants to engage in military action, but the U.S. is against this.

This sounds a bit far-fetched at first... if there's a conflict and it's sufficiently serious that the Europeans want to take up arms, wouldn't the U.S. want a piece of the action? But perhaps it involves a terrorist attack on an EU country, and to retaliate, the EU wants to drop some bombs or a few commando teams inside the territory of one of our close "allies" like Pakistan, where a lot of the terrorists currently hang out. But the U.S. doesn't want to risk upsetting the Pakistanis.

As I understand things, the U.S. could just say, "Fine. Go ahead. And have fun, guys... but you should remember to bring a map and a good compass, because we're not going to let you guys use our GPS system for navigation, targeting or troop maneuvers." As I understand things, the Europeans would be pretty much fucked. We could call off one of their military actions just by denying them GPS capability or degrading the signal, right?. Even if they were 90% certain they didn't actually want to use a military strike, just taking that card out of their hand would really reduce their power in a negotiation in a conflict.

In the past, I don't think this was so much of an issue. But with the fall of communism, it's less clear that the EU and US will stick together as closely as they have in the past. Furthermore, the U.S.'s foreign policy for the past 8 years, a belligerent "fuck you and get out of my way" attitude towards long-time allies like France and Germany, raises the possibility that U.S. and EU interests could come into direct conflict. Think about it this way. How would it change things if, say, France had control over the GPS system? Would the Iraq war even have been possible? The U.S. would never tolerate that state of affairs. Why should the EU?

Re:Quick translation...

Umm, lets start at the top. I assume you live in America. If you think France, Germany or the UK is going to invade Pakistan, well, that is honestly funny. Also... should they decide to invade Pakistan, are you seriously suggesting without gps they cannot do it? We aren't christopher columbus, we can find countries without gps. Further, do you realise not even US weapons use (or better put, require) gps. Scuds dont use gps + google maps to navigate. They use carefully tuned preprogrammed flight paths. More impressivly (or scarily) is ICBMS.. they have no guidance, they are shot into orbit and fall onto their targets in the km/s range with simple point and shoot logic. I could even point out the number 3 and most relevant point... no one can seriously choose to invade pakistan. They have the bomb, the same reason as no gps / anything will cause America to be invaded, you can wipe out the earth without gps with your nukes. Its called MAD, you might have heard of it. Its americas collapse via ecconomic reasons that is the real threat... just ask the soviet union. Why does history seem to have so many lessons? :p

Re:Quick translation...

Incorrect. From http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/jdam.htm [fas.org]
"Guidance is accomplished via the tight coupling of an accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) with a 3-axis Inertial Navigation System (INS). The Guidance Control Unit (GCU) provides accurate guidance in both GPS-aided INS modes of operation (13 meter (m) Circular Error Probable (CEP)) and INS-only modes of operation (30 m CEP). INS only is defined as GPS quality hand-off from the aircraft with GPS unavailable to the weapon (e.g. GPS jammed). In the event JDAM is unable to receive GPS signals after launch for any reason, jamming or otherwise, the INS will provide rate and acceleration measurements which the weapon software will develop into a navigation solution."

The military does not depend solely upon GPS for any navigational necessity. We had a half dozen GPS devices in my squad in Afghanistan, but we also had a map and compass and knew how to use them. It's like that all the way up to the B-2 Spirit: use GPS, but don't make it your only resource.

Re:Quick translation...

If you lived in the US you would know the 3 presidential candidates are basically on-record of saying they intend to MEND the relations which were damaged the past 8 years. And its why none of the US allies is alarmed - they know GWB is gone in 6 months and w/ him goes his warped policies.

Not valid

"launch launch launch pop pop pop" could mean the following :

1) the EU possibly starts (possibly collaboration with the Chinese) to destroy all US satellite, including KH and GPS one.
2) all intellectual property of the US are forfeited
3) the US lose ANY support whatsoever. For a VERY long time. And it find itself isolated politically, and as much isolated economically as the world can bear (I doubt there is anything the US physically produce which could not be produced/built over a few month/years in another part of the world)
4) escalation of conflict in nuclear war. Remember, some country in EU still have the same nasty nuke that you have. Then we have 2 sets of loser (EU/US) and one winner : the rest of the world.

Anybody which think that the US can kill any satellite of the EU or China because they dislike it, should have its head examinated, because there would be pretty hefty consequence.

Re:Quick translation...

Galileo [wikipedia.org] is going at 2 frequencies 1164 to 1214 MHz and 1563 to 1591 MHz. While it looks like (the civilian part) of this version is just centered at the (L2 = 1227.60 MHz) & (L5 = 1176.45 MHz) - so the 1164-1214 civilian GPS units for Galileo should work with the civilian bands for these satellites too. As for the military stuff.... well I couldn't say.

Great News

Boeing has a surplus of Commercial and Military Contracts. In fact, if we could have a few more prominent startups for Defense Contracting the better.

Does interoperate with Galileo also mean JAM?

The reason Europe decided to build Galileo as a direct civilian alternative to US' GPS was to prevent the US from shutting down all navigation in case of a conflict. TFA says that the new (US military) GPS now will have 500x transmit power, and also transmit a new civilian signal (L1C) to be fully compatible and interoperable with EU's Galileo.

I wonder if the capability to "interoperate" with the Galileo system also includes "Jamming". Seems like the satellite could produce a good military GPs signal while at the same time transmit a corrupt L1C signal to "interoperate" with the Galileo system.

Re:Does interoperate with Galileo also mean JAM?

The reason Europe decided to build Galileo as a direct civilian alternative to US' GPS was to prevent the US from shutting down all navigation in case of a conflict

In case of war, it won't be the US that will shut down GPS. It will be the US enemies.

Satellites are extremely vulnerable. They would be the first thing to be hit in case of a major war, this was already predicted in this thirty-year-old book [amazon.com]

Re:Does interoperate with Galileo also mean JAM?

In case of war, it won't be the US that will shut down GPS. It will be the US enemies.

Satellites are extremely vulnerable. They would be the first thing to be hit in case of a major war, this was already predicted in this thirty-year-old book [amazon.com]

A satellite's vulnerability really depends on it's orbit. Satellites in Low Earth Orbit a few hundred miles up are pretty vulnerable (as the US Navy shootdown of an errant American spy satellite recently showed). GPS satellites are in a much higher orbit, around 12,600 miles up. That makes them considerably more difficult to hit and probably puts them out of range of a lot of antisatellite capabilities (of course it's hard to tell since no country actually admits to having an ASAT weapon, much less what it's exact capabilities are). Communications satellites in geostationary orbit 22,240 are even more difficult to get to. In a war I'd be a lot more concerned about the reconnaissance satellites than GPS or communications sats.

Spacecraft Bus!

I remember that from "The Harlem Globetrotters in Outer Space"!!!!

Re:waste of money

You do realize that NASA is a hell of a lot like the Air Force, they pay a bunch of contractors like Lockheed to do most of the work? NASA isn't interested (and has no authority over) the warfare parts, they have very little that's classified by way of personnel and information, so it's a job much more suited to the Air Force, what with the NAVWAR and other capabilities they think it needs.

Re:What's the point?

Name the last time the United States went to war with somebody with anti-satellite technology. When you are fighting an asymmetric battle, it is plenty useful.

Re:GPS Shutoff

Yes, because lord knows there was no way for ships to navigate before GPS came along....

I am a little more concerned...

I am a little more concerned with my car being driven off a cliff by an automated traffic control system because some asshat decides to invade some other asshat, and to hell with the civilians using the system.

The insistence on a NAVWAR backdoor is rather stupid. In the last three wars in which it has been involved, the U.S. has pretty much had its rear kicked by enemies using what amounts to 1940s technology. The danger to US troops is not from WMDs, it's from IEDs made in peoples kitchens using easily obtained ordinance, generally with U.S. serial numbers on it.

If they want to blow me up, they're going to do it by setting up a bomb that reacts to the RFID in my "Real ID" card, U.S. Passport, or the pressure sensors in my tires, all of which are government mandated, and all of which go where I go, and so are really useful for targeting me both generally ("look, and American!") or personally. Or they'll use my IMEI on my cell phone, which on differs in that I'm not required to carry it, but probably will anyway.

If someone can build a missile that can get to me from where they are, then unless I am sitting in a bunker, a few hundred feet for going inertial or using airport beacons instead of GPS isn't going to matter much one way or another.

-- Terry

Re:I am a little more concerned...

Your superiority only matters if you can use it to accomplish goals that actually further your purposes. If it came down to an all-out war between the US and anyone else, then the US would win hands down, no question. But this doesn't serve any purpose of the US -- the local and international political ramifications of obliterating another country are unacceptable, even for the most gun-ho president. And no other country is going to start an all-out war with the US, because they know they'll lose. Being able to obliterate any country in the world doesn't matter if there's no way you'd ever do that.

Being able to kick the "bad people" out of a country like Iraq while allowing the rest of the population to enjoy the economic and social benefits of capitalist democracies is absolutely something the US wants to be able to do. It appears that, as mighty and all-powerful as your military is, they're unable to achieve the actual objectives required of them.

Also, what makes you think you'd only have to kill 150 million Chinese to destroy the country? I think you're grossly underestimating either the lengths people will go to to protect their country, or the population of China.

Re:GPS Shutoff

US weapons are guided by INS with GPS augumenting that. Turn of GPS and you've still got a pretty accurate INS system to rely on.

Unless the INS is too busy arresting Mexicans.

Re:1.4 billion dollars for what ?!

500x more power - essentially that requires a tremendously larger amount of power. Even with the best phased array bad ass military style antennas you arent going to get this sort of a power increase - you gotta put more out of the antenna at the source - which means you are lifting honking huge freaking batteries up into space and you are gonna have to stick some mad solar panels on the sucka too.
PS. I completely agree with the sentiment in your last sentence. - with that money you could probably mount a significant effort toward eliminating malaria in subtropical/tropical areas of the world, saving millions of children. Or you could provide an absurd amount of aid to prevent water born diseases in the 3rd world - or you could mount a tremendous anti-hunger campaign. Bottom line - bigger batteries on a satellite are more important to the people in charge.

Re:1.4 billion dollars for what ?!

I happen to have done some engineering work on GPS, and I can say that these additions are extremely non-trivial and cannot be done with existing hardware. The way the signals are transmitted must be changed entirely. The good news is that this system will allow for real-time ionospheric distortion mitigation (a problem for any non-DGPS receivers with the current system) and provide enough signal strength that even super-cheap receivers will be very accurate.

Also, this cost would likely have occurred anyway - the current satellite constellation won't live forever. The satellites will run out of orbital maintenance fuel, or their clocks will begin to drift erratically, and at some point in the foreseeable future, the constellation will lose enough satellites that it will be mostly unusable. So if we'll be launching new ones anyway, why not make them better?

I also understand your humanitarian question, however, the support that GPS provides in science and education (even though it was and is a military project in the USA) truly does humankind a great service. Oh, and it lets me find good pizza no matter where I am in the city, which is truly humanitarian :-)

Re:1.4 billion dollars for what ?!

Perhaps I've been in the computer industry for far too long, but how could it possibly cost 1.4bn to essentially add access control and a bigger amplifier to existing tech ?

The same way it coses $400 million to drive a remote-controlled car across a red desert?

Re:Satellite DRM

I think it's an interesting problem to create a satellite that emits a radio signal that can only be used by some people, but not others, as in the "military" and "civilian" signals from these satellites.

It's really not all that hard.
The civilian signal is unencrypted.
The military signal is encrypted.
All they do is flip a switch and the civilian signal is gone

I daresay at some point it would be considered a war crime to disrupt GPS signals, in any case, when civilization is much more dependent on them, as I think it is reasonable to expect in the future.

What?
A warcrime for a Sovereign Nation to control their property?

Why do you think the EU lofted their own GPS network?
Why do you think the Soviets began lofting GLONASS during the Cold War?
If you don't control it, don't depend on it.