Bush plans to disable GPS during crisis events

From MSNBC:
"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."


www.msnbc.msn.com...


This is of major importance because 1) So many civilian systems are integrated into the GPS grid and 2) We've recently seen a rise in stories related to 'space control' in relation to white house policy and leaks about classified programs.

Though the story cites terrorism as Bush's reasons... I think it's clear that such a move would be aimed at undermining China or Russia in a war as much as a guy with a suicide bomb and a truck.

Also... all you conspiracists will surely note that entire swaths of the civilian infrastructure can be nuetralized by knocking GPS out.

related stories on the GPS system:

"Washington and Moscow have opened talks on cooperating on their respective satellite navigation systems, GPS and GLONASS, the US State Department said Tuesday."
www.spacedaily.com...

"The United States GPS Industry Council (USGIC) welcomes the announcement of the new Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Policy signed by President Bush. The policy sets forth a forward- looking framework for the management of GPS and its augmentations"
www.spacedaily.com...





other threads realted to the idea of 'space control' by the US military (or 'space denial'):


www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

BTW, can anyone think of a list of everything that is controlled through GPS?

[edit on 16-12-2004 by onlyinmydreams]

BTW, can anyone think of a list of everything that is controlled through GPS?

Most newer commercial aircraft use GPS as a primary navigational tool. This could have a minor impact on air travel if/when it were to be disabled.

Brief synopsis for those interested:

Modern airliners have FMC's (Flight Management Computers) that do the navigation for us. These computers blend position information from both GPS and land based navigation stations (VOR's - VHF Omni-directional Ranges) or aircraft internal IRS's (Inertial Reference Systems) to determine an aircraft's position. Usually GPS is the primary nav source used by the FMC's due to it's accuracy, but if GPS is de-activated, the FMC's can revert to VOR's or IRS for position plotting and navigation. The only time this could be a major pain in the butt is when conducting instrument approaches at airports served solely by GPS approaches (primarily smaller airports).

hmmn... when you take the events of 9-11 into consideration, i can see why the gov might want to make navigation hard for pilots by taking away GPS. After all... I doubt Atta and friends could do any complex navigational chores while an experienced airline pilot should be able to cope without gps.

And people wonder why the EU wants its own commercial GPS system?????

Originally posted by paperplane_uk
And people wonder why the EU wants its own commercial GPS system?????

Yeah, well, my response to that is get after it.

Get your own GPS...problem solved.

Paperplane.

Have a read here: news.bbc.co.uk...

You will find its all in hand.

Originally posted by Kriz_4
Paperplane.

Have a read here: news.bbc.co.uk...

You will find its all in hand.

Hadnt read that specific article, thanks

What about american shipping? sure they can good old sun bearings and stuff, but that still iffy, i mean supertankers use GPS every time they sail.

Commercial trucking companies, taxis, package delivery services all use GPS.

I wonder how this would effect emergency managment services like police and fire departments?

I would imagine that most of those comapnies use WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System), if they disable that , there are a lot of people that would be without a GPS service.

www.garmin.com...

Plus the original intention of WAAS , was to provide GPS assistance to planes,(civilian) I know the FAA has continued with that idea, so wouldn't it cause a major problem?

gps.faa.gov...

If you ever want to check on the WAAS and see if it is down, here is the website to do it with

www.waasperformance.raytheon.com...

Originally posted by paperplane_uk
And people wonder why the EU wants its own commercial GPS system?????

So they don't have to be in debt to America to use ours. I mean, it's the same reason European nations have their own space programs. So they have one.

I don't think that they are talking about shutting it down for long periods of time tho no? I think that the concern is in part over inexperienced terrorists piloting planes, and also over terrorists using automated missle systems that are guided by gps technology. They're talking about limiting its usage during an attack, and they could probably even set it up so that the military still receives it, or even some shipping companies and other priority groups.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
I wonder how this would effect emergency managment services like police and fire departments?

The GPS network transmits an encoded 'military' data stream along with the civil use stuff - do the emergency services have mil spec GPSr's - that would not compromise them if only the civilian data streams are supressed (which one assumes is what is proposed here).

CBS' take on the possible GPS blackout:

www.cbsnews.com...

interesting....


It turns out that many tractors are semi-roboticized through the GPS system:
www.cbsnews.com...