A GPS failure

I did a quick search to see if there was indeed a post on this and came up with nothing.


I was watching a show on the history channel the other day about weaponry. They were talking about a new projectile that could be launched from the Paladin tank. This projectile used GPS to get pinpoint accuracy. This got me thinking on how much our military relies on GPS. The planes teh helocopters the missiles etc...

How much the people rely on GPS too is quite a major thing. Especially with the media and forigen relations.

So I got thinking what would happen if GPS system failed. I know there are more than one system and that each system hase a plethera of satelites to make it accurate. But any way. IF someone developed a weapon to knock out the GPS system how much havoc do you think this would cause? How much dammage could this do to the world militaries?

Just me wondering your opinions.

There are GPS jammers out there that people have tried to use, especially in Iraq against the JDAM systems. In the height of irony, the USAF used a GPS guided bomb to take out a jammer. There is enough redundency built into the system that you might see the accuracy go from 1 or 2 feet, to 1 or 2 hundred feet, but I don't think you'll see a total failure.

I guess it would all depend on which GPS system got knocked out. I would imagine that if one went down, another would kick in to cover it. Theres not just one you know.

Here is some more info...

en.wikipedia.org...

Go here, science.nasa.gov... and when the Sat tracker comes up click satellite scroll down to all the GPS sats...and those are the listed ones.

Taking out the whole system, IMHO would be almost impossible.

Mondern GPS is critical to everything - all ships, most planes and some cars rely on the US GPS constellation. It is pretty well bulletproof with the exception of taking out the birds or the uplink stations. Other countries are tossing up similar stuff but for 90% of the planet it is the US system in use.

If you take it out - bad, and not just for the US military..... Guy fell off boat in Long Beach and his GPS autopilot steered the boat right into Catalina Island - his destination - without him or anyone else on board..!!

It sounds like you referring to the satellites them selves....right.

If an enemy nation (since this is way over any terrorist head) decided to go to war with the US, a very smart move on there part would be to take out gps sats. The US has 27 in use now, for a country as big as China or Russia they would probably have to take out around a dozen....and that would put a serious dent in all military playbooks.

Of course if they did that that would be an act of war, and its likely the counrty would be a pile of rubble in the days and weeks to come. The US military could still have communication, using various telecommunication sats that are out there. And they would likely start filling the B-2's with laser guided bombs.

Europe is creating its own gps, its called Galileo. They plan on having a constellation of 30 birds, they have one so far. China is also apart of that system. The US put pressure on Europe about this issue, and if China attacks the US using Europes Galileo system then Europe will (basically) cut them off. Meaning I would guess in about 15-20 years from now China will start putting its own gps like system up there.

[edit on 15-1-2006 by Murcielago]

Not to mention that despite having the Russian version, and the developing European version, most countries out there use the US version, so they'd end up hurting themselves as well as the US military.

I would just like to point out a few things.

* Paladin is a self-propelled cannon, not a tank.

* The EU has 1 small demonstrator Galileo sat

* Once in a while GPS gives the wrong data (Police used a GPS tracker to track killer Scott Peterson, on one occasion it said his car was traveling at 30,000 mph.)

* Some weapons like JDAM aren't solely guided by GPS, they carry an inertia guidance system but use GPS to enhance it's accuracy.

Almost all weapons have also inertial guidance as backup. So the bomb will not "go mad" only the accuracy will decrease.

"Almost all weapons have also inertial guidance as backup" == longbow

I would argue that it is primary in some cases. For example, what sort of GPS would you
have if you were ABOVE the GPS constellation ?

This has been an unofficial plug for Ring Laser Gyros.

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