GPS system 'close to breakdown'

reply to post by mattifikation


you are right! how could we have been so stupid. this is the setup for a grand new contract, which will be issued, for new gear with all the latest bells and whistles.

reply to post by Amaterasu


Right. Perhaps I'm not understanding you correctly. What I was saying is that if the air force were to continue using GPS, but we are told the system completely crashed, wouldn't we know? I know quite a few people in various positions in the air force and other departments (although it could always be top secret), and I'm sure many people do wouldn't that lie come to light sooner rather than later? I suppose there is always the possiblity that by the time it is found out it won't matter, their objectives could have already been met. But that seems to a lot if's and could's and maybe's. Especially for a system that as many have pointed out here is extremely beneficial, particularly in times of war, to locate the injured.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


Great catch. S&F.

I don't think this is a set-up for a cushy new government contract - more likely for privatization (of GPS, followed by the military).

Personally,, I don't care if the system fails. My tin foil hat makes me sweat in the summer. It would wonderful if I could just go hatless.

I smell a Problem-Reaction-Solution scenario in progress:

Problem: GPS is about to fail. Emergency services won’t get to people on time. People will have to learn how to read maps (having people learn things is always a problem)
Reaction: OMG how will we find the mall without our SatNav? The military won’t have a problem, they have mall detecting black budget spy sats…
Solution: We could offer you the same service by triangulating your position using Cellphone towers. Just like Google Latitude does. Problem solved!

And another problem solved is that pesky problem of satnav systems not being able to report their position. This will make tracking you so much easier.

Another solution (the one that won’t be offered or promoted by TPTB) is using the hardware of other nations. GPS is the American system. But other systems are Glonass (Russian) that will be upgraded and expanded this year, Compass (Chinese) and Galileo (European). Those systems are not fully operational, but with GPS about to fail they will make sure it’s operational in 2 years.

reply to post by concerned190

I don't understand. If the GPS stytem could fail as early as next year then why are the census people marking coordinates on every front door in America RIGHT NOW for the 2010 Census?

This is what I thought of right away. Maybe this is the reason for the sudden need of GPS coordinates for every front door in America. Personally it won't effect me. I don't use the things.

reply to post by timewalker


GPS failing is probably just as big a surprise for the US Census Bureau as it is for you and me. A more important question is who asked the Census Bureau to gather exact geographical locations of 'front doors'? And who will have access to the resulting database?

I guess it feels good to see that other people won't be abled to navigate the roads properly, huh? Pretty funny seeing people lost, hey? Because everyone knows you're superior people to them.

Originally posted by Make Speed Limit 45
Who cares about the damn GPS system??. We didn't even have it until a couple decades ago and the world managed just fine. Another stupid frill that the idiot american now regards as essential. Let it fail.

OH COME ON. NOTHING in modern life is 'essential' and if you truely believe that then you may as well as go back to the stone age.

There have been more than enough articles around here about the black budget spy satellite system which are not available to the public, and which the government is not going to allow to break because they will lose a lot of control.

Well unless you believe in a secret space base, the launches of classified payloads have been rather limited; therefore any such system will have rather small capability. Furthermore, the military does not even have receivers for such technology and if it were the same as GPS then we'd pick it EM radiation.

Spy satellite =|= GPS satellite.

As for spying, they can do it with mobile phones. IIRC, if a employees mobile is stolen at a telecom, they track the address and tell them to hand it in or else they'll be raided.

[edit on 20/5/2009 by C0bzz]

You know, ive told others about not liking GPS,a nd when asked why...my answer was about how government or police can trac yuo, for thier own selfish reasons, because yuor a target to them now..or they need a scapegoat, and how technology jsut complicates things more...ive been near laughed at, and told crazy, becuae they thought gps would never fail! Well, i guess im the last one laughin now
GPS make people dumber.ive actually talked to people, who have never looked at a street and highwyay map before! so ide ask em, how they got to point a, b c ect same answer...oh, the GPS got me thier. Kinda elimiantes thining and using better judgement, wouldnt you say?
Loko at it this way...if GPS goes under..they wont be able to tax our mileage as its been proposed, to GPS our vehicles, and charge us money per mile..i wonder what would hapen to the military tanks, helicoptors, troops overseas who RELY on gps to operate functionally?
The more technological we become, the more we move closer to our demise..

Originally posted by Dorfl
reply to post by timewalker

 

GPS failing is probably just as big a surprise for the US Census Bureau as it is for you and me. A more important question is who asked the Census Bureau to gather exact geographical locations of 'front doors'? And who will have access to the resulting database?

who asked? AIPAC?

who will have access? GPS, uh, I mean Laser Guided Missiles?

They wont let the GPS fail, simply because GPS has a competitor: the russian GLONASS. Which is actually a better system

Originally posted by TheOracle
They wont let the GPS fail, simply because GPS has a competitor: the russian GLONASS. Which is actually a better system

How is this a better system? It doesn't have global coverage yet, the new batch of satellites is going up later this year.

It gives you a position on an ellipse closely resembling the earth. For GPS the ellipse is called WGS84 and for Glonass it's PZ-90. For different places on earth the ellipse will fit better and for some worse. PZ-90 might be a slightly better fit for Russia and Europe...but on a global scale it's not a big deal.

The only real difference I know of is that in the Glonass system satellites all use their own frequency. So you can identify them by their signal frequency instead of their ID-code (they all have the same ID). But that doesn't make it the better system...if anything it makes it the more complicated system.

I agree that there has to be something going on that is unsaid.

As GPS technology is not leading bleeding edge anymore and in fact the replacement satellites should be relativity inexpensive to replace.

Some conspiracies.

Maybe they want it to go down in 2012 so you can't navigate away from the disaster as easily.

Or maybe they don't want to put satellites up since they know they will be destroyed by the solar storm in 2012. Thus they're waiting to launch them after it is clear - that is if anybody is left to launch them.

Or perhaps it is simple greed and control and they don't want civilians to use them anymore without a monthly fee for the newfangled system. Or perhaps the military wants to take it off it's budget so we can pay for it twice.

Or Homeland security is going to begin to round up people in the camps and they don't want the camps locations known or the locations of the Nazi pigs hunting us.

More likely they don't like the control it gives individuals as the government fears independent individuals. Thus they must implement a new system in which we have to pay for each use and a government agent will relay that information to us if we have a proper ID chip with funds available, no wants and warrants, unpaid traffic fines or parking tickets. If not they'll drop on our location and put us in a camp until our fines are paid.

Whatever it is there is clearly parts of the story that was left out, so they can ambush us with something at the last minute in order to screw us and act like they're not responsible for their complete irresponsibility.


[edit on 20-5-2009 by verylowfrequency]

I never gave much credit to the concept of "Worldwide" when it's America using it. Just like the World Series, or the World Heavyweight Championship

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse

GPS system 'close to breakdown'

www.guardian.co.uk

US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide.

The satellites are overseen by the US Air Force, which has maintained the GPS network since the early 1990s. According to a study by the US government accountability office (GAO), mismanagement and a lack of investment means that some of the crucial GPS satellites could begin to fail as early as next year.
.............

(visit the link for the full news article)

There is still a Russian sytem and a Chinese sytem en in 2013 Galileo the European system. And I am sure they will invest to keep it running as far as "they" need it.

I work for a construction company in the survey department. We do residential and commercial projects. We use GPS for all of our surveying. Much cheaper than running conventional. Almost as accurate too. We can get within 1/100th of a foot. If the GPS system went down you would see construction projects slow way down. Especially your State and County projects. They are already anal and it would be even worse if you had to run conventional surveying. Very few surveyors would even know how to do it. Lots of expense for re-training.

Originally posted by Pjotr
There is still a Russian sytem and a Chinese sytem en in 2013 Galileo the European system. And I am sure they will invest to keep it running as far as "they" need it.

Yep but unless you have the proper kit then you will still have the same problems everyone else will have should the GPS system throw a wobbly... Just think everyone now can buy a car sat nav for what? about £69.99? Oh the horror! That price will rocket to £369.99!!! And then you wont even know if your buying into the right system, it will be betamax vs VHS, or Bluray Vs HDDVD all over again

I'm wondering if we can't have a single unit that uses a variety of methods - sorta like how cruise missiles use GPS as well as other ground based data.... Say mobile phone masts for instance, they are fixed in one position... Surely a device could identify each masts ID, cross reference that against a database of the mast locations and using the signal strength then triangulate a position.... I know signal strength is quite a flakey way, but when out in the open an exact position could be accurate, in built up areas tho maybe less so.

reply to post by tamusan


I have a 'Spot Me' it's a GPS reciever that uploads my position to a map to track my location. I work alone and it's a safety issue. Basicly the system works the following way.

1) I push the check in button.
2) The unit checks the location on the basis of the GPS satelites and records it in it's internal memory.
3) It sends my unit ID and the GPS co-ordinates to a satelite (not the GPS ones) that then relay it back to a base center which automatically updates the map.

My understanding is that this is very similar to the system used by corrections except that the ankle units pull a GPS location and send an update on an automatic time schedule.

Update from the USAF yesterday.

Air Force Responds to GPS Outage Concerns

The sky isn't falling and neither is the Global Positioning System, the U.S. Air Force said during a Twitter news conference. "No, the GPS will not go down," tweeted Col. Dave Buckman of the Air Force's Space Command. "GAO points out, there is potential risk associated with a degradation in GPS performance."

"The issue is under control. We are working hard to get out the word. The issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There's only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard," the Air Force official said.

The tweet forum marked the first time Space Command has used its Twitter page for a scheduled forum. During the session, held Wednesday afternoon, the Air Force sought to allay fears raised by a Government Accountability Office report critical of its management of the GPS program.

I know this sounds rather overly-sensitive, but I can't help but feel that the US is being set-up for failure by the current administration. I realize that Obama's camp didn't cause the problems, but they seem to have no problem announcing to the world all of our problems/ near misses / mistakes, etc.

In the good old days, we would have simply and quietly fixed the GPS system without anyone knowing it was about to fail. And if it failed before they fixed it, the offical response would have been: oops, we didn't see THAT coming!

There is a lot of money at stake here. If other countries, such as Australlia, begin using Europe's system, we lose money. Big time. And further, if we them have to buy-in to their system for lack of funds to fix ours, then that costs us more money. Big time.

Doesn't anyone else kind of wonder why we suddenly have to go around apologizing to every nation and announcing all of our problems, etc. It just seems that in the last 100+ days the US is purposefully being dragged down as much as possible.

Out of Australlia's news:
Source: www.news.com.au...
Quote: This failure could open the door to systems funded by other countries, such as Europe's Galileo network.

The EU-funded system, designed to rival the American network, is due to be launched next year – hopefully just in time for the fallout from the predicted failure of GPS.

The network of GPS satellites is overseen by the US Air Force, which was slammed in the accountability report for failing to keep the system up to date.

The air force is spending $1.7 billion to bring the system up to scratch, but the report claimed that constant delays and overspending had put the system in danger of failure.

reply to post by lpowell0627


If our failures and apologies are deep enough, along with our debt, also now being humbly acknowledged by the president, we will have no other recourse than to join a global union and be governed from there. It seems likely that obama with his many european as well as american fans would be the obvious choice to head up the global government as a reward for delivering the United States. It looks inevitable at this point. It seems to me (an Independent) that the majority of liberals would embrace this change in status because they believe the US is responsible for the bulk of the problems in the world. It's a wonder that the world had any problems at all before the US came along but if they are right, poverty will be gone and causes for war will be eliminated. We will all be equal.