“Modern weapons, including guided missiles and missile defense systems, all need information supported by navigation satellites,” said Peng Guangqian, a Beijing-based senior military strategist.
“Relying on other navigation satellite systems for such information is impossible in wartime,” he said.

China aiming to have its own GPS in place by 2012

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The Global Positioning System that provides everything from personal navigation in private cars to military precision strike capabilities could start to falter as early as next year, according to a recent government report.
The U.S. Air Force currently controls 30 satellites used for GPS, but some of those aging spacecraft could start to fail, resulting in [...]

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Delays in launching new satellites – the next one is scheduled for a November 2009 launch, almost 3 years late – could be problematic if the older hardware starts failing. The GAO has calculated – using reliability curves for each operational satellite – that the probability of keeping a 24-satellite constellation in orbit drops below [...]

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Chinese officials at the Toulouse Space Show have announced plans to put an Asia-wide satellite positioning system in place by 2010 to work alongside the US GPS and European Galileo programmes.
The Beidou/Compass system already has four satellites in position. It will be free to use, but will include an encrypted channel for “authorised” users.
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With EU approval for a new bidding process, Europe’s much-touted — and much delayed — Galileo, a Brussels-controlled competitor to the US’s GPS system, looks set for orbit. One satellite is being launched this weekend and the system is expected to go online by 2013. more…

The GPS Revolution: How Pocket Positioning Will Change Daily Life

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Russia successfully launched a rocket on Tuesday carrying the last three satellites to complete a navigation system to rival America’s GPS.
The military-run GLONASS mapping system works over most of Russia and is expected to cover the globe by the end of 2009, once all its 24 navigational satellites are operating.
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“The next-generation GPS III system is expected to have about 500 times the transmitter power of the current system, multiplying its resistance to jamming,” said the defense analysis website Globalsecurity.org.
“GPS III will have second and third frequencies to contain civilian signal, more robust signal transmissions, and provide real-time unaugmented one-meter accuracy” to locate objects on [...]

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An overpriced piece of pie in the sky
Times Online, UK - 6 hours ago
It arose out of a loose conviction among some EU countries that they would prefer not to rely on the GPS – devised for the US military, still its primary …
Galileo tugs on public purse strings Register
Galileo funding a step closer Computing
all 36 news [...]

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Europe’s attempt to create its own satellite navigation system, known as Galileo, has fallen on hard times. Over the past year, the European Union (EU) has been forced to abandon the idea of managing Galileo as a public-private partnership, in the process incurring a nearly €2.5 billion ($3.5 billion) debt. In addition, one-time partners China [...]

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The Pentagon says it no longer needs to hamper signals from the Global Positioning System network in times of crisis, due to advancements in those systems.
The next generation of GPS satellites won’t carry the capability to degrade the commercial GPS signal in favor of military uses, Pentagon spokesman Major Patrick Ryan told Reuters.
Current satellites allow [...]

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