GPS Declassified

by Richard D. Easton

  U.S. officials raised alarms about China’s antisatellite activities in 2006, when on at least two reported occasions China aimed a ground-based laser at a U.S. reconnaissance satellite.47 Sensors on Kwajalein Atoll traced the source of the laser to mainland China.48 In January 2007 China used a ballistic missile warhead to destroy one of its obsolete weather satellites, creating more than three thousand pieces of new debris.49 The strike, which required hitting the satellite as it traveled at nearly 17,000 mph, signaled that China’s antisatellite technology had advanced beyond that of the former Soviet Union.50 A year later the United States used a sea-based Navy Aegis ballistic missile interceptor to shoot down a dead spy satellite that was tumbling out of orbit. Officials said it was necessary to ensure that one thousand gallons of toxic thruster propellant did not survive reentry and harm human health.51 Critics at home and abroad speculated that the United States, which had not conducted any antisatellite exercises since the 1980s, contrived the action to send a message to China.52 However, unlike the Chinese incident, there were numerous public explanations in advance of the shoot-down, and the impact occurred at an altitude of about one hundred miles, so the debris burned up or fell to Earth soon after. The Chinese strike left debris scattered at a five-hundred-mile altitude, where some sixty nations or government consortia today operate satellites.53

  While nonstate terrorist groups are unlikely to acquire rockets capable of reaching the altitudes where GPS and GNSS satellites orbit, competition among nations that have heavy launchers and field GNSS satellites provides ample opportunities for miscalculations or accidents. Direct missile strikes pose less of a threat than other methods. China tested a microsatellite in late December 2008 that some analysts called a prototype for an antisatellite weapon. During a manned mission that included a spacewalk, the crew released a sixteen-inch cube weighing about ninety pounds that was capable of maneuvering around the spaceship. About four hours later the microsatellite flew within fifteen and a half miles of the International Space Station.54 The Chinese said its purpose was to photograph and inspect their manned spacecraft. Many analysts noted similarities to co-orbital antisatellite designs dating back to the Cold War era. After the United States stopped overflying the Soviet Union in 1960 and switched to spy satellites the Soviets began their IS antisatellite program (“Istrebitel Sputnikov ,” or fighter satellite).55 They designed these “kamikaze ” satellites to carry explosives, launch like regular satellites, and maneuver near their targets to destroy them with shrapnel.56 Operational versions of the system flew through 1983. The United States countered with Project SAINT (short for satellite interceptor), designed to inspect enemy satellites with television cameras, but canceled the program in 1963.57 The United States conducted one test in 2005 of a satellite called the Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART), which featured similar capabilities.58 A navigation error caused it to bump its target, a defunct communications satellite, into a different orbit without destruction or creation of debris.59

  The Defense Department’s Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China in May 2012 expressed unease about its microsatellite program. The report listed direct-ascent missiles, jamming, lasers, microwaves, and cyber weapons among China’s counter-space capabilities and added, “Over the past two years, China has also conducted increasingly complex close proximity operations between satellites while offering little in the way of transparency or explanation. ”60

  U.S. Navy commander John J. Klein, in Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy, hypothesizes that lesser space powers might contest command of space by locating microsatellites near GPS or GNSS satellites or even by attaching parasitic microsatellites to them, making defensive targeting difficult or impossible without destroying the navigation satellite itself.61 A nation pursuing such a strategy need not arm the microsatellites with explosives; it might simply move them close enough to jam or block the transmitted signals or attach them physically to the satellite’s antennas.62 Deploying such microsatellites might gain their sponsor political influence without their ever being used. The strategy of using mere presence to influence policies of a dominant power is not new, Klein points out. The European Union achieved greater say in the allocation of radio spectrum by proposing to overlay GPS signals with Galileo.63 Since Klein published his book, China demonstrated the same strategy by appropriating a frequency Galileo planned to use.

  Lesser space powers are growing in number and capability and staking out their own presence in space. India successfully tested its Agni-V missile in April 2012, sending it to an altitude of about 373 miles. The head of India’s Defence Research and Development Organization said the missile “ushered in fantastic opportunities in, say, building ASAT weapons and launching mini/micro satellites on demand. ”64 He added that India did not plan to put weapons in space but had to “re-think ” ASAT capability after China’s 2007 demonstration.65 Iran announced in June 2012 that it was completing work on a new space center at an undisclosed location that would accelerate domestic satellite launches.66 Iran contracted with a Russian firm to design and launch its first satellite, Sinah-1, aboard a Kosmos rocket from northern Russia in 2005.67 It launched its first homegrown satellite in 2009 and sent up another in 2010, along with a capsule carrying turtles, a rat, and a worm.68 A 2011 attempt to launch a monkey into space failed, but Tehran claimed to have successfully orbited and returned a monkey to Earth in January 2013. That was widely declared a hoax after photographs of the monkey before and after the flight did not match. A February 2012 satellite launch was successful, but Iran delayed its remote-sensing Fajr satellite several times in 2012 and again in 2013. Some Western intelligence sources believe the delay announcements have been attempts to cover up launch failures.69 It would be Iran’s first satellite with maneuvering thrusters if it ever reaches space.70 After several highly publicized failures, North Korea launched what it called an Earth observation satellite into orbit in December 2012. South Korean analysts who recovered the rocket booster reported evidence that the launch masked a military ICBM test, and astronomers said the satellite appeared dead.71

  All of these activities lead some to conclude that an arms race is underway in space. Brian Weeden, technical advisor for the Secure World Foundation and a former Air Force captain at the U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Space Operations Center, notes that controlling an arms race in space is difficult because so many basic space technologies can be used for good or ill. For example, the same technology that enables automatic rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station could direct a co-orbital ASAT.72 Dr. James Clay Moltz, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in the Department of National Security Affairs, describes four competing schools of thought driving U.S. space policy. They are space nationalism, which seeks dominant military power to control space; technological determinism, which advocates the selective military restraint of the Cold War; social interactionism, which emphasizes commercial cooperation; and global institutionalism, which favors international management regimes.73 Which approach or combination of approaches will ultimately prevail is an open question.

  Meanwhile space-tracking technology is on the rise. To overcome the limitations of monitoring orbital objects with ground-based radars and telescopes, the United States launched its first Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite in September 2010.74 Nearly two years later, in August 2012, the Air Force declared initial operational capability for the largely classified program.75 The satellite, orbiting at 390 miles above Earth, and the ground control system together cost about $500 million.76 Based on 2013 budget requests, the Air Force may be moving toward acquiring a second SBSS satellite.77

  Observers have asked whether the U.S. military is too dependent on space, but when it comes to both military and civilian use of GPS, a common refrain is, “There is no going back. ”78 That shared dependency comes with an enormous and growing financial commitment. The United States
will spend nearly $10 billion for military space programs in fiscal year 2013 alone, but cost overruns can quickly eat up an entire year’s worth of funding. In March 2012 GAO reported that spending on major defense satellite acquisition programs, of which GPS is but one, increased by about $11.6 billion—a 321 percent rise—from original cost estimates for the five-year fiscal period 2011 through 2016.79 The first two GPS III satellites, at $1.6 billion and $1.4 billion respectively, did not meet the original schedule and exceeded their estimated cost by 18 percent.80 As the United States grapples with long-term structural budget deficits, military budgets will come under pressure, and that will almost certainly affect the future of GPS.

  What’s Next for GPS Users?

  Current applications are the starting point in forecasting how we may use GPS in coming decades. Military dependence on GPS may decrease as the Pentagon explores new techniques to replace, augment, or back up the signals. Often mentioned is developing eLoran, a modernized version of the ground-based long-range navigation system Loran C that the United States decommissioned in 2010. The enhanced version requires fewer ground stations and broadcasts high-powered, low frequency, unjammable signals for use on the earth’s surface and up to jet altitudes.81 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), through its Micro-PNT Program, is working on self-calibrating inertial navigation and guidance systems, which combine clocks, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and calibration circuitry into an eight-millimeter cube.82 Self-contained inertial navigation units that do not require GPS to correct drift would be impervious to jamming or spoofing. A radio-navigation system that mimics GPS but works indoors and in underground mines, where GPS signals do not reach, has won Air Force backing. The Air Force signed a contract in 2010 with Locata, a privately owned Australian company, to provide a non-GPS component for its next-generation Ultra High Accuracy Reference System, an amalgamation of GPS and other PNT techniques aimed at overcoming jamming.83 Locata functions like a localized ground-based GPS without atomic clocks. A Locata network does not maintain absolute time based on an external standard. Rather, individual base stations, known as LocataLites, synchronize time with each other to within one or two nanoseconds.84 An analogy would be a cappella singers matching pitch to each other rather than, say, a piano. Tests in October 2011 of an enhanced version of Locata’s commercial off-the-shelf system confirmed that it met Air Force accuracy requirements. A plane flying at about 225 mph at an altitude of twenty-five thousand feet over an area roughly thirty by forty-five miles dotted with ten LocataLite antennas demonstrated horizontal accuracy of six centimeters (just over two inches) and vertical accuracy of fifteen centimeters (about six inches).85 Locata’s radio signals are more powerful than GPS, and they broadcast at the same frequency as Wi-Fi, making it easy to adapt many current devices to use them.86 The Air Force signed a multiyear contract with Locata in September 2012 to install the system across a 2,500-square-mile area of the White Sands Missile Range, and a veteran Air Force GPS manager has joined the company.87

  For the commercial sector and for consumers there are significant opportunities and challenges ahead in the area where most people first discovered GPS—surface transportation. Toll roads for years have used electronic transponders or bar codes to charge vehicles without stopping at tollbooths. GPS facilitates charging drivers by the mile, replacing gas-tax revenues lost to rising fuel efficiency. Switzerland implemented the first nationwide GPS-based toll system for trucks in 2003.88 Germany followed two years later with a system covering 7,500 miles of the autobahn, and today a patchwork of satellite, cellular, and transponder systems covers Europe, spurring the development of hybrid electronic toll devices for vehicles.89 Proponents of vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) taxes in the United States face strong headwinds. A Congressional Budget Office study found some potential benefits in reducing emissions and addressing traffic congestion, but VMT taxes would be costly to implement and raise privacy issues.90 Add to that the normal resistance to new taxes. When a North Carolina legislative committee floated the idea in 2009, a poll by the conservative Civitas Institute found 70 percent of voters against it.91 Around the same time Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican, called VMT an option “we should look at ” in an Associated Press interview. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the idea that same day.92 Three years later the GOP campaign platform explicitly opposed “any funding mechanism that would involve governmental monitoring of every car and truck in the nation. ”93 While a federal VMT seems unlikely, cash-strapped states are moving in that direction. California, Florida, Nevada, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington are studying the approach.94 One or more states appear likely to pass a VMT tax within five to ten years.95

  Other GPS legislation may be forthcoming. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for the Department of Transportation to set standards for information that GPS navigation systems must include, such as the height of overpasses.96 Trucks have struck New York overpasses more than two hundred times since 2005. A quarter of those accidents occurred in Long Island alone, where one bridge has been hit twenty-seven times.97

  A key development within sight is the fusion of GPS and other technologies used in machine control and transportation to create smarter, connected cars and intelligent transportation networks. Driver assistance technologies, such as backup cameras and parallel parking assist, and collision avoidance sensors, such as blind spot detection, adaptive headlights, and autonomous braking, have been available for years in luxury models. The 2012 model year brought a sudden expansion to a wide range of vehicles, according to ABI Research.98 A Highway Data Loss Institute study released in mid-2012 showed that forward collision avoidance braking and headlights that shift toward curves reduced insurance claims by 14 percent.99 Soon cars will not only give drivers more information and autonomously avoid collisions, they will interact with each other and with sensors and beacons built into highways. U.S. Department of Transportation officials believe vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I, or V2X) communication could prevent four out of five unimpaired vehicle crashes.100 Motor vehicle accidents and fatalities have decreased slightly over the past decade, but in 2009 (the most recent figures available) there were 10.8 million motor vehicle accidents and 34,485 people died from motor-vehicle-traffic-related injuries, about a fifth of all injury deaths.101 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute in August 2012 launched the first large road test of connected vehicles. Three thousand cars, trucks, and buses equipped with devices to send and receive electronic Wi-Fi data messages tested the concept on the streets of Ann Arbor during the yearlong study.102 NHTSA administrator David Strickland called V2V potentially “the ultimate game-changer in roadway safety. ”103 A Ford Motor executive likened the technology to cars sending tweets to one another—short messages about speed, position, and direction—so even though a driver may not see another vehicle accelerating to beat a red light at a cross street, her car will warn her.104 The government could mandate V2V technology in new cars as soon as 2017, though it would be years before most vehicles on the road have it.105

  The possible changes wrought by two-way communications between vehicles and infrastructure are profound. Many traffic signals are already equipped to turn green when prompted by emergency vehicle transponders. Suppose traffic signals sent vehicles messages about the time remaining for a green light, as many crosswalk signs already do for pedestrians. Taken a step further, they could automatically alert or slow down vehicles if drivers failed to notice a red light. Many police departments now use portable digital signs with radar guns that flash the speed of oncoming cars, and most drivers voluntarily slow down. Once cars are suitably equipped, police could potentially use V2I communication to slow a vehicle down to the posted limit—or to send a citation.

  Such communications do not require GPS, but some transportation theorists envision large-scale vehicular traffic managem
ent akin to air traffic control. A team of transportation and computer science researchers from Rutgers University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of California at Berkeley has proposed a concept called “active highways ” to manage traffic congestion the way computer networks handle large volumes of data.106 Drivers enter the system using digital tickets, inform the system of travel plans, reserve slots in high-priority intelligent lanes, and comply with system adjustments designed to route vehicles around problems. This is a long way from a Sunday drive in the country. With such infrastructure in place, it is not hard to imagine eventually requiring drivers to relinquish control entirely in high-traffic areas where the highway management system and cars collaborate—eliminating unexpected and unsafe movements, speeding, tailgating, and accidents.

  If it sounds farfetched, consider that by summer 2012 Google’s experimental driverless cars surpassed three hundred thousand miles without an accident, a better record than the average driver, based on Federal Highway Administration statistics.107 Nevada, Florida, and California already approved autonomous cars, and Google is spending millions lobbying other state and federal officials.108 Governor Jerry Brown rode in a self-driving Prius to Google’s Mountain View headquarters, where he signed the California law in late September 2012. Brown called the technology “science fiction becoming tomorrow’s reality ,” and Google cofounder Sergey Brin told reporters, “Self-driving cars do not run red lights. ”109 Google plans to sell its Driverless Car System, a technology package combining cameras, sensors, GPS, and software, to automakers after it wins certification from the National Transportation Safety Board and its international counterparts.110 The first driverless cars could hit showrooms within five years, and members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) predict that autonomous cars will make up three-quarters of those on the road by 2040.111