[ARC5] And then there were none

[MICHAEL ST ANGELO]

Who would destroy our GPS system?

The Russians and Chinese wouldn't because we would retaliate in kind against their GLONASS and Beidou Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). This is a carryover of the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine from the Cold War.

Other countries use our GPS system in their navigational and communications infrastructure.

As Wayne indicated there is redundancy in the size of our constellation. I've read about plans to augment our GNSS system Via ELORAN or by adding GNSS functions to geostationary satellites but funding is an issue.

I am more worried about spoofing of the GPS system. It is occurring now and will be more prevalent in the future.  

I do miss the NDB stations. The BC-453 and R-23 beacons were and are my favorite and most used surplus radio sets. I spent many enjoyable hours listening the the aeronautical and marine beacons, marine coastal LF stations and the LFBC stations. My favorites were the marine sequential beacons where you could triangulate up to 6 beacons that transmitted on a timed sequence. I used to cruise and we used also used the beacons, as well as MF broadcast stations  as aids to navigation. This was before GPS. LORAN-C receivers were above our budget.

When the Coast Guard proposed discontinuing the NDB beacons I wrote to them recommending to keep them as a cost-effective aid-to navigation. They responded that one shipping company still used DF equipment and will requested a delay in closure until the company upgraded their navigation equipment.

My Drake TR-7 also made a great LF and VLF receiver. The IF port was transposed with the RF port on the TR-7 double balanced mixer to enhance LF operation and the input port was accessible via the accessory socket. 

Speaking about GPS, one of by last projects at work was to upgrade the end-of-life GPS based NTP servers. The GNSS chipset in the new server included GLONASS and the Beidou system as well as GPS. You could enable them at an additional cost.

Mike N2MS



> On December 6, 2019 at 1:22 PM Robert Eleazer <releazer at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>     I was in charge of GPS at the Pentagon for a while.  GPS uses 24 satellites orbiting at 10,900 NM; they are very hard to get at.  You can lose quite a few GPS satelllites before the system is degraded seriously enough to affect aircraft navigation.  If that happens you will not need navaids because the country will be in the midst of a general thermonuclear war and all non-military aircraft that have not been vaporized will be grounded.
> 
>     Wayne
> 


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