Trump Signs Order To Test Vulnerabilities of US Infrastructure To GPS Outage (reuters.com) 165
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order directing U.S. agencies to test the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure systems in the event of a disruption or manipulation of global positioning system services (GPS). From a report: GPS is critical to a variety of purposes ranging from electrical power grids, weather forecasting, traffic signals, smartphone applications and vehicle navigation systems. The order said "disruption or manipulation of these services has the potential to adversely affect the national and economic security of the United States."
Really need to test backups (Score:3)
Redundancy is the key (Score:2)
There are too many nations testing their ability to jam or block GPS signals. So many things are dependent on them, and it works so well, they haven't used an alternative. Need to make sure things don't start crashing if the GPS signal is blocked or corrupted.
Luckily there are currently multiple competing GNSS, GPS isn't the only game in town: Galileo has recently achieved a full constellation, Glonass has recently re-established theirs fully, and BeiDou's constellation is in a complete enough state to achieve global coverage.
Nearly all current hardware (e.g.: Smartphones) are capable to talk simultaneously to the 4 major GNSS constellations.
For the systems that only use GPS for accurate time input and not actual position, there might be even more extra alternat
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Ships don't rely on GPS, it is just a back up system.
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I currently work in large vessel navigation. They pretty much absolutely depend on GPS for their day to day operations. Yes, there are ways to operate in a GPS denied environment (I also do submarine navigation), but it's a lot of work that most crews, especially the poorly trained merchant crews, have lost the skill to do so.
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Luckily there are currently multiple competing GNSS, GPS isn't the only game in town: Galileo has recently achieved a full constellation, Glonass has recently re-established theirs fully, and BeiDou's constellation is in a complete enough state to achieve global coverage.
Unfortunately, they all use similar frequencies, and are all similarly easy to jam -- the signal at a GPS receiver is so weak that it is literally below the noise floor, so it's exceptionally easy to jam it.
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Unfortunately very true. We need dome leaders that can actually fix things for a change. Does not seem likely to happen though, the cave-men are running the show.
credit where credit is due (Score:3, Informative)
Re:credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like he is making a sound decision based on long-term concerns for once. I'm surprised as anyone.
One would hope this would signify he is finally wading into the infrastructure repair he promised during his campaign (one of the few parts of his platform you couldn't argue with). US communication, utility, and transportation infrastructure is either horribly aged or under capacity and definitely needs improvement. Unfortunately the only kind of infrastructure he's really put any effort into so far is of the border wall variety.
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Even that's been a dramatic failure. Something like 20 miles added,and most of that fell down when the wind blew.
Re:credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
The House is able to handle multiple things at the same time. During the investigations and impeachment, they have actually voted on and sent to the Senate a record number of bills.
Trump has talked about infrastructure, the democrats are willing to work on infrastructure. But he hasn't offered any decent plans for infrastructure, that can explain on how it can be paid for. He even passed lowering the tax rates which have been increasing our budget deficit a lot during a period of economic boom, so we are having increased use of our infrastructure with less money to pay for it. The weekly proposed ideas put a lot of undue burden on the local and state governments in which they cannot afford.
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There is a partisan impasse in the House. Democrats are more concerned wit
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The USMCA trade bill was passed, which was actually a Trump initiative to update and replace NAFTA.
I wouldn't call it a Never Trumper, because if the Senate did anything with it, it could be considered a win for Trump.
Not following your logic (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not arguing...sincerely asking. I am sure there are relevant positive facts about him that I am unware of.
However, he had a Republican House and Senate for the first 2 years of his administration...before the Mueller investigation....so I don't see the relevance of his impeachment in his ability to get popular legislation passed. I saw a lot of news about the wall, but little else that one could call infrastructure. What are some of his non-wa
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Sounds like he is making a sound decision based on long-term concerns for once. I'm surprised as anyone.
You shouldn't be. Infrastructure is a big concern of his, including technical infrastructure. On the campaign trail, he talked a lot about technical vulnerabilities as a national security issue. The vulnerability of (and over-reliance on) GPS has long been a concern of mine. This kind of audit is way overdue. Hats off to Trump on this.
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>. Infrastructure is a big concern of his, including technical infrastructure.
And your evidence is?
>On the campaign trail, he talked a lot about...
Politicians say a lot of things on the campaign trail. You see what they actually care about when you see what they spend their political capital on once they're in power. And infrastructure is a pretty easy political sell on both sides of the aisle. So where's all the activity been for the last three years that shows he actually cares about it?
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So where's all the activity been for the last three years that shows he actually cares about it?
At the border
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I hope you're being sarcastic. Rebuilding a few dozen miles of existing wall is political theater, not infrastructure. Infrastructure is the stuff that gives you the ability to do other stuff. Roads. Plumbing. Power and communication systems. A wall just sits there.
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I hope you're being sarcastic.
Of course. A wall at the border is a waste of money, especially if the goal is illegal immigration, since most illegal immigration happens in airports (people overstaying visas). The southern border is simply the most visible. I especially oppose taking the money from DoD construction budgets to pay for it. If the DoD really doesn't need that money, use it to improve VA infrastructure.
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>Of course. /sarcasm tags - the number of people who honestly believe and spout ridiculous nonsense has been increasing at a dismaying rate in recent years - and not just among Donald's fan club.
I wish. Don't forget your
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Broken Clock is right twice a day (Score:2)
I don't expect it to be much of a decision, but something that will not have negative consequences for him. (Unless it actually disrupts GPS for the whole public)
Trump only cares about himself, not the nation or other people. If it isn't about him and it isn't about people who is against him, he would blanket sign it.
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Trump only cares about himself, not the nation or other people.
How is that different from any other politician?
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bringing manufacturing jobs back, pushing companies to move away from just-in-time as a form of warehousing
How much is stored in a warehouse does not change how many manufacturing jobs there are, except temporarily. Once you're fully stocked, you still have to have actual sales to keep the lines open.
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How much is stored in a warehouse does not change how many manufacturing jobs there are, except temporarily. Once you're fully stocked, you still have to have actual sales to keep the lines open.
You didn't even read. Warehousing is effectively non-existent in nearly all sectors, because product is manufactured at assumed sales levels. A truck, train or ship holding product is not a warehouse, it's "just-in-time" aka when product levels are always at a low level.
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Right - and moving to giant warehouses does nothing for the economy except a short-term boom while warehouses are stocked. It lets companies pretend there is a manufacturing boom "just in time" to re-elect Trump. But this does not raise demand for products, does not increase sales. Does not permanently increase manufacturing jobs.
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If not China, the market it going to go elsewhere probably not the US.
US manufacturing is good at making low volume but large and complex products. Automobiles, Airplanes, Industrial Equipment. When it goes into smaller products that we need to make in high volume, that is where the US will lag.
It is more complex then just Labor costs, but how the US is geographically placed out and its population density.
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And yet somehow, those small textile manufactures seem to be chugging along just fine. While gigantic companies like Harvey Woods effectively no longer exist after chasing always the lower cost of manufacturing a product. The US doesn't have a problem with manufacturing normal 'junk' as it were. It's that companies have chased lower wage costs for years, and continue to do so. Which is why those same companies 15-20 years ago who left the US for China, are now moving further west into poorer countries.
Good (Score:3)
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Considering that aviation navigation systems have been/are being all converted over to GPS instead of radar, this seems like something that should have had a lot more attention paid to it before now.
No we really don't. aviation navigation systems have not nor are being "converted" to GPS "instead" of radar. They have augmented the existing systems with radar.
There are many critical services which depend on GPS. Navigation in any form is not one of them as all retain fallback strategies.
Time sources on the other hand are far more important with a lot of critical infrastructure highly dependent on accurate time.
Been there, done that. (Score:2)
Fallback. (Score:2)
That was done only because many soldiers in the Gulf region only had a civil GPS.
Whereas, it the same situation happened today, those soldiers might be relying only on civilian smartphones.
It GPS was locked, any modern smartphone would simply failover to another of the majors GNSS systems it supports (Galileo, Glonass, Beidou).
The users wouldn't even notice that GPS isn't available.
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Here's the thing: Without GPS (or GNSS in general), those smartphones will cease to work. The mobile phone system is absolutely dependent on GPS for synchronization and timing of the on-air signals; this is what allows them to pack the cells in so densely. In order for CDMA to work (the underlying transmission technology used in LTE, 3G, and the previous techs) there needs to be precise timing of the signals so that the pseudonoise cancels itself out.
So, if the timing goes away, the whole system stops worki
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So the question remains - what is the GPS needed for? It's not like cell towers wander around - once they're built, they stay where you put them. Maybe you use GPS to precisely determine their initial location, but then you shouldn't need any further input for the life of the tower (barring major geologic activity)
The phones themselves certainly don't need GPS - as can be easily proven by disabling the phone's GPS. All they care about is the signal strength, and will quite often connect to a further towe
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So the question remains - what is the GPS needed for? It's not like cell towers wander around - once they're built, they stay where you put them. Maybe you use GPS to precisely determine their initial location, but then you shouldn't need any further input for the life of the tower (barring major geologic activity)
It has nothing to do with the position of the tower, and everything to do with timekeeping and signal synchronization. The modulation techniques used to allow multiple users on the radio channels (CDMA,OFDMA, etc...) used in all the modern cellular standards require absolutely precise timing so that the technique works. Without the precise timing, different transmitters will get out of sync and will very quickly start to interfere with each other. This is why the pico cells that some of the cellular provide
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Essentially, GPS is an effectively-free (for users), extremely-high-precision timebase. This means more than the fact that you can know the time very well; it provides an extremely stable frequency standard, with extremely little phase noise, for use for calibrating other clock sources -- like the ones used to generate the EM frequencies used for communicating with cellphone towers. The drift of a GPS-disciplined clock can be as little as 1x10^-13 -- one second in 10 billion/day. (Though in this situation
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Cellular networks have their own timing, they don't rely on GPS or similars ...
My phone gets its time via NNTP ...
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That is wrong ... most phones have no circuits for alternatives. ...
And they would not really know which system is failing if they only support two
GPS is not locked as in not available, it is simply displaced by a known amount for military GPS and an unknown by civilian. However with a earth bound reference point, that is mood ... hence GPS was "unlocked" more than a decade ago.
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Well, they turned off Selective Availability for that conflict. GPS has evolved significantly since then, so mil GPS can still be more accurate than civil GPS (for what it's worth). It's primarily due to the fact that the primary error source in GPS comes from the ionosphere, and how much it affects the travel-time of the signals passing through it. By receiving both the civilian L1 frequency, and the military L2, the receiver can measure and calculate the effect of the ionosphere, and factor that out, res
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Of course, most of the time when you're dropping a 2000lb JDAM, a few feet one way or the other doesn't make much of a difference.
We are seeing guided weapons that are so precise that they could register a kill with a 2000 pound laser guided sack of sand. They don't need GPS for this, just a good ID on the target and someone to light it up with a fancy laser pointer.
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We are seeing guided weapons that are so precise that they could register a kill with a 2000 pound laser guided sack of sand. They don't need GPS for this, just a good ID on the target and someone to light it up with a fancy laser pointer.
Most warfighting has moved away from laser guided munitions, as they're far more expensive. A JDAM kit costs something like $20,000 and can be bolted to the ass-end of a conventional 2000lb iron bomb. No muss, no fuss. The laser guided munitions, of which you speak, are far more complex, and require optics at the front of the bomb to track the target, and the computer/control surfaces at the rear. Add to this the fact that a laser-guided munition requires your target designator to stay lit while the weapon
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But then you need someone with a LOS to the target, within range of the target.
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Remember the Gulf war? When the military lock on the GPS was lifted and the civil GPS got as precise as the military one? That was done only because many soldiers in the Gulf region only had a civil GPS.
That was when they first turned it off, temporarily, because they didn't have anywhere NEAR enough military GPS receivers. They needed the accuracy on the battlefield more than they needed to avoid scenarios like a cruise missile flying into the White House and landing on the president's desk (one of the ni
Thinking...thinking.... (Score:4, Funny)
...how can we spin this to suggest that the Sky Is Falling or that Trump eats babies?
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You can just spin it based on whatever the cover sheet used to get him to sign it said. He probably thinks they're making Romney's car lose GPS functionality.
He thinks this is going after the company that compiled the Steele dossier on him. That's also why he pushes coal so much, someone told him it competes with fusion.
Navigation or Timing? (Score:2)
Probably the most crucial application of GPS (in terms of economic value) is the widespread dissemination of a standard time basis. There are other ways of doing the latter, which the article alludes to. One is the WWV radio signal from NIST, which oh-by-the-way Trump wanted to kill in his FY2019 budget [slashdot.org].
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It is a little unclear in the article whether we are talking about navigation (i.e., global positioning) or more narrowly about precision timing. Probably the most crucial application of GPS (in terms of economic value) is the widespread dissemination of a standard time basis. There are other ways of doing the latter, which the article alludes to. One is the WWV radio signal from NIST, which oh-by-the-way Trump wanted to kill in his FY2019 budget [slashdot.org].
Navigational GPS and syncing PCs with an NTP source will be the least of our concerns without a stratum source good enough to clock circuits that feed the world.
99.9% of citizens don't have a clue as to the importance of that particular aspect of timing. What good is GPS on your smartphone when the entire communications network is dead...
They're testing threat-mitigation technologies. (Score:2)
Threats and vulnerabilities are actually two different things. A threat is something an enemy hopes to achieve, like causing the traffic systems of a country to collapse. A vulnerability is a candidate mechanism for accomplishing a threat, e.g. disabling satellites or jamming their signals.
From TFA, it sounds like they're testing various technologies to mitigate GPS outages, including one threat a lot of people might not have thought of: the loss of GPS services for telling time.
What if GPS "fails" the test? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like concerns on the failure of GPS comes up every so often, ever since we started to use it. Or, rather once we started dismantling the older systems we used before GPS. These would be things like Loran, VORTAC, inertial navigation, and the equipment and training for celestial navigation.
Loran was worldwide, not all that accurate, and is no longer functional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
VORTAC is still functional but with range limited to about 200 miles it's only useful near developed coastlines and on paths over land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Inertial navigation will work without outside radio signals but it can drift over long periods/distances and so needs something to re-align itself once in a while.
I remember reading about how the US Navy stopped requiring all officers the the navy academy to take celestial navigation. They still required some enlisted ratings to learn how to navigate by the stars and as I recall officers still had to have a very basic introduction to celestial navigation, mostly to know that it was possible, that others would know how to use it, and as something of a history lesson. They reversed this policy and again required all officers to learn celestial navigation after some scares on GPS failure. Every Navy ship and aircraft over a certain size will have the necessary charts and equipment for celestial navigation. I'm no sailor but it sounds like many recreational and commercial sailors will learn celestial navigation, because getting lost at sea is bad.
Here's what I expect to be the future of navigation, automated celestial navigation. If the sky is visible then the sun, moon, and stars, can be used to find one's location. Add in things like a magnetic compass, barometric altimeter, and accelerometers for inertial navigation, and the system should be quite accurate. There's software to do this for common smart phones. Give the device better optics than a common iPhone and it can "see" the sun through the clouds and find stars even under a bright noon sun. This kind of navigation cannot be jammed, and given how inexpensive and powerful computers are today this should be quite affordable and easy to use.
Celestial navigation, even with computer aid, is not likely to be as accurate as GPS is now but it should be more than enough as a backup for people to use for navigation over the sea, and maybe even enough to find one's location in a car if one can safely assume the car is on a road and has accurate maps to use. Once an aircraft is over land, or a ship close to shore, then systems like VORTAC, and just plain looking out the window to find landmarks, should get a person where they need to be. I remember someone posting on Slashdot not too long ago how people would navigate while flying over the mountains if their primary navigation failed. The plan was to find a mountain peak, look for flowing water, follow the stream as it flowed down the mountain, eventually the stream will lead to a city or settlement which will have a strip to land. Following water flowing to the sea might not be ideal but it's better than many alternatives.
We can test how robust GPS is but there needs to be a discussion on a backup. I believe this will be a combination of celestial navigation and inertial navigation, something a $500 smart phone is able to do with very high accuracy.
Side note: I do wish people would separate the US GPS from other similar systems by using it's original name, Navstar. Navstar is just one GPS among many. Loran is a GPS, as is Russia's GLONASS, and the European Union's Galileo. I realize this is likely a lost battle, it still bothers me though.
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Well, you don't pay me for it, but I give you a hint again, I gave you already a dozen times.
READ THE LINKS YOU POST, and comprehend them.
Loran is far from disfunctional. The whole north atlantic is covered by Loran ... as far as I know going east to what you call "the middle east"
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Re:He must be worried (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a huge deal perhaps... unless you are not prepared, like many organisations.
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Cell phones towers require GPS time sources for CDMA / TDMA / OFDM.
Re:He must be worried (Score:4, Interesting)
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Cell towers and possibly the phones themselves use GPS disciplined radio (google it)
Otherwise known as CDMA / TDMA / OFDM...
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Sure this could be solved by replacing the GPS at cell towers with atomic clocks at a significant expense.
They basically DO have high stability clocks, built in, at each site. What they have is an automatically calibrated high accuracy local frequency standard which they have disciplined to the GPS signal. Such standards are "atomic clocks" in their own right, with errors in the 0.002 Parts Per Million over 20 years. All the GPS signals do is to provide a traceable standard for your frequency calibration, so you can trace it back to the ultimate time authority at NB of S's time reference.
So, the absence o
Re: He must be worried (Score:2)
Re: He must be worried (Score:2)
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I know cellular basestations use GPS for time sync, too. No telling how spoofed GPS with inaccurate time data would affect cellular service in an area.
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Most hardware clocks in computers are terribly inaccurate. Some by a few seconds a day.
Redundancy of GNSS (Score:5, Interesting)
Well buckweat. You don't think that trucking, EMP, everyday citizens would not have a negative impact if GPS went down.
No, most citizens using modern equipment will not have a negative impact if GPS dies, for the simple reason that Galileo has recently achieved a full constellation, Glonass has recently re-established theirs fully, and BeiDou's constellation is in a complete enough state to achieve global coverage.
There are currently multiple competing GNSS, GPS isn't the only game in town. Nearly all current hardware (e.g.: Smartphones) are capable to talk simultaneously to the 4 major GNSS constellations. Most everyday citizen won't be affected.
On the other hand, old hardware will be affected, like devices relying on GPS to provide them accurate time of day to feed into graphic systems. /. - these device need to be upgraded to reivers supporting multiple accurate time systems as soon as possible, redundancy is always goot.
Evenmore so because they tend to be immobile, these "single GNSS system" old devices are *already* at big risk of any signal jamming (this includes simple stupid frequency jammer used by the afore mentionned truckers who would like to spoof their employer's tracking devices) and there has been already cases mentionned here on
(And in the case of devices relying on GPS only for timing, you might as well include system which aren't GNSS as an alternative fall-back).
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curious, I had the GPS on my phone die last year. Yet I was able to make and relieve phone calls.
Is the one the cells use different from the one google maps would use?
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"curious, I had the GPS on my phone die last year. Yet I was able to make and relieve phone calls."
Sure but what if the UPS and the Amazon delivery guy and the pizza delivery guy couldn't find you?
You'd die.
Or you would have to go outside, oh, the horror!
Re: Redundancy of GNSS (Score:2)
Your phone isn't the network infrastructure is it?
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Neither planes nor ships need GPS to work.
They both have completely independent navigation infrastructure that has nothing to do with GPS.
GPS is only a fall back and a "quick glance" on the plotter ...
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The FAA is actively decommissioning VOR sites. Those things are ridiculously expensive to maintain.
Loran was supposed to be decommissioned in the 80s(?) But, the Coast Guard was able to get the feds to keep a reduced number of them online. They'll be phased out soon.
Reading comprehension failure (Score:2)
WRONG
Did you care reading my post?
Here I'll point out the part you missed:
Yes, I know that only the relatively modern devices can do multi system.
Yes, I know that old device predates multi system.
I also wrote that those are in dire urgency of getting upgraded.
NEVER go in to any sort of a security position. You haven't got a clue how the world works. You can't see beyond you own goddamn phone.
Please never go into any soft of position w
Re:Redundancy of GNSS (Score:4, Interesting)
No, most citizens using modern equipment will not have a negative impact if GPS dies, for the simple reason that Galileo has recently achieved a full constellation, Glonass has recently re-established theirs fully, and BeiDou's constellation is in a complete enough state to achieve global coverage.
They would be affected because losing GPS would result in severe disruption of the mobile telephony network. Cellular telephone technology absolutely depends on precise timing derived from GPS receivers mounted on each of the towers/sites. Without the time-base, they will not function. Newer sites probably have multi-constellation receivers, but I would wager the vast majority of sites are running older receivers.
Even then, the most likely scenario where you wind up in a GPS denied environment is that someone is jamming the signal. Galileo and GPS both carry their civilian signal at 1575.42 MHz. GLONASS, the Russian system does use other frequencies though they're transitioning to a compatible system as well. BeiDou also uses multiple frequencies, again with one of them at 1575.42.
Most "multi-constellation" receivers are likely focusing on the 1575.42 Mhz channel, as it allows it to receive multiple constellations, while simplifying the RF design as it only needs to be a single channel. The downside is that if you jam 1575.42, you cause all sorts of havoc.
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Cellular telephone technology absolutely depends on precise timing derived from GPS receivers mounted on each of the towers/sites
No, it does not. The timing is in the network, and does not come from GPS. How the funk would that work with a phone that needs SECONDS to fix its position because it only sees 3 satellites?
What you write here is utter bollocks.
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No, it does not. The timing is in the network, and does not come from GPS. How the funk would that work with a phone that needs SECONDS to fix its position because it only sees 3 satellites?
Don't pretend to speak with authority when you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The precise timing requirement has nothing at all to do with the phone and everything to do with the network equipment itself. It's not your phone that needs the time, it's the base radio connected to and repeating to other base radios, and communicating over networks. If for any individual base it goes off by more than 10s of milliseconds they degrade their functionality in an emergency mode and break from the
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Phone towers are connected to the landlines.
The landlines would provide magnitude more precise timing than GPS.
If for any individual base it goes off by more than 10s of milliseconds they degrade their functionality ... or a fraction of it.
That does not make any sense. The frequencies used by phones are GHz, not MHz
Sorry, you and the parent are wrong. GPS has nothing to do with cellular towers. Why would anyone be so stupid to base a cellular tower on an american GPs system that can be switched of or "masqu
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The current implementations of W-CDMA and LTE very much depend on GPS, and have for over fifteen years. They could reduce the dependency by adding rubidium clocks to the base stations, but that would increase the cost.
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It's not a position fix they get from GPS, it's a time fix. They don't use atomic clocks because even with an atomic clock you need to periodically calibrate it against something, and GPS signal is good enough for a time fix just about everywhere.
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Nearly all current hardware (e.g.: Smartphones) are capable to talk simultaneously to the 4 major GNSS constellations. Most everyday citizen won't be affected.
My guess is that if something was to disrupt the US Navstar GPS that the other satellite navigation systems would not be left fully operational. Assuming they were operational this is a measure of not only how US commerce might be effected but also the military. It would be logical to assume that if a large nation was to declare war that such a nation would take control of their own navigation system to deny it to others (by encrypting the signal, simply turning it off, or messing with it some other way),
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No, most citizens using modern equipment will not have a negative impact if GPS dies
Definitely incorrect. Most major consumer toys will not have a negative impact if GPS dies. My phone may connect to GLONASS as an alternative, but I won't be able to do much with it when the very expensive base radio whose time source only comes from an expensive GPS receiver desynchronises with other BRs in the mobile network and stops giving me service.
Most equipment that actually depends on time speaks to a single system.
Most equipment that is critical speak to a single system.
Equipment that falls into t
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Pretty sure you misread that. IMO (International Maritime Organization) regulations, which cover merchant shipping, are moving to require multi-constellation receivers. Furthermore, receiving Gallileo only requires a software tweak for the receiver, as it uses the same frequencies, modulation, and data system as GPS.
What you probably saw was contracts explicitly for the DoD. Even then, though, they've been moving to multi-constellation for the differential GPS on warships, in addition to the milGPS.
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I am surprised Trump does even know about GPS. Must have been on television...
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Alas, proving you have a right to cast a vote has been defined as racist in the USA. So it can't be required....
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There is a really easy way to secure elections - just require voter ID. Like Canada, Mexico, the EU, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, all of Scandinavia, India, and many more - pretty much the rest of the world.
Yes, but as a Canadian, that's viable because what is considered as ID is pretty all encompassing. They will accept the usual (standard government issued photo ID), utility bills, bank statements, or even having someone from the same district vouch for you. (I believe they finally eliminated the possibility of swearing an oath to Her Majesty the Queen). Until recently you could even use your voter registration card that was mailed to you as your ID for election purposes.
If you are going to require Voter ID,
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There are thousands of cases of proven voter fraud [heritage.org],
You mean thousand, not thousands. 1259 according to your link, in fact. "Thousands" implies more than 2k, and heavily implies substantially more. And looks like that's over all 50 states, over the past 15 years. Wikipedia has turnout statistics for the presidential elections in 00, 04, 08, 12, and 16, while your stat includes non-presidential election years. Even just taking the turnout for the presidential elections, the number of proven cases of electoral fraud combined with the numbers of actual vot
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How much voter fraud is acceptable to you?
You realize that report includes things such as "illegal voting assistance (telling people who to vote for)", improper absentee voting, buying votes, tampering with counts, and ballot petition fraud. The kinds of things that a Voter ID law wouldn't account for.
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If insignificant fraud, which will never change the outcome, is the cost for every citizen to be ensured their ability to exercise their right, then it's a fair trade.
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I am pretty sure you can get a free, hardship-based ID card in every State.
If you show up in person, Monday-Friday, 9am-4pm (9-1 on Wednesdays)(and closed at noon for 1 hour for lunch every day). When most of the people who need the free, hardship-based ID card are working. The people who usually, if they aren't working, aren't getting paid. Voter ID laws absolutely (indirectly, but also intentionally) disenfranchise a significant portion of the voting population.
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So it not only needs to be free, but completely convenient as well. Can we hold that rule for all things Government provides, like the Post Office, DMV, building inspectors?
Additionally, if you're working - you have some sort of ID, by law (an I-9 form [uscis.gov]), so this is a moot point.
So here's a question for you: how much voter fraud is acceptable to you?
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Perfectly fine... as long as all eligible voters can get an ID with equal ease.
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> Alright, what evidence the DNC has interfered with any voting system or voter registration system?
Don't move the goalposts. The question is about elections.
1. Wikileaks DNC email dump
2. Shadow, Inc.
OK, #2 is actually a voting system, literal interference from DNC about 2 months ago. The Iowa Caucuses worked well enough before the DNC gave the job to a bunch of ex-Hillary staffers.
Anything to keep Sanders from getting the nomination. Which, fair enough - he's neither a Democrat nor electable, but he
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Wikileaks just shows DNC doing what national committees do; like I said they're power centers. You don't expect fair treatment, the way you deal with a national committee is you maneuver around it until you can pack it with your own people. That's the same on the Republican side.
The Iowa primary is a caucus, not a secret ballot. All the crappy Shadow software did was delay the tallying; it could not have changed the caucus results without the collusion of everyone who attended the caucus, including Sande
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As evidenced by Biden's shocking win there.