Where are we now ?

[Danny_Labrador]

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network
of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational
technology, the White House said Wednesday.

See here:-

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://link>http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2004121521290001739682&dt=20041215212900&w=APO&coview=</A>

Who do you write to get the european thingy up and working quickly ?

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[AlexL]

not gonna happen. Too many people (airlines too) rely on it. Absolute chaos would reign if GPS ever went offline. They already have the ability to reintroduce the selective error thingy if need be.
Unfortunately the european system is bound to use a different protocol, so the nice Garmin and raymarine systems probably will need an alternate euro GPS receiver. The euro parliament have also mumbled about making it and encrypted subscriber service. So perhaps I'll stick with the freebee US system!

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[aitchw]

Yeah, but then the EU will make all current GPS receivers illegal and everyone will ignore it except us Brits and we'll be the only ones getting done for using them.

C'est la vie!

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[robp]

In the ( extremely unlikely) event that the U.S system was disabled, would a European system really be left on? Only if it was encrypted.


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[ROCKETSHIP_11]

During the first gulf war the system was off a lot of the time and was switched on as and when the warplanes required it, as it was bought and paid for by the pentagon who are we to complain, if it was a British system you would have to sit an exam to hold an expensive annual licence for your hand held receiver,

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[tome]

We monitored it continuously during the first Gulf war whilst conducting survey operations. Far from being switched off, it was at it's most accurate as SA was temporarily disabled. It later transpired that the reason was the coalition had insufficient military receivers and had to make use of commercial ones.

After the hostilities ceased, SA was swiched on again.

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[BrendanS]

Total rubbish. It was not turned off. What they turned off was selective availability, so it actually became more accurate!

This is a common myth which continues to do the rounds

<hr width=100% size=1>Me transmitte sursum, caledoni

 

[ccscott49]

Yes, I heard that aswell, but talking to the civilian proffesionals who use the system, they never saw nor were warned of any interuption of the GPS service. Nor any of the car based systems. Yes, it was bought and paid for by the US government and thankyou very much, but now is not governed by the militayr, so I am led to believe.

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[Sybarite]

I believe he is also looking at the possibility of switching off sextant availability...

John

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