Vol.1, Issue 2

Global Positioning System - A Combination of Efforts Success Story

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a great technological success story. Developed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to provide precise estimates of position, velocity, and time, GPS is now used for both military and civilian applications unforeseen by the designers of the system.

GPS is the only system today that can pinpoint a position on the Earth anytime, in any weather, anywhere. GPS satellites, 24 in all, orbit at 11,000 nautical miles above the Earth. The satellites transmit signals that can be detected by anyone with a GPS receiver. Using the receiver, one can determine a location with great precision.

Initially, two kinds of GPS services were offered: Standard Positioning Service (SPS) for open, unrestricted civilian use, and Precision Positioning Service (PPS) for DoD-authorized users. For reasons of national security, the civilian users had been limited to SPS, a degraded subset of the signals. In May 2000, Former-President Bill Clinton made it possible for civilians to get GPS signals that are nearly as accurate as the military PPS. Most GPS users are now able to identify their position within 20 meters, and some as close as 5 meters.

The U.S. military is applying GPS in a wide number of imaginative ways. Its interest in GPS goes beyond implementation with specific technologies. It is interested in developing systematic strategies for its use in battle. Therefore, new standards and regulations will become available as dynamic GPS military applications continue to unfold in areas of: aircraft navigation, intelligence and target location, weapon aiming, guidance systems and navigation warfare (NAVWAR).

Picture the desert, with its wide, featureless expanses of sand. The terrain looks much the same for miles. Without a reliable navigation system, U.S. military forces could not have performed the maneuvers of Operation Desert Storm. With GPS technology, the soldiers were able to go places and maneuver in sandstorms or at night, when even the troops who lived there couldn't. Other military applications of GPS include:

  • Guidance systems of a variety of missiles, bombs and artillery shells are being deployed with GPS or differential GPS guidance - allowing such weapons to accurately strike targets in any weather, day or night, without operator intervention after launch.
  • GPS jamming systems are being developed to counter GPS guidance systems.
  • GPS-homing seeker heads are under development to attack GPS jamming transmitters.
  • Automatically GPS guided cargo parasail crafts are being created that can be dropped at high altitude by a transport aircraft, and then sail to a remote location, allowing the transport to remain out of range of defenses around the landing zone.
  • GPS mapping systems are able to guide military troops and equipment to the exact location of their adversaries.
  • GPS receivers within military aircraft, ships and submarines provide numerous navigational advantages and the ability to identify the precise position in space or at sea of their target.

There is a widely held view that technology as basic and vital as GPS requires an international institutional framework for development of policies, regulations, and standards. According to the Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) of 1996, one of the U.S. policy objectives is to promote integration of GPS into peaceful civil, commercial, and scientific applications worldwide, and to advocate acceptance of GPS as an international standard. The PDD assigned the DoD a role as "stewards" of the system, and included civilian agencies in policy-making and management roles. Today, there are numerous government and industry organizations involved with developing GPS products and standards. Global Engineering Documents maintains a complete library of these organizations standards and specifications including:

U.S. Government

  • Department of Defense (DoD)
            - Defense Mapping Agency (DMA)
            - United States Air Force (USAF)
  • Department of Transportation
            - Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
            - Federal Highway Administration (FHA)
            - Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)
  • Department of Energy (DOE)
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
  • National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA)
  • Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR)

Industry

  • American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
  • Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
  • Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA)
  • Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM)
  • International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)

International

  • British Standards Institution (BSI)
  • European Norm (EN)
  • International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
  • International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
  • Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA)

GPS is widely seen as an important gift of the DoD to the civilian world. Both military and civilian applications are increasing every day. The GPS system of the future will make determining location as easy as determining precise time and quite probably be considered just as important. GPS is on its way to becoming a part of our daily lives, as an essential element of the commercial and public infrastructure.