America’s ‘Gold Standard’ GPS Risks Falling Behind Rival Systems
China, Russia and the European Union have developed satellite networks offering global-positioning services as the U.S. system ages
By Drew FitzGerald Oct. 14, 2023 https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/america-gps-eu-china-gnss-13f042b0
But the new systems’ more advanced capabilities are hard to ignore. Future makers of smartphones, vehicles and industrial equipment might decide to stop using GPS by default and start relying on Chinese signals first, for instance.
“There’s some inertia in being able to modernize GPS,” Betz says. “It doesn’t get to start with a blank sheet of paper.” The U.S. plans to keep using GPS’s original radio frequency, for instance—even as it adds new channels—to avoid making billions of dependent devices obsolete.
The Space Force said in a statement that GPS continues to set the gold standard in its field. “While other nations may report improvements in accuracy and equivalent performance in availability, GPS is still the clear leader in integrity and is the only system accepted for international flight use,” a spokeswoman for the branch’s Space Systems Command said.
U.S. plans
The U.S. military has long planned to upgrade GPS with a fleet of modern and upgradable satellites that provide more-precise coordinates subject to less interference. The newer satellites broadcast data to civilian users over a new frequency called L5.
The Space Force has 17 L5-equipped satellites in orbit after a spate of delays but has yet to reach the 24 live satellites needed to run a reliable system. Some already-built satellites sit in a Colorado warehouse awaiting their turn for a funded launch.
A Space Force spokesperson says the system with newer frequencies will keep growing and will be fully operational by 2027. Another fleet of satellites is slated to go live in the 2030s. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report estimated the two core satellite upgrades together would cost more than $15 billion.
The slow rollout worries Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral who leads the federally chartered U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, a group tasked with developing defenses against potential cyberattacks. He cites the civilian industries that rely on GPS, from seaport cranes to cellular networks, as a blind spot for American defense officials.
“Here’s this system that is absolutely vital to our critical infrastructure and we have almost no resiliency, and in fact the U.S. system is starting to decay,” Montgomery says. He urged the Space Force to fast-track its future launches.
Lockheed-Martin, which built the four satellites in storage, says one is already slated to launch in mid-2024. Program management director Juli Best says the company built a suite of new features into the satellites and streamlined its production processes “to help us enhance and deliver GPS faster,” adding that the defense contractor “is prepared to support the U.S. Space Force’s planned cadence of GPS launches.”
Drew FitzGerald is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, D.C. Email him at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com. Yang Jie in Tokyo contributed to this article.a’s ‘Gold Standard’ GPS Risks Falling Behind Rival Systems