GPS Upgrade Is Essential
System Too Important To Risk Delays, Underfunding
By RONALD SUGAR
Published: 30 November 2009
Within this dangerous world, the evolution of America's global security capabilities encompasses a remarkable story of human ingenuity. Six-and-a-half-decades ago, thousands of American airmen in hundreds of aircraft at tremendous risk often had to attack whole cities to hit one, localized objective. For years thereafter, the air planner's rule of thumb assumed the necessity of 14 sorties to destroy one target.
Today, one B-2 Spirit bomber can destroy 80 separate targets per sortie - with minimal collateral damage. A few years from now, when unmanned combat air vehicles become operational, the aircraft carriers they will equip will experience similar exponential growth in capability. Even the hard-pressed infantryman, who today possesses unprecedented situational awareness, is a fortunate beneficiary of our ongoing quest for heightened global security.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is at the heart of this explosion in capability, and is the key to our military's need for spatial intelligence, global navigational accuracy, and precision-munitions delivery with minimal collateral damage. As such, this national resource must be protected from tampering, unauthorized use and cyber attack.
The U.S. Air Force appreciates this. It has initiated a needed modernization of the GPS system to increase the accuracy, availability and security of GPS signals, and it has wisely adopted an "open architecture" principle by which to proceed. Wise because such a principle would minimize the technological risks that result from serial delays and simplify the complexities of synchronizing the modernization of the system's three components - satellites, ground control and end-user technologies.
This promises to get new and better capabilities to the war fighter faster, provided the modernization proceeds on schedule without the year-to-year slippages that are a hallmark of changing budget priorities. The penalty for falling short on this imperative is the eventual decline in the quality of GPS service.
Avoiding that outcome could be challenging for several reasons, some of which relate to the very success of GPS since its inception. Initially begun as an Air Force program, GPS is now critical to every service. In addition, the expanding scope of global security might prove a complicating factor.
Gone are the days when "global security" meant nothing more than military capability. Today, global security also comprises domestic security, infrastructure security, the security of our food and water supplies, population centers and our economy itself. GPS is critical here, too.
Cell phones use GPS to synchronize their base locations and allocate limited spectrum. All forms of transportation companies - rail, air, road and water - use GPS to facilitate the ongoing revolution in on-time delivery. Major investment banks use GPS' precise timing capabilities to synchronize global transactions, while power companies use it to analyze problems on the grid, maximize energy conservation and prevent blackouts.
Farmers rely on GPS for "precision farming," monitoring yield data, tracking the spread of infestations and applying pesticides in the most environmentally friendly methods. GPS can even help in the early warning and mitigation of natural disasters.
The indisputable value of GPS technology to our economic security has increased the spectrum of priority users far beyond what the Air Force envisioned years ago when it first commenced management of this national resource. The number of those with a vested interest in GPS modernization far exceeds anything Air Force managers have ever had to accommodate.
Will this fact prove a boon or a drag to the Air Force's modernization initiative? Can this broad community of users get beyond parochial interests to work together for the common good? No one should underestimate the effort required to coordinate the concerns and objectives of these many users. Joint efforts are never easy, but the benefits of this system are worth the extra mile.
GPS is both shield and sword for our current military and an engine of economic prosperity. Always a force multiplier, GPS has evolved into a budget multiplier as well. It is now a national resource that is critical to our nation's defense and economy - too critical to delay and too critical to underfund.
Updating the system is necessary and the Air Force's modernization vision is the way forward. But times have changed for this program, and success will require coordination, trust and understanding among all the users, throughout the Defense Department and beyond. ■
Ronald Sugar is chairman of the board and CEO of Northrop Grumman.
Help
