Military GPS & Potential Misuse of GPS

• Construction notice
• Disclaimer

• Introduction
• History
• NAVSTAR Services
  • Standard Positioning Service
  • Precise Positioning Service
• Military Uses of GPS
  • Attack Coordination
  • Navigation
    • Marine Navigation
    • Aircraft Navigation
    • Land Navigation
  • Guidance & Fire Control
    • Ballistic Missile Guidance
    • Cruise Missile Guidance
    • Artillery Spotting & Correction
    • Bombing from Aircraft
    • Air Defense
  • Intelligence
    • Special Forces
    • Enemy Radar Location
    • Signals Intelligence
    • Submarine Tracking
    • Mine Location
  • Training
  • Search & Rescue
  • IFF (Avoiding Friendly Fire)
  • Logistics
• Denial of services to unintended users
  • Selective Availability
  • Anti-spoofing
  • Jamming
• Technical Trends Affecting U.S. National Security
  • Widespread DGPS Service
  • Other Nation's GPS Services
  • Proliferation of military technology
• Misuse of GPS
  • Terrorist Use
  • Misuse by Other Governments
    • Use by unfriendly governments against the United States or it's allies
    • Use by friendly governments in ways unintended by the United States
    • Use by non-aligned countries against other non-aligned countries
  • Summary

This Page is Under Construction!

Introduction

This document discusses military applications of GPS and what I see is it's potential for misuse. It is a result of commentary I have read on the sci.geo.satellite-nav newsgroup. I've seen many people, unfamiliar with the military and weapons technology, blast the U.S. Department of Defense for it's implementation of Selective Availability (S/A) on the GPS signals available to civilian users.

My personal opinion is that S/A is rendered moot by the widespread availability of DGPS. However, I also believe that it is unfair to call the DoD paranoid simply because somebody there was doing his job - watching out for the best interests of the United States.

In my opinion, the best way to address this issue is to have enough information for reasonable discussed.

History

The NAVSTAR GPS system was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to support the mission of the United States military. During the initial planning and deployment of NAVSTAR, it was clear that persons other than "authorized personnel" would have access to it's services. Since the NAVSTAR service is broadcast worldwide, there is no way to prevent it's use by forces Action was taken to ensure that the U.S. Military would Two separate services were designed into the system. Civilian access was limited to the standard positioning service (SPS) while authorized military users would have access to the more accurate precise positioning service (PPS).