GPS, Galileo and missiles

The U.S. was NOT “Superiour” in anyway in this catagorey in KOSAVO, the only hit 13 of Serbia’s 500+ Tanks, Serbian Military used modified Microwave Ovens to operate with thier door’s open to interfear with NATO’s GPS guides on their (NATOS’s) Bombs, which caused Doezens of them to not hit thier targets, so much for yoye “Supieriour Hardwar”.

The fact that US destroyied “only 13 of 500 tanks” is highly debatable. However, even if this was true, it has nothing to do with GPS-guided weapond accuracy; it is the vegetation of this Balkan region that allowed camunflage, so the targets were hard to locate . But this would have apply for any type of weapon used in this region.

OTOH, in Afganistan, GPS weapon (JDAM) proved deadly, since the arrid terain in the region allow an easy target location. Also in Kosovo, if the Serbs would not have give up this province and asked for peace, ground war would have begun. In this case the Serbian tanks and APCs would have to move instead to stay concealed. What would have been the result? Look how USAF decimated the Iraqi Republican Guard in 2003.

The GPS guided is what you need today if you really want to have “precission” weapons. Laser-guided, TV guided are no longer the most modern guidance-US fielded them in the late ’60 in Vietnam. Nowadays you must have GPS weapons.

If this would not be true, why do you think that other powers aside the US would invest $ billions in GPS-like satelites systems (Russia’s GLONASS, EU Galileo, or the Chinese GPS embrion that Sekant mentioned) or in GPS weapons: France AASM, UK-France Storm Shadow, German-Swedish Taurus, Israeli Spike, Russian KAB-S?

A few years ago, General John Jumper, the former USAF Chief of Staff was asked what was the most valuable technology US developped for military pourposes in the last half-century. He reply without hesitation GPS. Not stealth, not cruise missile, not AESA radars, not active radar missile (AMRAAM), but GPS! This guy must knew what he was talking about: he flew >4500 hours on 10 different types of fighters planes, including F 4, F 15, F 16; among these, >1500 were combat hours in Vietnam. I believe that he knows better than you and me-just aviation fans 😉

Although China has not yet established an operational satellite navigation and positioning network, research for such a system has been underway for many years, and a
future space-based navigation capability is an acknowledged goal. Beidou (‘Big Dipper’) is the satellite component for the independent Chinese satellite navigation and positioning system. The Beidou satellite navigation and positioning system are consists of two satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The final Beidou constellation will include four satellites, two operational and two backups. Together with the ground stations, the Beidou system will provide navigation and positioning signals covering the East Asia region. However, to provide global signal coverage, satellites flying in other orbits around the world must complement the system. Three satellites have been launched to date

Sorry for the late reply, exams got me hampered on reading.
So, do you mean that these two/three/four satellites, would all be at a rather small distance from each other, just covering SE Asia? And what do you mean with the “together with the ground stations it will provide…”? Does it mean they need the ground stations to process the information and add their own info on it, how do the users get access to the signal from the ground controll station? or does it just mean that these are just ground controll stations, maybe with a DGPS type of feature, to send corrections? Any idea where the ground stations are located?
Who are the users? Missiles? Ships? other forces?

Thanks a lot for the info already provided, it’s really hard to find good info on this.

Recent operations (ie Kosovo or Gulf war II) has shown the importance of GPS guided missiles, and the US superiority in this domain. I was wondering whether the Europeans have missiles guided by GPS (i.e. is there a list) and, if yes, whether they are ensured to benefit from the GPS secure P (or M) code for their use at all time (is there for instance a NATO wide agreement for such a service?)?

The Galileo postioning system should be up (pun intended) and running by 2010, and the Europeans will then have a system competing with the US GPS. But, (owing to the Brits) such military use of Galileo has been ruled out, and European will remain dependend on US goodwill in the foreseeable future.

The U.S. was NOT “Superiour” in anyway in this catagorey in KOSAVO, the only hit 13 of Serbia’s 500+ Tanks, Serbian Military used modified Microwave Ovens to operate with thier door’s open to interfear with NATO’s GPS guides on their (NATOS’s) Bombs, which caused Doezens of them to not hit thier targets, so much for yoye “Supieriour Hardwar”. 😀

Does anyone have a clue what the Chinese Beidou (if that’s spelled right? I know it means “Great Bear”) is? It’s said to consist of two satellites and to be a GPS, which is of course practically impossible, unless they are using the globe as the third reference source. nonetheless I think it is something like the SBAS system, a satellite based DGPS type?
Anyone with more news/facts on this system?

Although China has not yet established an operational satellite navigation and positioning network, research for such a system has been underway for many years, and a
future space-based navigation capability is an acknowledged goal. Beidou (‘Big Dipper’) is the satellite component for the independent Chinese satellite navigation and positioning system. The Beidou satellite navigation and positioning system are consists of two satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The final Beidou constellation will include four satellites, two operational and two backups. Together with the ground stations, the Beidou system will provide navigation and positioning signals covering the East Asia region. However, to provide global signal coverage, satellites flying in other orbits around the world must complement the system. Three satellites have been launched to date

http://accra.usembassy.gov/wwwhgps2.html

But there’s nothing to stop someone from using Galileo signals for military purposes, right? Like how GPS signals are broadcast over specific frequencies?

I recall reading somewhere that around 2008 or so manufacturers were going to come out with receivers that can use both GPS and Galileo signals for increased navigation performance. Theoretically someone could use both the military GPS signal and the Galileo civilian signal to improve the accuracy of weapon, no?

Sure, but the open/free signals could be degraded at all time, so “holders” of the weapons could never be sure that it could in fact use its weapon.

For military matters, one would need to have access to a secure signal to ensure that its weapon would be effective at all time. And this is not even true of the Galileo PRS – the US obtained (in order to stop its opposition to Galileo) that the PRS signal not be too close to the GPS military signal, in order to be able to jam the former without degrading the latter.

The US also obtained that non EU/ESA countries taking part in Galileo not be given access to the Galileo PRS signal (in the case of the US, the main concern was obviously Chinese participation in Galileo).

There are seperate frequencies for SAR units and other applications too.
One of the major contra arguments of US was that Galileo became too accurate and hence even the normal civil receivers would be accurate enough to guide a weapon with. So, no military use? I think that would be a dream. They can even use the SAR frequency if they wish so. UK is just following its all-time buddy US and hence they wanted to prohibit that.

But there’s nothing to stop someone from using Galileo signals for military purposes, right? Like how GPS signals are broadcast over specific frequencies?

I recall reading somewhere that around 2008 or so manufacturers were going to come out with receivers that can use both GPS and Galileo signals for increased navigation performance. Theoretically someone could use both the military GPS signal and the Galileo civilian signal to improve the accuracy of weapon, no?

As for Galileo, it is by no means excluded from military use, there is a seperate/additional frequency for military use in the system.

Precisely no. The decision taken by the Council in late 2004 that formally launches Galileo prohibits that it be used for military purpose. There is indeed a secured signal (the PRS, or Public regulated system) that authorities will be able to use for some security applications such as border control, police work… Given that tody, militaries are often involved in “soft” security, it is likely that they will use the PRS to an extent.

But article 6. of the Council decision recalls “that Galileo is a civil programme under civil control, and consequently that any change to that principle would require examination in the framework of Title V/TEU ” (in order word, a unanimous decision from the Council). This means that the PRS cannot be used for strictly military applications, and that European manufacturers can not factor Galileo in their product.

Hence the question I submitted above !!!

Recent operations (ie Kosovo or Gulf war II) has shown the importance of GPS guided missiles, and the US superiority in this domain. I was wondering whether the Europeans have missiles guided by GPS (i.e. is there a list)

Reliance over GPS is somewhat a moot point as most (if not all) european long range weapons combine GPS with an inertial navigation system and in some cases they also add terrain matching (when very long range is needed).
MBDA’s Apache, SCALP-EG/Storm Shadow/Black Shaheen, JDAM ER, PGM and SAGEM’s AASM fall into this category, as well as EADS/Saab Bofors Dynamics Taurus missile.

I was actually wondering about that too, on some military ships they sail with a civil GPS, which means no P-code… I wonder if that is for all foreign militaries or just some of them (leaving the “good friends” like UK, with the real P-code).

As for Galileo, it is by no means excluded from military use, there is a seperate/additional frequency for military use in the system.

As for the “good will”, there are still enough DGPS correction stations active to rely on. For now, the US has left out the P-code and civil systems are equally accurate as military systems due to the problem of DGPS. US noticed that no one wanted to buy a more accurate GPS receiver because they simply bought a cheap one with DGPS incorporated. Then they just got rid of the P-code (for the moment) and now the DGPS stations reduced in numbers (again for the moment).

Does anyone have a clue what the Chinese Beidou (if that’s spelled right? I know it means “Great Bear”) is? It’s said to consist of two satellites and to be a GPS, which is of course practically impossible, unless they are using the globe as the third reference source. nonetheless I think it is something like the SBAS system, a satellite based DGPS type?
Anyone with more news/facts on this system?