USAF Upgrades Accuracy Of GPS
Signal For Civilian Use
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On
May 1, at 5 p.m. PDT (midnight UTC), the U.S. Air Force
deactivated the software that degrades the Global Positioning
System signal, upgrading civilian GPS receivers from an
unaugmented accuracy of about 100 meters to roughly 10 meters. The
new software allows the U.S. to block the precision navigation
signals within selected regions, while offering the improved
signal service everywhere else. The military continues to use an
encrypted, highly accurate version of the signal, for guiding
precision weaponry.
After
testing demonstrated the Pentagon can switch off the more precise
signal during an armed conflict, President Clinton approved
elimination of GPS “selective availability” (SA). Clinton
reached his decision after receiving a recommendation from
Secretary of State William Cohen, and after consulting with a
number of federal agencies, including the Commerce, State, and
Transportation Departments, and the CIA.
Clinton
had ordered the Pentagon to eliminate SA, within ten years, in a
March 1996 directive. However, the U.S. Space Command recently
finished developing and testing a “ software fix” that
preserves the military utility of the system to U.S. forces
engaged in combat, while denying it their opponents, allowing
implementation of the augmented signal six years early.
The
decision to improve the “civilian” signal accuracy is in
responsive to civil and commercial requests worldwide. A second
GPS signal will be added to the system in 2003 with a third to
come online two years later. Groundbased enhancement systems are
also in the works to further improve accuracy in specific regions
such as airports.
Europe
has been studying a plan called Galileo that would deploy a
European version of the GPS system by 2008. Europe's interest in
their own navigation system grew out of concerns over becoming
dependent on a system run by the U.S. military. Their plan
included getting private industry in Europe involved in the
project, potentially turning Galileo into a commercial system that
would provide high-accuracy positioning services for a fee.
However, the introduction of this “free” higher-accuracy GPS
signal could throw a wrench into European plans to develop their
competing system.
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