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UK May Have to Deploy its Own Satellite Navigation System Due to Brexit

posted by chromas on Wednesday April 25 2018, @11:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the alternative-sats dept.

takyon writes:

The UK may deploy its own constellation of navigation satellites due to being excluded from the European Union's Galileo project:

Britain is considering setting up a satellite navigation system to rival the European Union's Galileo project amid a row over attempts to restrict Britain's access to sensitive security information after Brexit, the Financial Times reported.

[...] "The UK's preference is to remain in Galileo as part of a strong security partnership with Europe. If Galileo no longer meets our security requirements and UK industry cannot compete on a fair basis, it is logical to look at alternatives," she said.

The European Commission has started to exclude Britain and its companies from sensitive future work on Galileo ahead of the country's exit from the EU in a year's time, a move which UK business minister Greg Clark said threatened security collaboration.

"We have made it clear we do not accept the Commission's position on Galileo, which could seriously damage mutually beneficial collaboration on security and defence matters," he said in an emailed statement.

Although basic Galileo services are supposedly free and open to everyone with no risk of being disabled or degraded, higher-precision capability is available only to paying commercial users.

Now we have GPS, Galileo, BeiDou/COMPASS, GLONASS, IRNSS/NAVIC, QZSS, and possibly a British satnav system in the future. Devices can use multiple systems to achieve greater precision. Check out this comparison of systems.

Also at BBC and The Independent.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 26 2018, @12:29AM (4 children)

    by looorg (578) on Thursday April 26 2018, @12:29AM (#671966)

    Yes but considering how tight those nations are with eachother, war between them seem somewhat unlikely.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday April 26 2018, @01:09AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday April 26 2018, @01:09AM (#671978) Journal

    Since Galileo was designed to provide the highest possible precision (greater than GPS) to anyone, the US was concerned that an enemy could use Galileo signals in military strikes against the US and its allies (some weapons like missiles use GNSSs for guidance). The frequency initially chosen for Galileo would have made it impossible for the US to block the Galileo signals without also interfering with its own GPS signals. The US did not want to lose their GNSS capability with GPS while denying enemies the use of GNSS. Some US officials became especially concerned when Chinese interest in Galileo was reported.

    An anonymous EU official claimed that the US officials implied that they might consider shooting down Galileo satellites in the event of a major conflict in which Galileo was used in attacks against American forces. The EU's stance is that Galileo is a neutral technology, available to all countries and everyone. At first, EU officials did not want to change their original plans for Galileo, but have since reached the compromise that Galileo is to use a different frequency. This allowed the blocking or jamming of either GNSS without affecting the other.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:25AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:25AM (#672075)

      But wouldn't the US shooting down a Gallileo satellite be considered an attack on the EU, of which many countries are NATO members, thus requiring their NATO partners - inlcuding the USA - to respond with military force against the attacker - the USA?

      The risk that the USA would have to go to war against the USA would be enough to stop any sane administration from carrying out such an attack.

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 26 2018, @04:29PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Thursday April 26 2018, @04:29PM (#672197)

        > The risk that the USA would have to go to war against the USA would be enough to stop any sane administration

        I am glad that you put the word "sane" in there, since my first reflex was to ask myself if you had been paying attention recently.

  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Thursday April 26 2018, @06:23AM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday April 26 2018, @06:23AM (#672043)
    Perhaps it's not very likely that the US would degrade GPS for an ally, but it's not like GPS can be neatly turned off for one country at a time, you can just play with accuracy for the satellites that are overhead a given area of interest. Turkey is, on paper at least, a US ally in the fight against Daesh (and other targets of opportunity that don't fit Turkey's world view) in Syria, which lies right alongside it's southern border, likewise northern Israel, northern Iraq, etc. Assuming the US is compromising GPS over Syria, then it's highly likely that civilian receivers in at least part those adacent countries are not going to be working too well either, and if those civilians are relying on accurate GPS for navigation, surveying, etc. that's just too bad.
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