The Wide Awakes » Stargazing with the EU

5/26/2007

Recently a couple of blogs that I read started to highlight a project that the EU runs called Galileo.

I had covered this myself last year as I have an interest in all things outdoors, computing and space so when it involves GPS I am in my element.

The Soviet Air Force shot down a Korean Airlines flight it claimed had violated its airspace. A 747 was shot out of the sky with subsequent evidence showing that the aircraft remained relatively intact as it spiralled to its death for 20 minutes. There was confusion as to how the aircraft could have strayed and if it did not then how the Soviets could be mistaken. Following the outrage the Great Ronald Reagan announced to the world that the US taxpayer was going to put the military GPS system onto the open airwaves, free to use, to allow everyone to be able to fix their positions.

Over 20 years on the system is much used and loved by everyone. Whether you use it like myself and enjoy a simple climb in the hills and a logbook of your journey or you enjoy an impersonation of Mr T in your vehicle telling you that he pities the fool who don’t turn left at the next junction GPS is an indispensable part of modern life. And on behalf of all UK subjects we would like to thank our cousins over the pond in gifting this system to us. It is very kind of you and we appreciate it.

However it is a US system and to my great European Overlords this is instantly bad. It also lacks the fundamental element of lack of ready exploitability for tax purposes.

GPS does not work too well in built up areas. How do we know this? We tried putting a GPS receiver on electronic ankle tags for criminals released before the end of their sentence. The system transmitted back its location to a monitoring station. Unfortunately they could rarely get a lock on a satellite in the sink estate highrises that the socialism has abandoned the under class to in this country. Net result? The criminal element could wander around within their blocks victimising those unfortunate enough to be housed in close proximity to these animals.

This is quite a problem for our masters. You see, they want to not only charge us an annual tax on each vehicle we own but also charge us for the roads we use. But GPS cannot penetrate urban areas to fix vehicles and track usage. Something else is needed.

In addition to this there is also the great lie of “selective deniability”. This is the EU myth that the US will shut down the GPS system to civilian use in “times of emergency”. Of course the subtext is that the Great Satan has control of this system and if the glorious EU valiantly stands up to the Globalisation Cartel of Chimpy McBusHitler then the US will simply turn off our toys and Sat Nav.

And then there is the grand Military Integration Project that the EU is working on.

First is SD. It will never happen. Why? Well President Pervert announced in the ‘90’s that it will never be used again. And did he do this as some unilateral gesture of good will? No, he did it because the DoD wanted in law a commitment that the US Executive Branch would never try to get all American troops killed in a war zone.

Ask any troop commander in the US army to turn out his fighting order and in amongst all that green kit will be a civilian hand held GPS receiver. Military GPS is large and expensive and usually only fitted to cruise missiles. The deliberately hobbled civvy band GPS is more than adequate for an infantryman to navigate across the Iraqi desert in formation with other troops. If a President used SD he would be stranding his own troops and the DoD knew this and got Clinton to set a precedence for its use.

Indeed this point was illustrated during the Iranian Navy crisis where a British helicopter flew over the position of the ship and one crew member took a picture of his GPS unit to prove the co-ordinates. It was a Garmin eTrex Venture.

But would the US use SD just for continental Europe if they had a falling out? No. Because the United States would just not be that childish. Yes I could see the EU doing it against the US but not really the other way around.

Then we have the integrationist project. Blair has used his 10 years in office to transform the British Armed Forces into an outfit compatible with other European arms. We have fighting formations closer to the continental model now and we use more EU kit (although the use of Italian 4×4 motors in place of UK or US models has contributed to British deaths in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq but I suppose our political leaders think it is a price worth paying). And part of that further integration will be the use of the Galileo positioning system in all our kit. Most likely to the exclusion of other systems so no GPS. As someone said yesterday closer integration with the Belgian Navy would be nice but I would prefer to have the US watching our backs.

But the three things that really stick in my throat about this vanity project are these.

First the Chinese have bailed the EU out on some funding in return for the promise of being allowed to mass produce civvy receivers for Galileo, cutting out British firms who hoped to make their fortunes on this system. This ignores the fact that the Chinese have their own project in the offing that (thanks to typical EU over-runs and cockups) will go live before Galileo.

Second is that the US taxpayer pays for GPS and we in Europe get it for free. The EU model will make us all pay and some of us pay twice.

The EU tax payer is already funding it to the tune of anywhere between 6bn and 20bn Euros ($8bn - $27bn US) and then for the accurate system (the civvy band will be similar to the GPS in that it will be inaccurate and free) companies will have to pay a licence. Not bad you think but I guarantee you that if it ever gets off the ground (literally) then the EU will demand that all aircraft flying in EU airspace will have to use Galileo and pay the fee for it. American air fares will carry the cost of licensing technology from the EU that the US lead in innovation anyway, and that is not very fair.

Third and perhaps the most dangerous is just how open the commercial, accurate system is.

Civvy GPS cannot be used to make a smart missile. The non-military system is hobbled so that it has an inbuilt inaccuracy, an update rate ineffective for high-speed navigation and an equipment interface that prevents the really jucy information being taken out of units onto computers and analysed (see the Garmin eTrex API for more information).

The commercial Galileo system will allow for all of these “inadequacies” (I prefer to call them “designed shortcomings”) to be rectified. The commercial system will be protected by encryption to ensure that only licensed users can access it. Problem?

US DoD analysts have already broken the encryption algorithm used and were scathing about it when it happened. The EU have left this system wide open.

In their rush to develop more hi-tech ways to extract higher taxation from EU citizens the Union is developing a tool for global Jihad that has the added bonus of making the US pay for it in a roundabout fashion.

The only saving grace is the Airbus project. Even with firm orders from several airlines that would blow Boeing out of the skys the EU subsidies aircraft builder cannot get the plane delivered because of industrial relation problems and the usual European attitude to hard work and meeting deadlines.

Airbus have firm orders but cannot figure out what to do, lets face it Galileo (still in a concept stage) has an uphill struggle. But if it brings in more tax I guess it will take top priority!

Said RfS @ 7:00 am | Permalink

2 Comments »

Thanks for the insight from across the water…

A(not so) “funny” story of US GPS:

The military purposely built in inaccuracy for civilian use. Still way better than other methods, but not targeting precise. The FAA figured out a way to post-process the GPS signal, so they could provide aircraft the ability to fly off one runway and right to the approach point of the landing one, accurate enough for complete IFR. So they built it.

Sorta blew the military only use out of the water, so to speak, and I hear it actually was s lightly more accurate thatn the mil version.

Comment by Xformed — 5/26/2007 @ 8:49 am

I am in favor of any device that makes it easier or at least more likely for me not to think about where France is…or was.

Comment by Azamatterofact — 5/28/2007 @ 12:23 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr				Jun »
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31