SPACE GAMES
functioning regionally and should be fully
operational by 2020. But many of our
adversaries are less concerned than we are
about having to operate without GNSS
because they have backup systems: Russia
has a terrestrial position, navigation, and
timing system called Chayka, Russian for
“sea gull,” that will allow the country to
maintain precise timing and positioning
in the event of a GNSS disruption. China
and Iran have similar systems. So do South
Korea and Saudi Arabia. We don’t.
he United States recognized its GPS
vulnerability in the early 2000s, and Presi-
dent George W. Bush issued a security
directive calling for the development of a
backup system. An executive committee,
co-chaired by the secretary of transpor-
tation and the secretary of defense, was
assigned to ind a plausible solution for
our reliance on GPS’ clock. It did—in a
World War II–era radio broadcast system
known as LORAN (long-range naviga-
tion). Without getting too technical, the
LORAN and, later, LORAN-C systems,
which were in use until 2010, broadcast
low-frequency radio signals—at the oppo-
site end of the spectrum that satellites
use—across a network of towers. hose
signals can be used for both navigation and
timing. he proposed enhanced LORAN
system (eLORAN) would ofer a signal
that is terrestrially based and much stron-
ger than GPS—and much more diicult
to jam, too.
So why, 14 years later, don’t we have
this system? he short answer: funding and
bureaucracy. he small amount of money
allocated to put the eLORAN system into
play was nixed in a succession of budget
cuts that began with the administration
of President Barack Obama. “he policy
never changed,” Goward says, noting that
Obama also supported the development of
the eLORAN system. “he solution every-
one had agreed upon was defunded.” hat
could be changing. he National Defense
Authorization Act passed in 2017 man-
dated that the federal government create
a small-scale eLORAN demonstrationproject as an initial step toward a full-scale
system, which Goward estimates could
cost about $500 million. An additional
challenge, as Goward sees it, is that no one
federal agency is responsible for GPS. “he
Air Force is responsible for broadcast-
ing the signal, yes,” Goward says, “but its
responsibility ends when the signal leaves
the satellite.”
he Air Force also has more than just
GPS ish to fry. While the 2019 budget
adds $452 million for additional GPS
satellites, another big bump—$643 mil-
lion—comes in spending on research and
design for our missile-warning system and
other space systems. hat relects changing
threats. It’s not just about disrupting sig-
nals, Rodriguez says. It’s about real threats
actually in the space domain. In fact, there
have even been recent suggestions to estab-
lish a new armed forces branch: the Space
Corps. “Our adversaries are developing
capabilities to hold assets at risk in a physi-
cal sense,” Rodriguez says. “We’re talking
about things like directed energy—lasers.
Or simply getting a little too close to
another satellite in GEO.”
hink about the geostationary Earth
orbit—in many ways, the most covetedCONTINUED FROM PAGE 111