GPS glitch shows US military's flaws
June 1, 2010 The Air Force has not said how many weapons, planes or other
systems were affected or whether any were in use in Iraq or
Afghanistan. But the problem, blamed on incompatible software,
highlights the military's reliance on the Global Positioning System
and the need to protect technology that has become essential for
protecting troops, tracking vehicles and targeting weapons.
"Everything that moves uses it," said John Pike, director of
Globalsecurity.org, which tracks military and homeland security
news. "It is so central to the American style of war that you just
couldn't leave home without it."
The problem occurred when new software was installed in ground
control systems for GPS satellites on Jan. 11, the Air Force said.
Officials said between 8,000 at 10,000 receivers could have been
affected, out of more than 800,000 in use across the military.
In a series of e-mails to The Associated Press, the Air Force
initially blamed a contractor for defective software in the
affected receivers but later said it was a compatibility issue
rather than a defect. The Air Force didn't immediately respond to a
request for clarification.
The Air Force said it hadn't tested the affected receivers
before installing the new software in the ground control system.
One program still in development was interrupted but no weapon
systems already in use were grounded as a result of the problem,
the Air Force said. The Air Force said some applications with the
balky receivers suffered no problems from the temporary GPS loss.
An Air Force document said the Navy's X-47B, a jet-powered,
carrier-based drone under development, was interrupted by the
glitch. Air Force officials would not comment beyond that on what
systems were affected.
Navy spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove confirmed the X-47B's receivers
were affected but said it caused no program delays.
At least 100 U.S. defense systems rely on GPS, including
aircraft, ships, armored vehicles, bombs and artillery shells.
Because GPS makes weapons more accurate, the military needs
fewer warheads and fewer personnel to take out targets. But a
leaner, GPS-dependent military becomes dangerously vulnerable if
the technology is knocked out.
James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said the glitch was a warning "in the
context where people are every day trying to figure out how to
disrupt GPS."
The Air Force said it took less than two weeks for the military
to identify the cause and begin devising and installing a temporary
fix. It did not say how long it took to install the temporary fix
everywhere it was needed, but said a permanent fix is being
distributed.
All the affected receivers were manufactured by a division of
Trimble Navigation Limited of Sunnyvale, Calif., according to the
Air Force. The military said it ran tests on some types of
receivers before it upgraded ground control systems with the new
software in January, but the tests didn't include the receivers
that had problems.
The Air Force said it traced the problem to the Trimble
receivers' software. Trimble said it had no problems when it tested
the receivers, using Air Force specifications, before the
ground-control system software was updated.
Civilian receivers use different signals and had no problems.
Defense industry consultant James Hasik said it's not shocking
some receivers weren't tested. GPS started as a military system in
the 1970s but has exploded into a huge commercial market, and
that's where most innovation takes place.
"It's hard to track everything," said Hasik, co-author of
"The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare."
The Air Force said it's acquiring more test receivers for a
broader sample of military and civilian models and developing
longer and more thorough tests for military receivers to avoid a
repeat of the January problem.
The Air Force said the software upgrade was to accommodate a new
generation of GPS satellites, called Block IIF. The first of the 12
new satellites was launched from a Delta 4 rocket Thursday after
several delays.
In addition to various GPS guided weapons systems, the Army
often issues GPS units to squads of soldiers on patrol in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In some cases a team of two or three soldiers is
issued a receiver so they can track their location using signals
from a constellation of 24 satellites.
Space and Missile Systems Center spokesman Joe Davidson said in
an e-mail to The Associated Press that the system is safe from
hackers or enemy attack.
"We are extremely confident in the safety and security of the
GPS system from enemy attack," he said, noting that control rooms
are on secure military bases and communications are heavily
encrypted.
"Since GPS' inception, there has never been a breach of GPS,"
Davidson said. He added that Air Force is developing a new
generation of encrypted military receivers for stronger protection.
The military also has tried to limit the potential for human
error by making the GPS control system highly automated, Davidson
said.
GPS satellites orbit about 12,000 miles above Earth, making them
hard to reach with space weapons, said Hasik, the defense industry
consultant. And if the GPS master control station at Schriever Air
Force Base, Colo., were knocked out, a backup station at Vandenberg
Air Force Base, Calif., could step in.
Iraq tried jamming GPS signals during the 2003 U.S. invasion,
but the U.S. took out the jammer with a GPS-guided bomb, Hasik
said.
The technology needed to jam GPS signals is beyond the reach of
groups like the Taliban and most Third World nations, Hasik said.
Jamming is difficult over anything but a small area.
"The harder you try to mess with it, the more energy you need.
And the more energy you use, the easier it is for me to find your
jammer," Hasik said.
More worrisome, Hasik said, is the potential for an accident
within U.S. ranks that can produce anything from an errant bomb to
sending troops or weaponry on the wrong course.
In 2001, a GPS-guided bomb dropped by a Navy F-18 missed its
target by a mile and landed in a residential neighborhood of Kabul,
possibly killing four people. The military said wrong coordinates
had been entered into the targeting system.