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Member
Posts: 2567
Location: Manitowoc, WI | This taken from www.foxnews.com
GPS System Could Fail Next Year, Report Warns
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Mismanagement and underinvestment by the U.S. Air Force could possibly lead to the failure and blackout of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a federal watchdog agency says.
The risk of failure starts in 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report quoted by PC World.
The failure would impact not only military operations, but also the millions of people and businesses who rely on the satellite-based navigation systems built into cars, boats and cell phones.
"If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to," the GAO report states.
The report says the Air Force has struggled to build successful GPS satellites within cost and on schedule.
Edited by jerry 5/19/2009 1:30 PM
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Member
Posts: 2393
Location: Waukesha Wisconsin | It'll never happen! The world/our country depends too much on GPS for this to occur.
My guess is this is a ploy to extract more funding for the Air Force. Sounds like a cry for more financial help during an economic downturn. |
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Member
Posts: 2567
Location: Manitowoc, WI | I agree with you Dennis, the public outcry would force the government to pay whatever is necessary to keep it working. |
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Member
Posts: 744
| The bank bailout has worked so well, I'm sure that we will be paid that money back in time to use it to fix the GPS sysytem. |
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Member
Posts: 319
| Sounds too much like the Y2K scare to me. |
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| The Air Force deems it is a failure when the accuracy is 99.98% or lower. There are 30 sattelites up and 8 have a component with a POSSIBILITY of failure. |
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