The Pentagon Can't Trust GPS Anymore

If US ever gets into a serious near-peer war, the Pentagon may have to resort to doing the same thing Ukraine does. Mass produce inferior but easy-to-scale weapons to address the growing munition shortages.

The Pentagon understands this. This is why moves are made in that direction.

Now, does it have a semi-reliable IMU fallback? GPS jamming/spoofing detection, an IMU that survives the conditions? Classified. Best case, you can partially un-fuck the performance with just a software fix.

If that was a contingency, it would just play into the the whole cyber/information/electronic/space domains aspects of the whole "multi-domain" stuff.

Surely both China and the US have contingencies in place to try to determine if the opposing side is exploiting their PNT systems, and then figure out ways to subvert that in various ways.

USG is in this position for a few reasons:

* It is actually technologically difficult to create GPS equivalent INS (or similar system). Everyone is pursuing this, not just USG/DOD. The Chinese are too for sure.

* It is true that the DoD became somewhat over reliant on GPS from a training and doctrine perspective. While they continued to develop and buy systems and munitions with INS backup, you can't operate with near total air/space/cyber dominance for ~2 decades without it somehow effecting your culture

* The war in Ukraine has been a catalyst for all sorts of technological changes, both in the West, but all across the world.

I remember the capability coming as a surprise in 1990, but you're right that Reagan announced that civilian access would happen back in 1983.

Now I don't know if I was misremembering, or if Iraq was simply unaware of the technology, or whether that announcement was for access at some future date.

I do remember discussing GPS on sci.physics in the mid-90s though. Where I learned that GPS is the only commercial technology that has to take general relativity into account. Clocks on Earth run measurably slower than clocks at the altitude of GPS satellites, and the effect is big enough that GPS has to correct for it.

Before KAL 007, GPS was unaffordable to most users, and not widely developed commercially because there was still uncertainty about whether it would remain available in the long run.

Do you not see the irony in this? "The two of you should make peace in our language, or it's fake."

Even if the argument is made that the USA is involved in the war and should be a party to the plan (it "isn't", except "it is"), the peace plan should've been written in Ukrainian and Russian, and only then translated to English as appropriate.

Seriously, that this is even being considered as a detractor from peace is highly specious.

Perhaps you should point out that the language of the peace plan wasn't written in Ukrainian, translated into Russian, and then into English. That'd probably be acceptable, right?

If the USA had been punished in the same manner for its atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, would we have had the rest of the disaster unfold?

And we see the end result of this line of thought in Gaza, where literally millions of human beings lives have been irreversibly damaged for generations, because someone decided to punish their enemy at massive scales. And as we can see in the case of Gaza, this is no guarantee of peace, whatsoever. This line of thought has led to genocide and ethnic cleansing at massive scales.

And, it simply does not work. Period. There are generations of new terrorists who want vengeance in the Gaza/Israel war, just as vehemently as Americans do, for the Ukraine/Russia war. These children will only be converted back to peace-makers if their lives are _improved_ by the peace plan, not made worse, and there is a long, long road ahead in both wars, for all parties, to attain that condition.

At some point, making peace means putting aside any aggression-based arguments and just getting on with the program to bring both sides together, to stop the fighting and start the economic unity required to keep things peaceful.

This peace plan seems like an attempt to do just that, so it should be supported. After all, it does contain triggers that will re-ignite the war machine again - and, it could be argued that should those triggers be activated, the war would be more justifiable to the world community, and those who seek a wider, escalated war against Russia, will get their fulfilment if this plan is betrayed. This peace plan would be the first step towards greater forms of punishment - but it works for both sides. If Putin violates the agreement - Russia comes under attack by the entire world. If Ukraine's leadership violates the agreement, Russia gets cart blanche to continue its dismantling of the Ukrainian state. Therefore, the peace-makers must have the reins in lieu of the warmongers, as of now.

(Disclaimer: I've read the peace plan, have Ukrainian and Russian friends in my circles who are veterans from the conflict, and their opinion is: yes, it is far past the point where the aggressive warrior narcissists need to be ignored and statesmen and diplomats need to work harder to re-establish peace between the two nations. I personally feel that this plan has to proceed, or else the entire world is going to see the conflict expand to our own borders. This means the hyper-actualisation of warrior narcissism needs to stop, and civilisation-building economic tools need to be better applied - by all parties - to ensure the region is rebuilt again. Trust must be restored through economic unity, first and foremost - that is what this plan aims to achieve.)

> China would absolutely not be okay with the US on its doorstep

Yes, that's precisely the point. You think we should only do things that China approves of?

It's a fairly impressive result for the country that was expected to collapse in a week or two.

Russia wanted to wipe Ukraine off the map, literally. By simply existing Ukraine is winning.