Something struck me as I scanned the 280-odd presentations listed under 36 session tracks: the frequency with which the word BeiDou appeared. To determine if there were any substance to this fleeting impression, I essayed a quantitative analysis. Naturally, GPS and the generic GNSS occurred times beyond measure, but this is how the others fared.

IRNSS: 1
QZSS: 3
GLONASS: 10
Galileo: 13
BeiDou: 19.

What does this signify? Little enough, possibly. Still, something. A satellite navigation system bursts seemingly out of nowhere and within a few short years virtually laps the field, putting 20 (14 usable) transmitters into space and establishing a regional operating capability, soon to be global. That sort of thing tends to get noticed.

The titles of BeiDou-focused papers on tap this fall in Nashville — not all of them springing from the laptops of Chinese engineers, not by a long shot — add substance to this passing fancy.
◾    BeiDou Consumer Receiver Chips at Last.
◾    A Combined GPS/BeiDou Vector Tracking Algorithm for Ultra-tightly Coupled Navigation Systems.
◾    Towards the Inclusion of Galileo and BeiDou/Compass Satellites in Trimble CenterPoint RTX.
◾    New Assisted BeiDou Products from JPL’s Global Differential GPS System.
◾    BeiDou Integration in Cell Phones and Tablets.
◾    BeiDou — A System That is Now Ready for Applications.
◾    Augmenting GPS RTK with Regional BeiDou in North America.
◾    New Systems, New Signals, New Positions — Providing BeiDou Integration.

The affiliations of some of the authors of the above read like a top-level directory of North American and European GNSS manufacturers. Clearly, the ground has been plowed and the fields lie ready — if they are not already planted. Unless that’s too mixed a metaphor for satellite radionavigation signals.

The recent acquisition of one Western GNSS manufacturer by a major Chinese business concern has not gone unnoticed, either.
For more intelligence, I consulted the newest member of this magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board. He replied to my emailed penny for his thoughts.

“I would be happy to contribute a column for the July issue based on my observations here at the China Satellite Navigation Conference in Wuhan. The article would be titled: Little Tigers versus Wolves.”

Wow. Now I wonder, who’s who?

Let’s all remember, brevity is the soul of wit.

GPS III Flexible Signal Generator. With completion of the Delta Preliminary Design Review for the GPS III satellites, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force announced that “an innovative new waveform generator permits the addition of new navigation signals after launch to upgrade the constellation without the need to launch new satellites.”

IGS Real-Time Service. The International GNSS Service, a worldwide federation of agencies involved in high-­precision GNSS applications, announced the launch of its Real-­Time Service (RTS). The RTS is a global-scale GNSS orbit and clock correction service that enables real-time precise point positioning and related applications requiring access to IGS low-latency products. The RTS is offered in beta as a GPS-­only service for the development and testing of applications.

QZSS Will Grow to Four. The Japanese government has ordered three navigation satellites from Mitsubishi Electric Corp. to expand the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, currently orbiting the sole Michibiki. QZSS augments GPS navigation signals for users in the Asia-Pacific region. NEC Corporation has been awarded a contract for the QZSS ground control segment.

Real-Time PPP with Galileo. Fugro Seastar AS achieved this task within a week of all four Galileo satellites being activated. Fugro is now generating Galileo orbit and clock corrections, which can be used in conjunction with the Fugro G2 decimeter-level corrections associated with its GPS/GLONASS PPP service.

BeiDou Ground System Approved. The BeiDou Ground-Based Enhancement System (BGBES), a network of 30 ground stations, an operating system, and a precision positioning system, was approved by a Chinese government evaluation committee. The system is expected to improve BDS positioning accuracy to 2 centimeters horizontal and 5 centimeters vertical via tri-band real-time precision positioning technology, and to 1.5 meters with single-frequency differential navigation technology.

CNAV Test on GPS L2C and L5. The U.S. Air Force Space Command announced that CNAV capabilities on the GPS L2C and L5 signals will be tested in June. The civilian navigation message to be carried by modernized GPS will have similar data to the existing NAV message, but its structure will be different, with increased message bandwidth for greater information density. L2C and L5 users and receiver manufacturers are encouraged to review the test plan, provide comments, and participate in the evaluation process.

GPS at the Smithsonian. Brad Parkinson’s presentation, “GPS for Humanity — The Stealth Utility,” is now available as video on UStream.The talk helped introduce the new Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum exhibit, “Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There,” which is now open and free to the public in Washington, D.C.

My acquaintance with the system began in July 2000, when I joined the staff of GPS World and received my first assignment, editing an article about GPS-bearing carrier pigeons in the sister publication Galileo’s World, from founding editor Glen Gibbons. We published Galileo’s World quarterly from 2000 to 2002, chronicling the ups and downs, forward steps and back, of the European GNSS. Unless you counted EGNOS — really telecom satellites with a piggyback SBAS payload — Galileo had no space vehicles as yet, but did encompass plenty of political and financial maneuvering, rhetoric, market projections, international negotiations, and technical blueprints. In short, the stuff of news. For application stories in the magazine, we filled with European uses of GPS, all of which would eventually integrate Galileo as well.

In 2002, a UK-based travel agency of the same name began to assert its legal possession of the name Galileo, and sent a cease-and-desist shot across the bows to the corporate ownership of the two magazines, and to the European Union. The EU felt it had sufficient legal clout or standing of some kind, for it neither desisted nor renamed its space program. But our counsel at the time instructed us to quietly fold up our tent and steal away. The impending battle wasn’t worth our stake.

And so Galileo’s World sadly ceased publication. Not for lack of interest, or support, or commitment. But because of someone else’s greed or turf belligerence in a completely unrelated market. Such is the way of the global economy.

We have covered every step of Galileo’s way, technically, economically, and politically, in the pages of GPS World. Occasionally we ponder calling ourselves GNSS World, or even PNT World. But the brand, like the satnav system it is named after, is just so strong, it would be foolhardy to walk away from it, at this point in time at least.

We continue to support European satnav progress at each successive stage. And so we say yet again: Welcome, Galileo!

“We can’t make it, sir. They’re laying down fire too heavy, if you ask me.”

“I’m not asking you, lieutenant,” said the Captain. “Go to overdrive!”

The throb of the diesel Stryker increased: cha-rugga-rugga-rugga. He surveyed the rocky defile ahead. “Throw back the shield!” he shouted. “Swing out the M240!”

The crew, bending to tasks in the rocking transport, grinned. “The Old Man’ll bring us through,” they said. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!” . . .

“Get a free muffin with your next mocha latte!” Waldorf Twitty’s phone on the passenger seat squawked.

“Hmm?” said Twitty. He regarded the smartphone in mild astonishment. “You’re within 15 meters of Studbricks. Bring your e-coupon now!” Waldorf Twitty drove on in silence, the fire of the worst ambush in years of guerilla warfare fading in the airways of his mind. “Recalculating!” yapped the phone urgently. “Head for Studbricks!”

Waldorf Twitty proceeded to a parking lot at town’s edge. He hefted his laptop, pocketed his phone, and crossed the green expanse of industrial campus toward a distant office block, passing a clinic that ministered to employees.

. . . “It’s the billionaire investor, Boren Wellfleet,” said the pretty nurse.

Waldorf Twitty put down his external hard drive, repository of his own medical research. “Who has the case?”

“Dr. Debakow, and a specialist, Dr. Farnyard, has flown in.”

A door opened and Farnyard emerged, distraught. “It looks bad for Wellfleet. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look.”

“Glad to,” said Twitty.

In the operating room Dr. Debakow whispered, “I’ve read your blog on streptothricosis — brilliant.” At this moment a machine with many displays began to go rugga-rugga-rugga.

“The new anaesthetizer is giving way!” cried an intern. “No one knows how to fix it!”

Twitty glided to the machine, now going rugga-rugga-queep-rugga-rugga-queep. “Give me a USB drive!” he snapped. He inserted the device in his own hard drive, then into a port on the trembling, moaning anaesthetizer. “That will hold for ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation.”

“Coreopsis has set in,” said Farnyard nervously. “Would you take over, Twitty?”

“If you wish.” . . .

“I see you! You’re in the geofence!” his boss’s voice barked. Waldorf Twitty halted and looked around; people passed tranquilly to and fro. “I’m tracking your phone now — why aren’t you here yet? Where’s the Veeblefreetzer design!?! Why weren’t you in at 6 this morning?”

Twitty groaned. He had never figured out how to disable the location transmit function on his phone. Every app he downloaded — and he had many — claimed location-sharing could be turned off, but they buried the settings so deep. He turned back to the parking lot. He would call in sick. Or something.

. . .The dark-haired beauty took his hand. “You’ll lead us out of here?” she quavered. He nodded grimly. . .

“Say, bud, looks like you’re under-insured!” a friendly voice boomed from his pocket. “Bill Lacky with Consolidated Coverage, friend of your friend’s friend on Facebook, and a 3rd removed on LinkedIn. I’m just a few blocks away. I bet I can get an introduction from someone by the time I’m there. Heading your way!”

At a corner he leaned against a wall in the shade. “This is the police, Mr. Twitty. We are authorized to make an employer’s arrest. Hold your phone and stand perfectly still. An officer has your coordinates and will arrive shortly.”

. . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the blindfold,” said Waldorf Twitty. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile on his lips, he faced the firing squad: erect, motionless, proud and disdainful. Waldorf Twitty, inscrutable to the last.

[with apologies to James Thurber.]

“We are on the brink of creating a hollow force,” they continue. By this they mean that the military of the size that they are required to maintain may be incapable of performing the duties for which it is relied upon.

This sounds a great deal like the scenario forecast in Don Jewell’s “2C or Not 2C” column in this magazine. Five GPS satellites currently on orbit have the capability of broadcasting new signals essential to security and economic growth. But that capability is hollow because of a lack of — what? money? resolve? back-up? — to turn it on and use it. Those satellites could actually die in a couple of decades without ever performing the function for which they were designed.

The hollow-force concept as applied to the GPS constellation reverberates eerily through John Lavrakas’ “BeiDou, How Things Have Changed” piece in this issue. If GNSS matters continue developing along the same paths they follow now, the hierarchy of satnav systems, by user numbers, market share, health, robustness, economic viability, yea even unto military prowess, may well shift.

The uncertain fiscal year 2013 funding caused by the combined effects of a possible year-long Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Congress and radical budget surgery known as sequestration currently has military chiefs directing severe reductions to operation and maintenance spending.
Operations and maintenance keep satellites flying.

“Our proposed near-term actions,” write the civilian Secretary of the Air Force and the U.S.A.F. General Chief of Staff, “include . . . defer[ring] non-emergency Facilities Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization  (FSRM) projects, resulting in a reduction of roughly 50 percent in FSRM spending; where practical, de-obligat[ing]/incrementally fund[ing] contracts to encompass only FY13.”

Modernization will (or would) keep GPS apace with user requirements, growing security needs, and an increasingly digital world. Incremental funding has delayed new signals and new capabilities time and again; sounds like it’s set to do more.

“For now, and to the extent possible, any actions taken must be reversible at a later date in the event that Congress acts to remove the risks I have described,” writes Ashton Carter, Deputy Secretary of Defense, to nearly every one under the sun connected with the military and money.

When is decay reversible? The notion of a tipping point is that, once passed, it cannot be re-crossed again in the opposite direction. Neither the status quo nor stability can be restored.

Many of us in the private sector have gone through successive rounds of cutbacks and lay-offs. Such measures first trim away the fat. This can be healthy, to some extent, although fat stores energy for later use. Then they start slicing into muscle. This reduces the ability to function. Finally, in many cases, they take a hacksaw to the bones. This not only cripples the organism, it effectively destroys it.

It is impossible to tell as this magazine goes to press in December just where we may find ourselves, and in what shape, come the early days of January 2013. Those elected parties with responsibility for the state of our fiscal affairs, who in the best of all possible worlds would  possess some sort of vision for the future, continue to posture, prevaricate, pander, and generally excuse themselves from worrying about what may happen to the rest of us. After all, they will still be in office and drawing good salaries come the New Year, come what may.

The GNSS industry has pulled through the last half-decade of worldwide recession as well as most, better than many. There have been some casualties along the way, and almost universal belt-tightening. But we keep moving onward and upward, blessed with a technology that continues to find new and profit-bearing applications, and encouraged by researchers further out in front of us, who discover and develop yet newer possibilities at an astonishing rate.

Now we face new uncertainty. The domino-paths of the global economy wend this way and that, curving, intertwining, doubling back, snaking everywhere. A toppled piece here can lead to a cascaded pile-up way over on the other side of the board, and vice versa.

It all comes down to end-user ability to buy, to upgrade, to invest in the future — as opposed to holding tight to whatever can be preserved in the present.
If characterizing GNSS end-users could be done by naming off surveyors, farmers, fishermen, and other outdoor enthusiasts, then determining the economic outlook for this industry would be easier to do, though the picture might not necessarily be any more optimistic. But the GNSS end-user community has swelled almost immeasurably to include the automotive industry, the telecommunications industry (in both its infrastructure and its own end-user equipment), utilities, airlines and the aircraft industry, militaries around the world, and even governments themselves — municipal, state, and national. Every one of these entities has a budget and acutely feels the chills — and in more delayed fashion, the warnings — of national and global economies.

Should the United States Congress, in full possession of all its political wisdom, drive the country over the fiscal precipice, reverberations of the crash in the chasm below will propagate far and wide — and into the very marrow of our bones.

We have overcome before. With science and technology as our co-pilots (or are they our engines?), we shall overcome again. We may and should speak out, attempting to influence the political process, but we cannot control its outcomes.

We can do our own jobs, and we will.  Accept change, keep calm, carry on.

To play fair, do not use Google or any other research, reference, or resource. Dinner guests were honor-bound not to employ their smartphones — just their smarts. You are, too.

The first six questions had known answers (at least to the gamesmasters) at the time of the dinner. The final three peered into the future, as of that evening. Two of them have since been determined. Once the Galileo question is settled, the What Do You Know Grand Winners — 10 individuals who sat and gamed together among the 21 competing tables — will be announced, and suitable tchotchkes distributed.

A special division for online contestants has been established; send your answers to editor@gpsworld.com. Any entries that are too suspiciously close to the true answers will be disqualified for use of unauthorized resources.

The accounting and awarding — and all the answers — will appear on the Wide Awake Blog in the very near future. Do not touch that dial.

Game Rules

1. What Do You Know? What’s Your CEP? consists of nine quantitative questions. Answer each question as best you can — without the aid of outside sources! Then give your error range: an upper bound and a lower bound.

Answers will be graded on how close they are to the true answer, the size of the error range given, and whether that error range encompasses the true answer. The smaller your error range, the higher your potential score — but if the true answer falls outside your error range, you score zero for that question.

2. The second and third rules pertained to “play by tables” at the dinner, and are irrelevant and thus omitted here.

4. A final trifecta of three questions asks you to predict events in the future.  After turning in your answers to these questions, game play concludes for the evening. A final Grand Prize to the winning table will be awarded after the last event.

A more detailed mathematical explanation of the scoring process is available at the scorer’s table, should you wish to see it.

And now, are you ready to play . . . .

What Do You Know??!!??!!  What’s Your CEP??!!??

1.  Estimate the distance in kilometers from Shanghai, China, to Nashville, Tennessee, along a Great Circle global route, and from that derive the number of Delta II booster rockets (used to launch GPS satellites) laid end-to-end that would cover that distance.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _________ 

Lower bound  ______________

­­­

2. Give the total area, in either square inches or square centimeters (specify which you are giving) of a rather substantial hat worn by Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, to a friend’s wedding in July of this year.

Kate Middleton

That hat!

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer __________ 

Lower bound  ______________

3.  Peg the number of total orbiting and operating GNSS satellites, including SBAS, as of September 20, 2012.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________   

Lower bound  ______________

4.  Jack Daniel’s, a sour mash whiskey made in Lynchburg, Tennessee and the best-selling whiskey in the world, is known for its square bottles and black label. How many shots of whiskey does a white-oak barrel of Jack Daniel’s contain?

Jack Daniel’s barrel in the Hermitage Hotel, Nashville

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________   

Lower bound  ______________

5. How many of Richard Langley’s “Innovation” columns have appeared in GPS World magazine?

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________  

Lower bound  ______________

6.  In his memoirs, Tony Blair mentions that, when he first met Queen Elizabeth II as Prime Minister of the UK, the Queen put him in his place by telling him,  “You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.”

In a similar vein, how many individuals have served as Prime Minister (official, not acting or deputy) of Japan from the beginning of the Shōwa era under Emperor Hirohito in 1926 until today? (Note:  This is the count of individual persons. A single person serving as Prime Minister several times, such as the postwar Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, counts only once.)

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________   

Lower bound  ______________

Final Trifecta

7.  Predict the number of days that will elapse between the day of the combined launch of the Galileo IOV-3 and IOV-4 satellites and the day when the first satellite of that pair is declared operational. Dates are defined based on UTC. For example, if the launch should take place on the currently scheduled date of October 10, then October 11 would be 1 day, October 31 would be 21 days, and so on.  If the launch occurs on a different date, we start counting from there.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________

Lower bound  ______________

8. Predict the number of U.S. states, out of 50, that go blue in the Presidential election on November 6, 2012 — that is, their electoral votes go to President Obama’s Democratic Party ticket.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________

Lower bound  ______________

9.  Predict the total number of combined points scored in all three NFL football games to be played on Thanksgiving, November 22: Houston Texans vs. Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins, New England Patriots vs. New York Jets.

Upper bound  ______________

Absolute answer _____________

Lower bound  ______________

_________________________________________________________________

Sleep was what I wanted, you know what I got. Wide Awake, staying up late, wishing I was not.

GPS is no exception, of course. We put our signatures and seals on these things; enterprising competitors, adversaries, and curious people find a way to steam open our envelopes, create seals indistinguishable from the original, or simply use products in ways unexpected.

We exist in a world headed pell-mell toward the product consumerization, as GPS World tells us, as if this is new. We BYOD [bring your own device, a business policy of employees bringing personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and using those devices to access privileged company resources such as email, file servers, and databases, as well as their personal applications and data.  — Ed.] to work with its purchase by credit card and reimbursement by petty cash. This is nothing new than a newer terminology for mass-merchandizing.

Wars will be fought that way too, as if they always weren’t. Soldiers built their own grenades, brought their own weapons, horses, uniforms, and food to the contested game … always. Patton had his own pair of pearl-handled Colt sidearms.

The pressure for encrypted GPS and inconvenient milspec devices misses this reality. Our every weapon will fail unintentionally, get repurposed by knowledgeable adversaries, and be turned intentionally against us. We cannot engineer away these consequences. We can only be better readers. We must be flexible competitors. We have to be open to the reality that everything fails in ways we will not anticipate but should expect.

War is not fought in rows with toy soldiers equal and alike arrayed with fair rules. Fourth generation warfare is here. War is an expediency when diplomacy, economics, and reason fail with adversaries and friends alike. It is fought with a dangerous expediency.

— Marty Nemzow
Miami, Florida