Final 12 months, simply earlier than the Fourth of July vacation, the US Area Pressure formally took possession of a brand new working system for the GPS navigation community, elevating hopes that one of many navy’s most troubled house applications would possibly lastly bear fruit.
The GPS Subsequent-Era Operational Management System, or OCX, is designed for command and management of the navy’s constellation of greater than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of software program to deal with new alerts and jam-resistant capabilities of the most recent technology of GPS satellites, GPS III, which began launching in 2018. The bottom phase additionally contains two grasp management stations and upgrades to floor monitoring stations world wide, amongst different {hardware} components.
RTX Company, previously generally known as Raytheon, received a Pentagon contract in 2010 to develop and ship the management system. This system was purported to be full in 2016 at a price of $3.7 billion. Right now, the official price for the bottom system for the GPS III satellites stands at $7.6 billion. RTX is growing an OCX augmentation projected to price greater than $400 million to assist a brand new collection of GPS IIIF satellites set to start launching subsequent 12 months, bringing the overall effort to $8 billion.
Though RTX delivered OCX to the Area Pressure final July, the bottom phase stays nonoperational. 9 months later, the Pentagon could quickly name it quits on this system. Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Pressure for house acquisition and integration, informed Congress final week that OCX remains to be struggling.
Hopes Dashed
The Area Pressure’s formal acceptance of the bottom system from RTX final 12 months marked a turning level for OCX after years of blunders. The handover allowed navy groups to validate the brand new management software program and upgraded floor services earlier than declaring the system prepared for operational service. However this testing uncovered extra issues.
“Because of this, intensive and extra operationally related testing with precise GPS satellites, floor antennas, and consumer tools led to a rise to find intensive system points throughout all subsystems, a lot of which haven’t been resolved,” Ainsworth informed the Home Subcommittee on Strategic Forces in ready testimony.
“For over 15 years, this system has skilled vital technical challenges, schedule slips, and related price progress, placing in danger the launch and functionality of future GPS satellites,” Ainsworth continued.
Delays within the OCX program pressured the navy to retool the GPS community’s decades-old legacy management system to handle the GPS III satellites. Upgrades in 2020 allowed the Area Pressure to start utilizing a subset of the brand new capabilities enabled by “M-code” GPS alerts designed for warfare.
The military-grade alerts are particularly essential now to fight GPS jamming and spoofing round struggle zones in Ukraine and the Center East. M-code is extra immune to jamming, and its encryption makes it harder to spoof, a sort of assault that makes receivers belief faux navigation alerts over actual ones. The improve additionally permits the navy to disclaim an adversary entry to GPS throughout battle, whereas sustaining the flexibility for US and allied forces to make use of M-code for a bonus.
Army officers beforehand thought they wanted OCX up and working to completely exploit M-code alerts on roughly 700 varieties of weapons methods reminiscent of airplanes, ships, floor automobiles, and missiles.
Due to its civilian and navy significance, the GPS community is an “engaging goal for adversaries,” mentioned Lieutenant Common Doug Schiess, the Area Pressure’s deputy chief of operations. “Jamming [denial of signal] and spoofing [false signals] are a present and rising menace to GPS. We’re modernizing GPS to mitigate these threats.”
However a key a part of the modernization remains to be tormented by issues. Ainsworth informed lawmakers that persevering with to replace the prevailing GPS floor management system “is now a viable choice as systemic points with OCX proceed.”
