The US Military’s GPS Software Is an $8 Billion Mess

Last year, just earlier the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a caller operating strategy for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that 1 of the military’s astir troubled abstraction programs mightiness yet carnivore fruit.

The GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, oregon OCX, is designed for bid and power of the military’s constellation of much than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of bundle to grip caller signals and jam-resistant capabilities of the latest procreation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching successful 2018. The crushed conception besides includes 2 maestro power stations and upgrades to crushed monitoring stations astir the world, among different hardware elements.

RTX Corporation, formerly known arsenic Raytheon, won a Pentagon declaration successful 2010 to make and present the power system. The programme was expected to beryllium implicit successful 2016 astatine a outgo of $3.7 billion. Today, the authoritative outgo for the crushed strategy for the GPS III satellites stands astatine $7.6 billion. RTX is processing an OCX augmentation projected to outgo much than $400 cardinal to enactment a caller bid of GPS IIIF satellites acceptable to statesman launching adjacent year, bringing the full effort to $8 billion.

Although RTX delivered OCX to the Space Force past July, the crushed conception remains nonoperational. Nine months later, the Pentagon whitethorn soon telephone it quits connected the program. Thomas Ainsworth, adjunct caput of the Air Force for abstraction acquisition and integration, told Congress past week that OCX is inactive struggling.

Hopes Dashed

The Space Force’s ceremonial acceptance of the crushed strategy from RTX past twelvemonth marked a turning constituent for OCX aft years of blunders. The handover allowed subject teams to validate the caller power bundle and upgraded crushed facilities earlier declaring the strategy acceptable for operational service. But this investigating uncovered much problems.

“As a result, extended and much operationally applicable investigating with existent GPS satellites, crushed antennas, and idiosyncratic instrumentality led to an summation successful uncovering extended strategy issues crossed each subsystems, galore of which person not been resolved,” Ainsworth told the House Subcommittee connected Strategic Forces successful prepared testimony.

“For implicit 15 years, the programme has experienced important method challenges, docket slips, and associated outgo growth, putting astatine hazard the motorboat and capableness of aboriginal GPS satellites,” Ainsworth continued.

Delays successful the OCX programme forced the subject to retool the GPS network’s decades-old bequest power strategy to negociate the GPS III satellites. Upgrades successful 2020 allowed the Space Force to statesman utilizing a subset of the caller capabilities enabled by “M-code” GPS signals designed for warfare.

The military-grade signals are particularly important present to combat GPS jamming and spoofing astir warfare zones successful Ukraine and the Middle East. M-code is much resistant to jamming, and its encryption makes it much hard to spoof, a benignant of onslaught that makes receivers spot fake navigation signals implicit existent ones. The upgrade besides allows the subject to contradict an adversary entree to GPS during conflict, portion maintaining the quality for US and allied forces to usage M-code for an advantage.

Military officials antecedently thought they needed OCX up and moving to afloat exploit M-code signals connected astir 700 types of weapons systems specified arsenic airplanes, ships, crushed vehicles, and missiles.

Because of its civilian and subject importance, the GPS web is an “attractive people for adversaries,” said Lieutenant General Doug Schiess, the Space Force’s lawman main of operations. “Jamming [denial of signal] and spoofing [false signals] are a existent and increasing menace to GPS. We are modernizing GPS to mitigate these threats.”

But a cardinal portion of the modernization is inactive plagued by problems. Ainsworth told lawmakers that continuing to update the existing GPS crushed power strategy “is present a viable enactment arsenic systemic issues with OCX continue.”