Note: The main discussion is on the issue of GPS and the impact of the problem
At about 2:00 a.m. local time on March 13, the United States was attacked by 10 short-range missiles near the Erbil Consulate in Iraq's Kurdish district. The U.S. military has determined that the missile launch was launched by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from western Iran.
After this news appeared, the netizens on the mainland really "opened their minds" and actually said information about "GPS", what information? That is- there is a problem with the GPS, that is, there is a problem with the GPS, so the missile has deviated and directly hit the vicinity of the US consulate, and there are still many people who like it.
Is there really such a thing? The GPS in the United States is so strong, will there really be a situation of "failure" and "failure"? It is undeniable that such a situation really exists, so is it not what netizens said this time, the US GPS is in trouble?
So you hit near your own "gate"? If this is the case, it may be the United States itself that may be sad, after all, its own products have intermittently hurt themselves. Is that really it? We look at it step by step.
How strong is the GPS in the United States?
There are four major satellite systems known in the world, and they are also the systems with a large global coverage area, namely the GLOBAL POSITIONING System GPS of the United States, the GLONASS Satellite Navigation System of Russia, the Galileo Satellite Navigation System of the European Union (GALILEO), and the Beidou Satellite Navigation System (BDS) of China.
If you want to talk about the overall strength, the old "GPS" is indeed stronger, if it comes to regional, other navigation systems may be better than GPS.
So how strong is the GPS in the United States? The GPS satellite navigation system of the United States is a positioning system that uses satellites flying in space, continuously transmits a certain frequency to the ground broadcast, and loads some special positioning information with radio signals to achieve positioning measurements.
The whole system is composed of three parts, including the satellite constellation, the ground control part, and the user part. Of course, other systems also contain these three parts. However, there are certain differences in the signal encoding of the four major systems.
Since 1994, the United States has implemented an AS policy, and only the military of the United States and its allies can use the P code, as well as a small number of users authorized by the U.S. government. Therefore, it is not something that ordinary people can use.
With the removal of the SA interference technology for GPS, the positioning accuracy of the standard positioning service can actually be increased to 20m and the timing accuracy can be increased to 40ns when the dual frequency is operated.
Of course, for civilian use, mainly positioning application, under normal circumstances, the accuracy of the civilian version of the US GPS can reach 10 meters, but the second generation of the US GPS satellite system, the third generation of GPS system layout, the strength has also been further improved.
In 2019, Lockheed Martin pointed out that its positioning accuracy is 3 times that of the previous GPS system, and its anti-interference ability is 8 times that of the current GPS system.
Therefore, how strong the strength of the US GPS is and how widely it is used, it is estimated that only they themselves know. As a "military-civilian" dual-use system, everyone may only know the skin. Military data may not be made public. That time the Iranian missile was deflected, is it not the GPS problem that netizens said.
Iranian missiles hit the vicinity of the US consulate, and the GPS went wrong, is it true?
It is undeniable that the GPS signal interruption in Iran has been completely absent. In 2020, iranian media iranintl issued a note that there was indeed a global positioning system (GPS) signal outage, and it also brought some impact.
For example, there is no link between a GPS outage and the deaths of at least 12 hikers in a snowstorm and avalanche in the mountains north of Tehran, an increase in complaints that a GPS signal outage affects air navigation, and so on.
What does this mean? It shows that Iran has indeed had a GPS problem. Moreover, the report also pointed out that in the past two years, social media users and taxi drivers have reported many cases of getting lost while using GPS navigation, and the problem has greatly worsened, but in the end, it is said that the problem of signal interference has increased, that is, GPS has been affected.
Of course, this also shows a problem, Iran's use of GPS is still quite a lot, at least it used to be so.
So this Time Iranian missiles attacked near the US consulate, is there a problem with GPS? The GPS ground in the United States has a total of 1 main control station and 5 monitoring stations, which are responsible for the monitoring, telemetry, tracking and control of satellites. The main control station, the Satellite Control Center, is located at Fulken Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, and its mission is to collect data sent by each monitoring station, calculate the satellite orbit and clock difference parameters, and send it to each injection station.
The other four, located in Hawaii in the United States, Cavagaland island in the North Pacific, Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, and Assuncian Island in the Atlantic Ocean, the main control station is mainly used to monitor and track satellites. What does this mean? GPS is monitored by the United States 24/7, is that a problem? Surely there will be no problems.
And if the GPS problem is wrong, it has long been discovered by the United States, and at the same time, the problem will affect users in other countries except Iran.
Therefore, there is no problem with GPS. Netizens "opened their minds" and thought of GPS problems. From the perspective of GPS itself, this possibility is completely absent, unlikely to be true.
If GPS is really bad, how big is the impact and how terrible is it?
In civilian use, if GPS really has a problem, then mobile phone navigation that relies on GPS, navigation of shipping ships, etc. will lose their direction. At the same time, the aircraft and other equipment in the aviation system cannot be used, and the aircraft will lose its direction. It is even possible to have catastrophic effects without your knowledge.
Why? For example, in the case of aircraft, positioning devices are installed on each aircraft, and each positioning device will send data in real time during the flight of the aircraft, and then realize the data sharing of each aircraft to avoid possible collisions between aircraft.
If gps can not convey the precise location, there will be problems, so gps positioning in aviation is very critical, once there is a problem, there may even be an air crash, quite scary.
In the military, GPS can be used as an "auxiliary" high-end navigation system. It can be used for coordinated operations, missile guidance, field positioning of search and rescue personnel, and so on. And the United States uses GPS for missile development and auxiliary navigation, according to encyclopedia data, about 70% of them have been realized - the use of GPS auxiliary guidance examples.
For example, the Tomahawk cruise missile accurately hits the target of a small house from the l600km place, which is assisted by GPS. At the same time, in the vast desert, there is no sign, mainly rely on navigation satellites for positioning, in order to know where the target they locked, and then to achieve accurate locking, tracking, searching and so on.
So, for GPS, if something really goes wrong, the United States may be more anxious, and the impact is huge, very scary. Obviously, if Iran uses GPS, if something goes wrong, the U.S. may fix it before they find out, after all, they are using it themselves. Instead of breaking the news, then repair it. Therefore, the Iranian missile attack near the US consulate is unlikely to be related to GPS, and it can only be said that everyone's "brain hole" is not generally large.
reference:
https://www.army-technology.com/features/the-problem-with-gps/
https://old.iranintl.com/en/iran/iran-spokesman-confirms-mysterious-disruption-gps-signals-tehran