Air Force speaks out over the future of GPS... on Twitter

Artist concept of an Iridium satellite in earth orbit.
An Iridium satellite in earth orbit. Photograph: NASA/AP

The rumblings over the future of GPS are continuing, with some of the major players finally getting involved in the debate over the future of satellite navigation tools.

To recap: a recent report by the US government accountability office suggested that overspending and mismanagement could threaten the future of GPS. It predicted that the reliability of satnav would fall as low as 80% over the next five years.

Since we reported the details earlier this week, the story has spread far and wide - but the US Air Force (which is responsible for the upkeep of the constellation of satellites that provides GPS) has been almost silent.

Until now.


Responding to a small selection of questions from users, Colonel Dave Buckman - an expert on GPS at Air Force Space Command in Colorado - explained what he thought was going on.

In the hour-long exchange, the Air Force's messages about the future of the system were repeated time and again: namely that the group of 24-30 GPS satellites was the largest array of its kind, and that it wasn't about to stop working entirely.

Here's a representative sample of the 13 messages that AFSPC actually sent:

@lukeshepherd: We have the largest GPS constellation in history and active plans to mitigate any potential gap in coverage.

@usmcpablo: The issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There's only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard

@weisen: We definitely need to keep this in perspective . Since 1995, GPS has never failed to exceed performance standards.

But it wasn't only the Air Force getting involved. Boeing - one of the major contractors working on the GPS upgrade - also made a comment on the subject today. And its language was markedly different from that of the Air Force, admitting that there had been problems in the past that required changes.

According to Boeing, the upgrade to the existing satellite array - called GPS IIF - will "deliver more capability and improved mission performance".

Working very closely with the Air Force and its team, Boeing has taken aggressive steps to resolve the technical issues on IIF with a strong emphasis on Mission Assurance. Design changes were required to ensure performance over the satellite design life and have caused schedule delays, but these changes are in the final phase of implementation.

It's good to finally hear from the people involved. But I can't be the only one who remains concerned that their public response to the questions raised by the US government's watchdog essentially boil down to "No, it's really not a problem". Can I?