It is possible during the month of December that GPS data could be unreliable for short periods of time. The U.S. Navy announced that GPS testing at Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kekaha started on Nov. 29 and will run
It is possible during the month of December that GPS data could be unreliable for short periods of time.
The U.S. Navy announced that GPS testing at Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kekaha started on Nov. 29 and will run through Dec. 24. According to PMRF, the testing will involve brief and momentary instances that could render GPS data inaccurate.
The outage will occur during support activities of regularly scheduled testing events that involve radio frequency (RF) transmissions over several frequency bands, according to PMRF Public Affairs. RF transmissions are controlled and directed in a way that minimizes impact to receivers not involved in the test in the surrounding area.
“As a matter of standard practice and consistent with similar events PMRF supported in the past, we routinely request the issuance of NOTAMs and NOTMARs alerting air- and watercraft of the possible impact to their navigational systems,” a PMRF spokesperson said. “Transmissions during the test are infrequent and only for short durations.”
The testing scenario would not be unlike that of missile testing or sonar schedules, according to PMRF. The notice of a testing window may be several hours or days, when the actual launch or test may be only a few minutes or for an otherwise relatively short period.
PMRF could not elaborate on the testing that is classified. They did note that classified does not necessarily imply an exotic or clandestine test and that it also entails the mundane work that is just not appropriate to discuss for security reasons.
Global Positioning System is a series of satellites placed in orbit around the globe as a navigation system created by the U.S. military. The service uses signals from multiple satellites to triangulate a continuous real-time location to a receiver that converts the longitude and latitude data to a user-friendly electronic map.
GPS systems have inherent accuracy errors including up to a 3 percent loss of signal arrival, along with ionospheric interference that can add up to a 5 percent error. There is also accession and declination loss that reaches 2.5 percent and RF interference of up to 1 percent.
