Where Are We? - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 181

The LightSquared controversy was costly and disruptive but may have long-
term benefits. It significantly raised public awareness of the role gps now plays
in the U.S. economy and the nation's security and prompted the National pnt
Advisory Board to develop a series of recommendations about jamming. They
include urging the executive branch to designate gps as critical national infra-
structure subject to Department of Homeland Security oversight, creating a
system for reporting locations with persistent interference and eliminating
them, cracking down on gps jammers, strengthening receivers and antennas,
and funding a national backup capability for pnt needs. 284
Whereas previous economic studies of gps focused on market opportuni-
ties and sales forecasts, the Coalition to Save Our gps commissioned the first
analysis of what a gps disruption might cost the economy. ndp Consulting
Group, based in Washington dc, submitted its report The Economic Benefits of
Commercial gps Use in the U.S. and the Costs of Potential Disruption in June 2011.
(Many igures cited in this topic come from that study.) ndp focused on three
commercial sectors with high gps adoption rates and readily available data—
precision agriculture, engineering/construction, and surface transportation—to
project the impact on commercial users. The study found that full nationwide
disruption of gps would produce a direct economic impact of $96 billion per
year—about 0.7 percent of the U.S. economy. 285 Given that the commercial
market is only a quarter of the total gps market, that shows the significant
return from the roughly $35 billion in public funds spent on the constellation
to date and the nearly $1-billion-per-year cost of maintaining gps. 286
With increasing competition for limited radio spectrum, the National pnt
Advisory Board expects more interference threats and wants to be better pre-
pared to defend gps. At its August 2012 meeting, members discussed commis-
sioning a more comprehensive study of the economic benefits that gps produces
for the United States and the rest of the world. 287 That promises to be an enor-
mous number-crunching task, given the scope of gps use today, and one made
harder by the prospect of accounting for the growing use of receivers that com-
bine two, three, or four different gnss signals. The European gnss Agency in
a spring 2012 report estimated that the global gnss market would reach €244
billion, or about $277.4 billion, by 2020. Other reports may arrive at different
figures, but they are all likely to be huge numbers.
This chapter began with the question: Where are we? One answer might be,
recalculating. In the United States and much of the world, both the culture and
the economy are inextricably dependent on accurate, uninterrupted gps ser-