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Leak provides early details for Trump's proposed Space Force
Congress is still a long way off from greenlighting Trump's proposed Space Force, but that isn't stopping the Pentagon from outlining plans for the new military branch. Defense One has obtained a leaked draft proposal that reveals some of the potential changes. The military would move quickly, creating a US Space Command by the end of 2018 that watches over space operations across the armed forces. The Pentagon would recommend that the leader of Air Force Space Command also head up this new division. Simultaneously, officials would establish a Space Operations Force that would include personnel (including civilians) from the whole military. It'd be ready quickly -- "space experts" would go to the European and Indo-Pacific Commands by summer 2019.
US Air Force raises concerns over LightSquared's LTE network messing with GPS
Following a navigation system's instructions without driving into a ravine is hard enough as it is -- can you even imagine how hard it'd be if you kept losing GPS reception every time you drove within range of an LTE tower? There have been a few anecdotal concerns raised over the last several weeks that LightSquared's proposed LTE network -- which would repurpose L-band spectrum formerly used for satellite -- is too close to the spectrum used by the Global Positioning System, leading to unintentional jamming when the towers overpower the much weaker GPS signals. Things have gotten a little more interesting, though, now that the US Air Force Space Command has officially piped in. General William Shelton has gone on record saying that "a leading GPS receiver manufacturer just ... has concluded that within 3 to 5 miles on the ground and within about 12 miles in the air GPS is jammed by those towers," calling the situation "unbelievable" and saying he's "hopeful the FCC does the right thing." Presumably, the USAF thinks that "the right thing" would involve pulling LightSquared's license, but for its part, the company says it believes Shelton is referring to a test conducted by Garmin (possibly explaining that recent outage in the Southeastern US?) using simulated interference filters -- not the actual filters that it has spent several million dollars developing and perfecting. Regardless of how effective the filters might be, the idea that the only thing standing between a functional GPS system and a constellation of space-borne paperweights is a private company's privately-developed, privately-operated filtering equipment... but then again, we love LTE. Decisions! [Thanks, Brian]
