Space Force Declares Anti-spoofing GPS Signal Operational
War fighters can access a limited version of a new, more secure military GPS signal, after the U.S. Space Force recently declared a necessary upgrade to the ground system operational. More accurate than the civilian signal, the encrypted M-Code programming language provides advanced anti-spoofing and anti-jamming capabilities designed to provide positioning, navigation and timing data to the war fighter even when adversaries are trying to block or degrade the signal. But even as the military has successfully added more and more GPS satellites with M-Code availability — 23 and counting — the ground system being purpose-built for GPS III and M-Code is years behind schedule. According to a 2019 Government Accountability Office report, the $6.2 billion Next-Generation Operational Control System (OCX) being built by Raytheon Technologies is five years behind schedule, and the government doesn’t expect it to be delivered until June 2021.
To provide access to M-Code sooner, the Air Force tasked Lockheed Martin in 2017 with building an upgrade to the current ground system called M-Code Early Use (MCEU), a more limited version of M-Code that will operate until OCX is ready. Installation of the hardware and software upgrades for MCEU was officially completed in July.
Read more in Defense News article. https://www.defensenews.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/12/07/new-anti-spoofing-gps-signal-declared-operational/
