The Global Positioning System for Military Users: Current Modernization Plans and Alternatives

As the Department of Defense s DoD s Global Positioning System GPS satellites reach the end of their service lives, the department plans to replace them with ones that can counter deliberate interference by generating stronger signals. Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office CBO indicates that an alternative approach namely, improving military receivers to retain the GPS signal even in the presence of such jamming would be less expensive than DoD s plan for upgrading its constellation of GPS satellites. Furthermore, the alternative would yield benefits almost a decade earlier than DoD s plan. However, the improvements to military receivers could make them larger and heavier and thereby less useful to personnel operating on foot until they could incorporate the substantial gains that have been achieved in miniaturization in other applications.