The DOT Volpe Center’s September 10 report on the vulnerability of GPS to jamming and other interference, in addition to the events of the following day, have greatly heightened national concerns about the security of the satellite system and the degree of dependence that should be placed on it as the backbone of our future ATC system. These concerns were reflected in several of the presentations and much of the discussion at the annual technical meeting of the U.S. Institute of Navigation (ION) in San Diego in January.
Since September 11, military and civil government officials, including the FAA, have been conducting internal, but classified, assessments of the extent to which short- or long- term non-availability of GPS would affect their operations. ION attendees had hoped that a DOT presentation scheduled for the meeting would shed some light on these assessments, but Heywood Shirer, DOT radionavigation program manager, was only able to tell them that while an action plan for civil GPS users had been prepared in December, it had still not been signed off in late January by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.
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