Land-based backup to GPS wins reprieve in spending bill
A terrestrial backup for the satellite-based Global Positioning System endorsed by a wide range of users from the aviation, marine transportation and telecommunications industries gained a new lease on life in the fiscal 2008 omnibus spending bill passed by the House Monday.
The Coast Guard had planned to terminate operation of its LORAN (for Long-Range Navigation) system, which could serve as the backbone of a GPS backup, in fiscal 2008. But language in the Homeland Security Department portion of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 denied that request.
The omnibus bill said that termination would be premature, partly due to the fact that an improved version of LORAN, known as enhanced Loran or eLORAN, has been recommended as a GPS backup by the multiagency National Space Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Committee, whose membership includes top officials from the Defense, Homeland Security, Transportation, Commerce and State departments, along with NASA. That committee has not publicly released its eLORAN recommendation.
The Transportation Department's Volpe National Transportation Systems Center urged development of an alternative to GPS in a 2001 report that concluded the satellite-based system could be knocked out by jamming its high-frequency low-power signals. The report suggested LORAN as a possible backup.
Since the Volpe report was issued, the Coast Guard -- at the direction of Congress -- has converted most of its LORAN stations, which had a location accuracy of from one quarter of a nautical mile to one nautical mile, to eLORAN stations, which have an accuracy of between eight and 65 feet.
GPS also provides precise timing signals for telecommunications companies worldwide, and they urged the Transportation and DHS to adopt eLORAN as a backup during a public comment period earlier this year.
Langhorne Bond, president of the International LORAN Association, who also served as head of the Federal Aviation Administration from 1977 to 1981, said the language in the House bill was a plus for eLORAN , which he believes has already received solid, if quiet, Bush administration backing.
"They're not going to shut down LORAN," Bond said. "The problem is trying to decide who will pay for it." LORAN operations -- which benefit a wide range of federal and civil users -- have been entirely funded by the Coast Guard, which would like to see other agencies share the load.
Coast Guard Capt. Curtis Dubay told the National Position Navigation and Timing Advisory Board in October that the Coast Guard operates 24 LORAN stations, of which 19 have been modernized to eLORAN. In order to provide full eLORAN coverage, he said the Coast Guard will upgrade the remaining five stations, build three new ones and add monitoring stations to check integrity and accuracy.
Dubay estimated costs would total $400 million for modernization and another $50 million for coverage expansion.
COMMENTS
- Check your facts, FY2006 Loran funding was added to FAA appropriaton by conf report. I suspect these funds and similar prior year funding, not Coast Guard appropriations, have been used for Loran upgrades. Hasn't Coast Guard been trying to dump Loran C for years becuase shipping uses GPS. If LORAN is a necessary backup system not limited to transportation then maybe DHS should pick up the tab and manage it. Coast Guard is part of DHS, already has the facilities, has been paid to upgrade them, so let Coast Guard manage the program for the good of the nation. Just make sure that it is adequately funded. The story is probably bigger than reported, especially if the public discussion has been going on for more than six years. Any fool knows that any critical system needs a capable backup. What is in place today to backup GPS, how critical is this issue. What GPS applications can Loran backup, and are these applicataions designed to use Loran as a backup? Gary Kirk Posted December 19, 2007 12:37 PM
