But then the best-laid plans. . . .

So, if everything had gone as planned, we would have a new ground control segment (OCX) operating a new generation of satellites (GPS III) as they launch into an expanded constellation in support of modernized military GPS user equipment (MGUE).

But then the best-laid plans. . . .

OCX still appears four to five years away, the first tranche of GPS IIIs are going up years late, and, as a 2015 Government Accountability Office report concluded, MGUE’s acquisition strategy has been revised several times in the Air Force’s quest to develop the new user equipment.

How bad is the situation? Well, so bad that the House Armed Services Committee recently zeroed out Fiscal Year 2017 funding for OCX because of the cost overruns and schedule slippage.

“Re-baselining,” a term of bureaucratic art that in other quarters is known as moving the goalposts, has become a way of life for GPS. The program is always on schedule, because the schedule is always new and improved. What continual re-baselining hides, however, is that the GPS program, at 42 years of age, is suffering from a kind of mid-life crisis.

How did it come to this? A few of the culprits:

• Changes in leadership. As ambitious and talented military leaders climb the GPS Directorate or Air Force Space Command rungs of their careers, the typical three-year tour of duty at Los Angeles Air Force Base means a constant cycle of re-education. The GPS program has been good for upwardly mobile officers, as many colonels turned into generals, aided in part by overseeing an ever-more-popular utility. But it comes with an overhead of training costs.

• Design decisions, technical challenges, and engineering changes. Keeping the heavy, power-draining Nuclear Detection System on board GPS satellites, adding multiple new signals, devising a digital signal processor, implementing inter-satellite links.

• Loss of expertise. A few years back, Air Force dropped a contractor, Arinc, Inc., which had advised the program office for decades, in favor of a vendor with limited GPS expertise. That reset the learning curve while the newbies got up to speed.

Another example: Along with the technical challenges, the folks responsible for designing and building every GPS satellite navigation payload suffered a steady erosion of engineering talent as ITT Industries was absorbed by Exelis and then Harris Corporation. The associated delays rippled through the whole GPS III endeavor.

It also didn’t help that a couple of years ago the Air Force cashiered its GPS Independent Review Team, a group of experienced outside advisers authorized to take the long view. A couple of bright spots in this gloomy picture are the Aerospace Corporation and the Massachusetts branch of the MITRE Corporation. These federally funded research and development centers provide institutional memory along with day-to-day expertise in solving technical and programmatic problems.

• Budgetary processes. GLONASS gets its own line item in the Russian federal budget. Europe’s Galileo has funding for seven years. China has five-year plans that place its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System high on the list for resource allocation.

But GPS? Rescissions, congressional hearings, new demands, GAO reviews take place from month to month, week to week, even day to day. A situation that is made worse by the Air Force’s ability to reprogram funds from GPS to the squeaky wheel or problem child or favored program of the moment.

What can be done? Well, maybe it’s time to re-baseline the whole deal.

Obviously this can’t be done by the folks holding things together in current operations, acquisitions, engineering, and system management. No one wants to rebuild a car while it’s flying down the freeway at 70 miles an hour.

Perhaps the program needs to rebuild its brain trust, establish a parallel organization that can take a longer view beyond budget cycles, leadership rotations, and engineering change orders.

Back in the 1990s, such an effort was undertaken by a blue-ribbon group supported by the National Research Council. Today, the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board might be best positioned for such a mission.

No one wants to make any sudden moves with a resource on which industries, critical infrastructures, and nations depend. But some kind of movement is definitely needed — and soon.

The post Re-Baseline This! appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Officials from the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Global Positioning Systems Wing announced today (February 25) the award of the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX) contract to Raytheon Company, Intelligence & Information Systems, Aurora, Colorado.

With a baseline duration of 73 months, the OCX development contract has option years for sustainment worth a potential total of $1,535,147,916. Raytheon teammates include Boeing, ITT, Braxton Technologies, Infinity Systems Engineering, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Officials from the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Global Positioning Systems Wing announced today (February 25) the award of the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX) contract to Raytheon Company, Intelligence & Information Systems, Aurora, Colorado.

With a baseline duration of 73 months, the OCX development contract has option years for sustainment worth a potential total of $1,535,147,916. Raytheon teammates include Boeing, ITT, Braxton Technologies, Infinity Systems Engineering, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The contract calls for development and installation of hardware and software at GPS control stations at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado and Vandenberg AFB in California, deployment of advanced monitor stations at remote sites, and initial contractor support with sustainment options for five years.

OCX will replace the current GPS Operational Control System, maintaining backwards compatibility with the Block IIR and IIR-M constellation, providing command and control of the new GPS IIF and GPS III families of satellites, and enabling new modernized signal capabilities.

The OCX will provide new anti-jamming technologies, more advanced predictive algorithms, and more frequent clock and ephemeris updates.

Raytheon’s Airspace Management and Homeland Security (AMHS) business area currently is prime contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and is also involved with implementation of India’s GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system, two satellite-based systems that provide improved integrity and positioning accuracy.

The GPS Wing selected Raytheon over a team headed by Northrop Grumman Corporation.

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An increasingly likely $97.4-million cut in the GPS OCX budget for fiscal year 2010 (FY10) would slow down work on modernization of the operational control segment, but the Air Force would try to recoup any reduction in the FY11 budget.

Meanwhile, technical problems that have delayed development of the follow-on generation of Block IIF satellites are largely resolved and a first launch is expected in May 2010.

An increasingly likely $97.4-million cut in the GPS OCX budget for fiscal year 2010 (FY10) would slow down work on modernization of the operational control segment, but the Air Force would try to recoup any reduction in the FY11 budget.

Meanwhile, technical problems that have delayed development of the follow-on generation of Block IIF satellites are largely resolved and a first launch is expected in May 2010.

Lt. Gen. Tom Sheridan, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles Air Force Base, offered those assessments in response to questions from Inside GNSS during a press conference today (September 17, 2009).

The version of the Deparment of Defense (DoDO Appropriations bill, H.R. 3326, passed by the House of Representatives on July 30 reduced the OCX allocation because of contract delays in the OCX program.  On September 10, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed H.R. 3326 out to the Senate floor with the OCX cuts still intact.

“[The reduction] will slow us down a little in the first year of the contract,” Sheridan said, adding that the GPS Wing at SMC still plans to get a contract signed in December. FY10 begins October 1.

He added, “I would hope that as we discuss the FY11 budget with Congress, that they will see the work we are doing” and augment the next year’s budget to enable the program to get back on schedule.

IIF Space Vehicle 1 (SV1) is undergoing final integration & system test (FIST) at the Boeing assembly plant now, and Sheridan said he sees “no showstoppers” and that the spacecraft is expected to be shipped to Cape Canaveral in the December-January timeframe. “I think we’re past the problems.”

“The biggest issue is getting a slot in the launch manifest,” he added. The second IIF spacecraft, SV2, was sent to the launch facility in Florida earlier this year for a “pathfinder” exercise, “to find out how you flow a IIF through the launch procedure,” Sheridan said. “It went very well.”

Although no GPS satellites are  available for launch, the constellation is currently overpopulated with 30 operational satellites and some older, on-orbit SVs that could be brought back into service. Sheridan expressed confidence that the Air Force would be able to maintain the constellation at or above its requirement of 24 operational spacecraft.

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Officials from Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s GPS Wing have announced the release of a request for proposal (RFP) for Phase B of the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX) contracts.

OCX will replace the current Operational Control Segment managed from Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, maintaining backward compatibility with the Block IIR and IIR-M constellation and enabling new modernized capabilities onboard the Block IIR-M and IIF satellites. In addition, OCX will provide command and control (C2) of new capabilities associated with the new GPS III generation of satellites.

The Phase B contract for OCX will include development of OCX Blocks 1.0 and 2.0. Block 1.0 will replace the existing legacy GPS command and control system and support mission operations of GPS IIIA satellites. Block 2.0 will support monitoring and controlling of the new L2C, L5, and M-Code signals as well as launch of both GPS II and GPS III satellites. This contract will also include options for interim contractor support, transition support, special studies, and sustainment for up to five years.

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are currently performing technology development efforts under the Phase A OCX contract, which extends until September 2009.  Work done on this Phase A contract provides input to the selection for Phase B.

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(Updated Jan.26) President Barack Obama’s nomination of William J. Lynn III, a senior vice-president at Raytheon Corporation, for deputy secretary of defense and his granting Lynn a waiver from the new administration’s own rules on former lobbyists has provoked considerable criticism from some quarters.

As the number two official in the Department of Defense (DoD), Lynn would report directly to Robert Gates, the current secretary of defense who has continued in that position in the new administration, the only holdover from ex-President Bush’s cabinet. Gates has come out strongly in support of Lynn, saying that he requested the waiver from the president.

Among other responsibilities, the deputy secretary serves as the co-chair of
the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Executive
Committee (ExCom). Lynn would succeed Gordon England, who has paid a lot of attention to GPS during his term in office and enhanced the role of the PNT ExCom as an arbiter and advocate for the GPS program throughout the federal government.

(Updated Jan.26) President Barack Obama’s nomination of William J. Lynn III, a senior vice-president at Raytheon Corporation, for deputy secretary of defense and his granting Lynn a waiver from the new administration’s own rules on former lobbyists has provoked considerable criticism from some quarters.

As the number two official in the Department of Defense (DoD), Lynn would report directly to Robert Gates, the current secretary of defense who has continued in that position in the new administration, the only holdover from ex-President Bush’s cabinet. Gates has come out strongly in support of Lynn, saying that he requested the waiver from the president.

Among other responsibilities, the deputy secretary serves as the co-chair of
the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Executive
Committee (ExCom). Lynn would succeed Gordon England, who has paid a lot of attention to GPS during his term in office and enhanced the role of the PNT ExCom as an arbiter and advocate for the GPS program throughout the federal government.

Although Lynn apparently hasn’t had a close association with the GPS program, in his role as Raytheon’s senior vice-president for government operations and strategy he is the chief liaison with federal executive and legislative branches for a company that does. Raytheon is the prime contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and leads one of two competing teams seeking the contract to build the next-generation GPS operational control segment (OCX).

Overall, Raytheon reportedly did $18.3 billion worth of business with the U.S. government in 2007. Lynn has agreed to sell his stock in Raytheon and other defense contractors to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the future.

According to an Associated Press report, until early last year Lynn had lobbied Congress and federal agencies on a variety of programs including missiles, sensors and radar, advanced technology programs, and space and intelligence funding. That put Lynn inside the two-year ban on lobbing of federal agencies and Congress that Obama has set for new appointees — hence, the need for a waiver in the case of the Raytheon executive.

In a January 22 press conference, Gates defended that decision, noting, "People in the transition certainly recognized that it [Lynn’s Raytheon role] was an issue. And I interviewed Bill Lynn. I was very impressed with his credentials. He came with the highest recommendations of a number of people that I respect a lot. And I asked that an exception be made because I felt that he could play the role of a deputy — of the deputy — in a better manner than anybody else that I saw."

Gates has been “intimately involved” in the process of identifying and interviewing appropriate candidates for various vacancies throughout the department, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell.

Morrell added that, before Obama made his announcement, Gates has been busy working with the president-elect’s transition team to identify appropriate candidates for various vacancies throughout the department and interview them personally.

“I think he feels as though . . . we’ve made some good progress toward identifying some very capable candidates to fill some very big jobs within the department,” Morrell said.

Among the people expressing concern about the nomination and waiver are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which conducted a hearing on Lynn’s nomination last week. Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) said that under congressional
ethics rules, Lynn would still have to recuse himself for one year from
matters related to Raytheon, but he says he will back the waiver.

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) the ranking Republican on the Armed
Forces Committee and the Republican nominee in last November’s presidential election, said on Sunday, January 25: "I have asked to see which areas that Mr. Lynn will be recused from. But I think we need to probably move forward with his nomination."

Lynn returns to the capital as no stranger to either DoD or Congress. From 1997 to 2001, Lynn served as one of five under secretaries of defense, acting as the department’s comptroller and principal advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for all budgetary and fiscal matters.

Another significant DoD position held by Lynn was that of OSD director of program analysis and evaluation (PA&E) from 1993 to 1997, where he oversaw all aspects of the DoD’s strategic planning process.

Raytheon recently announced that its OCX team completed the segment design review and modernized capability engineering model demonstration on Dec. 13, 2008. The company is working under a $160 million Phase A system design and risk reduction contract awarded by the GPS Wing in November 2007. A team led by Northrop Grumman is the other contender for the OCX contract. A final decision on the OCX prime contract is expected later this year.

Before entering the DoD in 1993, Lynn served for six years on the staff of Senator Edward Kennedy as liaison to the Senate Armed Services Committee. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the National Defense University, on the professional staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses and served as the executive director of the Defense Organization Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Lynn has a law degree from Cornell Law School and a Master’s in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

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With Boeing as part of the other prospective OCX team headed by Raytheon Corporation, both companies with experience operating the GPS ground-based infrastructure are playing supporting roles for the contest to build the new control system.

As speculated might occur, Lockheed Martin has joined the Northrop Grumman Corporation team competing for the GPS Next Generation Control Segment (OCX) Phase B contract. Lockheed had led its own team in the first round of competition that ended last November.

With Boeing as part of the other prospective OCX team headed by Raytheon Corporation, both companies with experience operating the GPS ground-based infrastructure are playing supporting roles for the contest to build the new control system.

The OCX modernization effort will provide mission support for the existing GPS Block II and future capabilities of the Block III satellites as well as a larger constellation. Northrop Grumman announced Lockheed’s association with its OCX team on April 28.

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The GPS program has passed a milestone of sorts with the first allocation of funds from civil agencies to pay for a portion of the core GPS budget.

The Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08) budget for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) sets aside $7.2 million as the first installment on the civil share of GPS modernization efforts, including the L1C signal that will be transmitted on the GPS Block III satellites and costs of monitoring the civil GPS signals in the modernized ground control segment (OCX). For the FY09 budget, the Bush administration has requested a $20.7 million allocation. The total five-year civil contribution (FY09-13) is expected to be more than $200 million.

The GPS program has passed a milestone of sorts with the first allocation of funds from civil agencies to pay for a portion of the core GPS budget.

The Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08) budget for the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) sets aside $7.2 million as the first installment on the civil share of GPS modernization efforts, including the L1C signal that will be transmitted on the GPS Block III satellites and costs of monitoring the civil GPS signals in the modernized ground control segment (OCX). For the FY09 budget, the Bush administration has requested a $20.7 million allocation. The total five-year civil contribution (FY09-13) is expected to be more than $200 million.

Since the GPS program’s inception in 1974, expenditures for the core budget (space and control segment infrastructure, operations & maintenance, etc.) have come solely from Department of Defense (DoD) funds channeled through the U.S. Air Force. Civil agencies have financed augmentation programs such as the Wide Area Augmentation Systems (WAAS), the Nationwide Differential Global Positioning System (NDGPS), small-scale research and development projects, for applications of GPS technology in departmental operations.

At a March 20 meeting of the National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT EXCOM), DoT representatives confirmed that the FY08 allocation would be split equally between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) and identified the respective agency funds from which the money will come. The FY09 allotment would all come from FAA. FAA will include funding to implement L1C and civil signal monitoring in its budget request for (FY09–13) and serve as DoT’s implementing agency for the civil funded capabilities, says Paul Feenstra, a public affairs officer in the Reaseach and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), which coordinates PNT activities for DoT.

Under a 2004 National Security Policy Directive (NSPD-39), any future civil requirements after provision of the L5 civil signal that begins with the Block IIF satellites must be paid for by civil agency budgets. The money will go toward system engineering, design, and eventually purchase of equipment — activities that are overseen by the GPS Wing of the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California.

The GPS signal monitoring system will consist of a worldwide network of 18–21 monitor stations established at widely dispersed sites around the world so that every GPS satellite can be continuously monitored from at least two stations. The stations will collect real-time measurements of the GPS signals (L1C, L1-C/A, L2C, and L5). This information will pass to the processing two processing facilities where a suite of software algorithms will monitor the accuracy, integrity, continuity, and availability of satellite performance.

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Successful launch of a GPS Block IIR satellite on March 15 continues a U. S. Air Force initiative to bolster the nation’s GNSS constellation against anticipated failures of aging on-orbit spacecraft while improving system accuracy and accelerating the availability of new military signals.

An analysis of the condition of subsystems on GPS satellites in orbit last year indicated that up to nine GPS space vehicles (SVs) could fail in the near future, according to Col. David Madden, commander of the GPS Wing at the Space & Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California. “That’s what drove us down this path of launching five in one year,” said in a recent news conference.

Successful launch of a GPS Block IIR satellite on March 15 continues a U. S. Air Force initiative to bolster the nation’s GNSS constellation against anticipated failures of aging on-orbit spacecraft while improving system accuracy and accelerating the availability of new military signals.

An analysis of the condition of subsystems on GPS satellites in orbit last year indicated that up to nine GPS space vehicles (SVs) could fail in the near future, according to Col. David Madden, commander of the GPS Wing at the Space & Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California. “That’s what drove us down this path of launching five in one year,” said in a recent news conference.

The March 15 launch (at 2:09 a.m. EDT) of a modernized IIR —SVN19R-M — was the third of these, following successful launches on October 17 and December 20, 2007. The satellite is en route to the fourth slot of the constellation’s A plane with the designation SVN48. It will operate as PRN07, its pseudorandom noise code identification.

The final Block IIR-Ms are scheduled to go up this year on June 8 and September 8. June’s launch includes an L5 demonstration payload that will broadcast the new civil signal in advance of the follow-on generation (Block IIF), which will carry the signal as a regular feature.

Although Air Force operators had been concerned about the impending demise of older satellites, “some SVs that we thought would fail are still operating,” said Madden.

The GPS Block IIA satellites have long outlived their design life. SVN/PRN24, launched in 1991, is the oldest operational GPS spacecraft. The Block IIRs, the first of which launched more than 10 years ago, are also showing remarkable resilience.

As a result, the GPS constellation will have more functional spacecraft in it than ever — 32. Two of those satellites, however, will be switched off and kept as spares, including SVN27 that IIR-M 19 will replace. The “baseline” GPS constellation or fully operational capability (FOC) calls for only 24 on-orbit satellites — 4 in each of 6 planes.

Implementation of the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX) for which contracts were let last November will, among other things, enable the system to handle more than 31 satellites simultaneously. Air Force officials hope to have an operational OCX in time for the first GPS Block III satellite launch, now expected to occur in the 2013–14 time frame.

Besides providing backup, accelerated launching of the Block IIRs has increased the overall positioning accuracy that can be achieved by users as a result of the improved on-board atomic clocks. In effect, the launch philosophy for GPS has changed — at least temporarily — from “launch on need” (replacing failed satellites) to “launch on schedule” or “launch for capability.”

The IIR-Ms can transmit the new military M-code signal (as well as the second civil signal at L2), which has provided another incentive for accelerated launches. Air Force officials are looking forward to having enough satellites available to begin evaluating the M-code signals in space and testing modernized user equipment (MUE) for such features as antijam protection and antispoofing capability.

If all goes well, eight IIR-Ms should be in operation by the end of 2008, but initial operational capability (IOC) for M-code — 18 satellites — will not occur until the last of the IIFs reach orbit in five or six years. Prototype MUE receiver modules are scheduled to be available for testing by 2010, according to Madden.

As for the L2C signal now being broadcast in "dataless" mode, according to the GPS Wing, “The AF [Air Force] will add navigation messages to broadcast the L2C signal after the Control Segment is capable of generating all of the new data for the L2C signal (the so called New & Improved Clock & Ephemeris [NICE] messages) and after AF Space Command operations support decisions allow adding the new capability. The number of L2C-capable satellites on orbit is an input to both, but is not the deciding factor.”

Although better clocks have improved the user range error (URE) of the signals in space, additional satellites have not necessarily translated into better dilution of precision (DOP) values. DOP is a factor derived from the geometry of satellites that can improve or worsen positioning accuracy.

Because many of the satellites are clustered together in the orbital planes (see figure at beginning of article) to ensure back-up capability rather than spread out in an optimal configuration, DOP values look more like those of a constellation with fewer satellites.

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In a somewhat surprising development, the U. S. Air Force turned to two new vendors — Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon — in a November 21 announcement of contracts for the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX).

In a somewhat surprising development, the U. S. Air Force turned to two new vendors — Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon — in a November 21 announcement of contracts for the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX).

Officials from the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Global Positioning Systems Wing announced the award on November 22. Northrop Grumman’s Space & Mission Systems division in Redondo Beach, California, and Raytheon Company’s Intelligence & Information Systems business unit located in of Aurora, Colorado each received 18-months $160 million contracts.

In doing so, they moved future development of the critical ground control segment away from Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which have had responsibility for the operational control segement (OCS) since the GPS system’s launch nearly 30 years ago. Boeing, however, did not compete as a prospective OCX prime contractor but became a member of the Raytheon team, as is ITT Corporation. In turn, Lockheed — which did compete for the primary contract — could conceivably join the Northrop Grumman team to lend its expertise to the other competitor.

The dual award of contracts is designed to reduce the risks of developing OCX and will include a system requirements and system design reviews, and creation of a modernized capability engineering model. These deliverables will support OCX "Key Decision Point B," which follows competitors’ system design reviews and prototype demonstrations scheduled for early 2009. At that milestone the Air Force will down-select to a single prime contractor to continue development of OCX.

According to the SMC GPS Wing, OCX will replace the current OCS, maintaining backwards compatibility with the Block IIR and IIR-M constellation and enabling new modernized capabilities onboard the Block IIR-M and IIF satellites. In addition, OCX will provide command and control (C2) of new capabilities associated with the new GPS III family of satellites.

"The new capabilities provided by OCX will be the cornerstone for revolutionizing GPS C2 and mission capabilities," said Colonel Dave Madden, commander of the GPS Wing, in announcing the award. "OCX will shift the focus of GPS operations from satellite C2, transforming the C2 to user-oriented, effects-based operations, enabling Air Force Space Command to greatly enhance GPS operational services to our nation’s combat forces, civil partners and myriad of domestic and international users."

The first phase of the contract will focus on defining the long-range architecture, technical requirements, concepts of operations, and fielding capabilities incrementally. Issues related to the introduction of future GPS III satellite blocks into the constellation also will be part of the OCX’s first contract phase.

Through its Europe-based subsidiary, Park Air Systems, Northrop Grumman has recently developed and installed the ground-based elements of a certified GNSS for precision approach and landing at Bronnoysund Airport in Norway. The NORMARC 8005 SCAT-I (Special Category I) ground station receives and validates GPS signals and then transmits the calculated signal corrections and flight path data via a VHF data link. SCAT-I avionics systems on-board aircraft use the received signal to improve position accuracy and signal integrity along a defined flight path. One ground station can serve several approaches.

Raytheon’s Airspace Management and Homeland Security (AMHS) business area currently is prime contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and is also involved with implementation of India’s GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system, two satellite-based systems that provide improved integrity and positioning accuracy.

ITT’s Space Systems Division has built the navigation payload for every generation of GPS satellites, but the company is making an effort to become a major competitor in other segments of the GPS program.

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