The Global Positioning System (GPS) will celebrate its 31st anniversary of full operation on April 27. Originally a military-only system, it was made available for free to the public after the Korean Airlines Flight 007 incident, which killed 269 crew members (including a Malaysian) after the Boeing 747-230B passenger plane was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet.
The original GPS system was becoming obsolete and the Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX) modernization process was announced with Raytheon awarded the contract in 2010. But after 15 years of problems, delays and skyrocketing costs, the Pentagon canceled OCX this week.
The OCX was supposed to take over the task of controlling satellites on the ground and integrate GPS Block III satellites whose signals are harder to jam. This is important for military purposes because precise location is necessary to carry out missions and bomb actual targets.
Raytheon (later renamed RTX) failed to integrate the old satellites with Block III, which risked disrupting the GPS system not only for military use but also for civilian use.
The risk of disrupting global GPS services led the Pentagon to cancel the OCX program. When canceled, the project cost jumped to $6.27 billion, which was twice the original cost.
Although OCX was canceled, the gradual modernization process will now be carried out through the Architecture Evolution Plan (AEP). AEP has been carried out in phases since 2007 while waiting for OCX to be fully operational. So for now, AEP, which was supposed to be a temporary system, will ensure that GPS continues to operate without any disruption.
