Global Positioning System in Twilight 2000

[Ursus Maior]

Originally Posted by micromachine

Should all the GPS uplink stations be down, the system will degrade rather quickly to the point of uselessness. Some talking heads say that positional accuracy will reduce to half a kilometer within two weeks and by ten kilometers after six months.
There are only four ground uplink stations that can make the adjustments, and they are at Cape Canaveral, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia and Kwajalein Atoll. The master control station is Schriever AFB outside of Colorado Springs.
In my humble opinion, I would guess that GPS is a thing of the past in any version of the T2K universe. OPFOR would have them very high on the strike package list in almost any conceivable war scenario.

I'm not sure this is how it worked in 1997. By then all Block II and Block IIA as well as at least one Block IIR satellites were in orbit and functioning. Block II satellites worked for 14 days withouth contact from the control segment, while IIA could go on for 180 days. However, up until 2007 the modern operation control segment (OCS), providing maintenance and keeping GPS operational and performing within specification, was not implemented. Up until then, it is my understanding, only the legacy 1970s-era mainframe computer at Schriever Air Force Base was able to calculate data needed to do maintenance and keeping everything up to specifications.

It is my understanding, that once Schriever AFB is gone, pre-2007 Navstar GPS would degrade irrecoverably, until the capabilities of the mainframe at Schriever AFB could be replaced elsewhere.

The bright silver line is: I cannot find Schriever AFB in the official target list from Challenger magazine.