The United States and China are locked in a new race, in space and on Earth, over a fundamental resource: time itself.
And the United States is losing.
Global positioning satellites serve as clocks in the sky, and their signals have become fundamental to the global economy — as essential to telecommunications, 911 services and financial exchanges as they are to drivers and lost pedestrians.
But these services are increasingly vulnerable as space is rapidly militarized and satellite signals are attacked on Earth.
However, unlike China, the United States has no plan B for civilians in case these signals are hit in space or on land.
The dangers may seem as far-fetched as science fiction. But just last month, the United States said Russia might develop a nuclear weapon in space, refocusing attention on the vulnerability of satellites. And John E. Hyten, an Air Force general who also served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who is now retired, once called some satellites “big, fat, juicy targets.”
Tangible threats have been increasing for years.
Russia, China, India and the United States have tested anti-satellite missiles, and several major world powers have developed technology intended to disrupt signals in space. A Chinese satellite has a robotic arm that could destroy or move other satellites.
Other attacks occur on Earth. Russian hackers targeted the ground infrastructure of a satellite system in Ukraine, disrupting the Internet at the start of the war there. Attacks such as jamming, which drowns out satellite signals, and spoofing, which sends misleading data, are on the rise, diverting flights and confusing pilots away from battlefields.
If the world lost its connection to these satellites, economic losses would reach billions of dollars a day.
Despite acknowledging the risks, the United States is years away from having a reliable alternative source of time and navigation for civilian use if GPS signals are down or interrupted, documents show and experts say. The Department of Transportation, which leads civilian projects on timing and navigation, disputed that but did not respond to follow-up questions.
A 2010 plan by the Obama administration that experts hoped would create a backup to the satellites never got off the ground. A decade later, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order that said disrupting or tampering with satellite signals posed a threat to national security. But he did not propose an alternative or propose funding to protect the infrastructure.
The Biden administration is soliciting bids from private companies, hoping they will offer technical solutions. But it may take years for these technologies to be widely adopted.
Where the United States lags, China is moving ahead, installing what it says will be the world’s largest, most advanced and most accurate timing system.
It is building hundreds of timing stations on land and laying 12,000 miles of fiber optic cables underground, according to planning documents, state media and academic papers. This infrastructure can provide time and navigation services without relying on signals from Beidou, China’s alternative to GPS. It also plans to launch more satellites as backup signal sources.
“We should seize this strategic opportunity by putting all our efforts into building capabilities that cover all domains — underwater, on the ground, in the air, in space and in deep space — as soon as possible,” researchers from China Aerospace Science and Industry. Corporation, a state-owned conglomerate, wrote in a newspaper last year.
China has maintained and upgraded a World War II-era system known as Loran, which uses radio towers to transmit time signals over long distances. An improved version provides signals in the eastern and central parts of the country, extending offshore to Taiwan and parts of Japan. Construction is underway to extend the system west.
Russia also has a long-range Loran system that remains in use. South Korea has upgraded its system to counter radio interference from North Korea.
The United States, however, decommissioned the Loran system in 2010, with President Barack Obama calling it “obsolete technology.” There was no plan to replace him.
In January, the government and private companies tested an improved version of Loran at US Coast Guard towers. However, the companies have shown no interest in operating the system without government help, so the Coast Guard plans to make all eight transmission sites available.
“The Chinese did what we in America said we would do,” said Dana Goward, president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation in Virginia. “They are firmly on a path to being space-independent.”
What is the United States doing?
Since Mr. Trump’s executive order, about a dozen companies have proposed options such as launching new satellites, installing fiber-optic timing systems or relaunching an improved version of Loran. But few products have come to market.
A private company, Satelles, working with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, has developed an alternative time source using satellites already orbiting about 485 miles above Earth.
NIST scientists say the signals are a thousand times stronger than those of the GPS satellites, which orbit more than 12,000 miles above Earth. This makes them harder to block or fake. And because satellites in low Earth orbit are smaller and more dispersed, they are less vulnerable than GPS satellites to an attack in space.
The satellites receive time from stations around the world, including the NIST facility in Colorado and an Italian research center outside Milan, according to Satelles CEO Michael O’Connor.
China has similar plans to upgrade its space-time system by 2035. It will launch satellites to augment the Beidou system, and the country plans to launch nearly 13,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit.
China says its investments are driven in part by concerns about a US space attack. Researchers from China’s Academy of Military Sciences said the United States is “making every effort” to develop its space cyberwarfare capabilities, especially after the war in Ukraine brought “a deeper appreciation of the critical nature of space cyber security.”
The United States has increased spending on space defense, but the Space Force, a branch of the military, did not respond to specific questions about the country’s anti-satellite capabilities. He said he is building systems to safeguard the nation’s interests as “space becomes an increasingly congested and contested domain.”
Regardless of civilian use, the military is developing backup GPS options for its own use, including weapons such as precision-guided missiles. Most of the technology is classified, but one solution is a signal called M-code, which the Space Force says will resist jamming and perform better in warfare than civilian GPS. However, it has been plagued by repeated delays.
The military is also developing a positioning, timing and navigation service to be delivered by satellites in low Earth orbit.
Other countermeasures look to the past. The US Naval Academy has resumed teaching sailors to navigate by the stars.
What if the US doesn’t find a solution?
Satellite systems – America’s GPS, China’s Beidou, Europe’s Galileo and Russia’s Glonass – are the important sources of time, and time is the cornerstone of most navigation methods.
In the US GPS system, for example, each satellite carries individual clocks and broadcasts radio signals with information about its position and the exact time. When a cell phone receiver receives signals from four satellites, it calculates its own location based on the time it took for those signals to arrive.
Cars, ships and aircraft navigation systems all work the same way.
And other infrastructure is based on satellites. Telecom companies use precise time to synchronize their networks. Power companies need time from satellites to monitor grid conditions and quickly identify and investigate faults. Financial exchanges use it to track orders. Emergency services use it to locate people in need. Farmers use it to plant crops precisely.
A world without satellite signals is a world almost blind. Ambulances will be delayed on roads with constant congestion. Cell phone calls will be reduced. Ships can be lost. Power outages may last longer. Food can cost more. Commuting will be much more difficult.
But some critical civilian systems were designed with a faulty assumption that satellite signals would always be available, according to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
This addiction can have dire consequences. A recent report from Britain showed that a week-long blackout of all satellite signals would cost its economy nearly $9.7 billion. An earlier report put the toll on the US economy at $1 billion a day, but that estimate is five years old.
“It’s like oxygen, you don’t know you have it until it’s gone,” Adm. Thad W. Allen, a former U.S. Coast Guard commander who heads a national advisory council on positioning, navigation and timing in space, said last year .
For now, mutually assured losses prevent major attacks. Satellite signals are transmitted in a narrow radio band, making it difficult for one nation to jam another’s satellite signals without shutting down its own services.
Free GPS use for 50 years has “got everybody addicted”, according to Mr Goward of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation. The government has not done enough to make alternatives available to the public, he said.
“It’s just admiring the problem,” he said, “you’re not solving the problem.”
