This is somewhat ridiculous on the part of the US government. This is data easily collected by survey-grade GNSS systems, that anyone could collect. If the Russians wanted to do SIGINT, they wouldn't announce where they're putting their gear; they would load a van up with a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of RF equipment and position near their targets.
Granted, these are used for post-processing position data for increased accuracy, and not for updating mission-critical orbit/atmospheric error data, but the principal is the same.
Comment is against the larger point being made in the article, and I quote:
>“They don’t want to be reliant on the American system and believe that their systems, like GPS, will spawn other industries and applications,” said a former senior official in the State Department’s Office of Space and Advanced Technology. “They feel as though they are losing a technological edge to us in an important market. Look at everything GPS has done on things like your phone and the movement of planes and ships.”
> The Russian effort is part of a larger global race by several countries — including China and European Union nations — to perfect their own global positioning systems and challenge the dominance of the American GPS.
For example France doesn't rely on GPS for military purpose, mostly using inertial positioning systems that drift and require re-calibration. (sometimes with dramatic effects like when 2 soldiers got killed in the wrong country in Africa because they had drifted)
There is a giant network of ground stations around the world so that french submarine can re-calibrate their positioning system periodically. It's a unique solution that only works when you have territories all over the world, since you don't want to position your nuclear power with a foreign system.
The French military have plenty of reliance on Navstar GPS; for example the AASM munitions used over Libya and Mali have GPS as a primary mode and INS, IIR or laser as secondary options.
Yeah, I was wrong to exclude everything, sorry. As part of NATO, the GPS is used for some stuff. It CAN be completely disabled would have been a more accurate description.
- Tons of military bases (see: all over the world)
- NSA mass surveillance centers (see: Germany, and probably secret ones elsewhere)