Ok so thank goodness I don’t read many GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports, so I don’t know how they normally read, but after reading a couple of stories about how GPS could start to fail starting next year, I sucked it up and tried to read through the whole government report on the subject to see what was up.

Unlike reading a corporate report, where bad things are often described as ‘soft’, ‘sub optimal’ and ‘unfavorable’, the GAO doesn’t mess around with such niceties and refreshingly, yet starkley, tells it more like it is. The title says it all “GPS: Significant Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading Widely Used Capabilities” and it only gets worse from there… some key thoughts:

- The US Govt recognizes GPS as “a key tool in an expanding array of public service and commercial applications” and “In light of the importance of GPS… GAO was asked to undertake a broad review of GPS.” and what was found was well seemingly a mess, and a mess with potentially big consequences…

- The guys put in charge of GPS, the Air Force, are not sure they’ll be able to get new satellites up to replace the old ones in time to ensure uninterrupted service. See the chart above showing the probabilities of having the full 24 satellite constellation. Depending on which and how many satellites fail without replacements, this would mean that not only could consumers not know to take a left in 1/4 mile, but also maybe our military’s smart bombs could becoming dumb bombs as soon as next year.

- What seems to be the problem with getting the satellites up? Well the Air Force can’t seem to stick to a budget and schedule… currently at three years late and at $1.6B…more than twice the original budget of $729 million… citing ‘significant technical problems’ and the lack of one central point of authority to guide the project… even with the admission that “GPS had already been ‘done’ before.”

- contributing factor #1: too many cooks in the kitchen and different priorities between military folks and commercial oriented folks about requirements of the system

- contributing factor #2: its so hard to find good help these days. From cnet there were problems with mergers related to their GPS vendors”the aerospace and defense bits of Rockwell were acquired by Boeing shortly after it won a GPS contract. A year later, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas. The work was moved again. Next Boeing acquired Hughes Electronics’ space and communications business, which meant another move; all the while shedding “valuable workers and knowledge.”

The net net here seems to be that there needs to be a government GPS czar who makes all the decisions and leads the project. Any takers?