GNSS: Only galileo please?

claudiotereso

Hi all,

As the international scene becomes darker and darker it’s not impossible that Mister T will disable GPS for european users or at least downgrade precision.

I wanted to enable only galileo in my watch but that doesn’t seem to be an option. As far as I can remember previous models allowed this. Am I wrong?

maszop

@claudiotereso Maybe let’s not fall into paranoia?

claudiotereso

@maszop maybe…just maybe…

maszop

@claudiotereso And later he will turn off the internet

And in the end he will turn off the sun and steal the moon.

claudiotereso

GPS is a USA military system…in case of war he as the power to turn it off to civilians.

Until 2000 the GPS was not accurate for civilians.

https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/html/0053_2.html

maszop

@claudiotereso It’s Europe flexing its skinny muscles, not America, at the moment.

Personally, I wouldn’t like to see any politics on the Suunto forum.
EOT.

claudiotereso

@claudiotereso ok, then forget the background.
the question is: Can I choose my GNSS system like I could in older watches?

maszop

@claudiotereso No, you can’t.
This has already been discussed on the forum.
It works automatically to provide the best accuracy at a given place/moment.

claudiotereso

@maszop that’s the answer I needed. Thank you.
I did look for the question on the forums and couldn’t find it.

A Former User

I’m kind of enjoying how the paranoia has shifted from China to the U.S. for a change. Appreciate it, Donald. ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜

cosme.costa

@claudiotereso In reality you weren’t able to switch off GPS in older models, in older models you could complement GPS with Galileo or Glonass or…, but GPS was always on.

Elipsus

@claudiotereso While I like the general idea of why you are asking that, I can give you some insights about why its not really problematic from my point of view :

GPS (and other GNSS like Galileo/Beidu/Glonass) is, by design a one way system, GNSS sattelites broadcast their position/speed and stuff for everyone to hear (except some bands that are encrypted) every one can “listen” to a GPS signal (its pretty easy to decode) and make the calculation to get its own position.
GPS and Galileo signals are fully intercompatible

So that means many thing :

No one can know or see if you use GPS or something else, not even the US military / CIA/FBI/NSA can find your position if you have a GPS enabled watch (as long as this watch isn’t connected to a Cellular or something that could relay the position), this statement is valid for any GPS receiver, as long as they are not connected to something else, but if its connected to something else, being on GPS/Beidu/Glonass/Galilleo won’t change a thing.
The US cannot “use your data” if you are connected to GPS, because its still one way

Now about why other countries still developed their own ? after all if anyone can use it without being tracked, its not necessary right ?

its more about being resilient if USA decides to reduce the capabilities of its “public” GPS, or completly turns it off.

And then why the military don’t use GPS ?
For example for a long time the French military used a positioning system based on the wheel speed and véhicule direction to derive position

But its the same as before , using wheel speed allows to be immune to jamming (very easy to do by adverse military, by blasting random noise on the same frequencies as GNSS), or spoofing (much,much harder, by sending fake satellite data to make the receiver think its at a different direction, but you have to cover the whole GNSS bands to completely block the legitimate GNSS signals, and modern military receivers can detect spoofed signals by checking their intensity and using other means of navigation, like RTK )

By having a Gallileo system, you can at least be immune to GPS-related issues (and trump related issues lol), but you still have the troubles mentionned, so Wheel-based (and other exotic stuff) will stay here.

What does that means for civilian ?
Using only galllileo doesn’t help, at all, GPS hardware is present and work well, Gallileo compatibility will helps if public GPS is blocked, but that will be fully transparent as your GNSS receiver will not receive GPS at all

claudiotereso

@Elipsus

“its more about being resilient if USA decides to reduce the capabilities of its “public” GPS, or completly turns it off.”
That’s what I was talking about.

Before 2000 this was the situation: https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/data/

Now, imagine that we went back to it, and I think it’ s not impossible so I think it’s a scenario worth thinking about and prepared to.

What would happen to GNSS accuracy who use GPS and Galileo?