From military hardware to GPS time servers
The Global Positioning System was designed and built by the US military in the late 1970’s, although it didn’t achieve initial operational capability until 1993. GPS was originally designed as a military only system but in 1983 after a USSR aircraft shot down a Korean airliner that had accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace, the then President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, vowed the system would be available for civilian use once completed.
Full Operational Capability was declared by the now named NAVSTAR GPS in April 1995 and in 1996 to fulfil his predecessors promise the U.S. President Bill Clinton issued a policy directive declaring GPS to be a dual-use system; one for US military use and one system for civilians.
Currently GPS is the World’s only GNSS (Global Navigational Satellite System) although the Russian GLONASS system that was operational during the Cold War but has since fallen into disrepair is being repaired and a European GNSS known as Galileo is expected to be operational by 2012, other systems developed by China and India are also being developed.
GPS is primarily a navigational system that transmits precise timing information via an onboard atomic clock. It is this information and the satellites location that is used to triangulate positioning. However, the GPS signal can also be used by a GPS time server as a timing source.
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