A Modern Horror Story: G-Day
Every Halloween we present this familiar horror story:
You wake up. Emergency and rescue radios are down.
Your location app is offline and planes are grounded worldwide.
You attempt to go shopping, but the credit card isn't working. The ATM is down, too.
As the day progresses both cell and internet service are lost, stores and restaurants are closed, and you can't even get gas.
By the next morning the power is out.
The cause? GPS is down.
G-Day Isn't Coming - It Is Already Here
Within the quantum community, all the talk is about Q-Day (aka the Quantum Apocalypse), the day when quantum computers can crack public keys.
But what about G-Day, the day when GPS is not available? This is a much more immediate and existential crisis - and it is already here. In Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Middle East, GPS is practically non-functional, and the problem is spreading. Indeed, some clever sleuthing revealed that the kill switch is already in place about Europe.
Fortunately, in most of the western world we have thus far been somewhat immune - other than isolated incidents that disrupted flights around LAX, Denver International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, as well as the interference of nearly 1000 flights a day and around 22 shipping zones. This probably isn't GPS - it is our over-reliance on it that has exposed us to a single point of failure and GPS blackmail.
But backups and alternatives are coming. Other countries are developing their own sovereign capabilities and embracing new technologies, including state-of-the-art quantum technologies (see "The More You Know" below), to build something better that is more robust, accurate, and leverages existing infrastructure. G-Day is coming for all of us - best be prepared!
🎓 The More You Know...
The problems due to G-Day are felt differently around the world. For the most part, the USA has been immune, thanks to the fifty-year-old GPS constellation that has been made more robust over time.
And the rest of the world, including all networks, power grids, transportation, and financial transactions, have taken advantage of the largesse of this US military asset.
But that is changing rapidly. For many countries, there is a movement towards creating their own sovereign PNT and timing solution. And they can look to the UK as a good model on how to approach this without launching their own multi-$B GPS-like constellation.
After Brexit, the UK government no longer had access to the European version of GPS called Galileo. Their first step: setting up a National Position, Navigation, and Timing Office. Seems like an obvious step, but that central office that represents all PNT stakeholders does not exist (and it should!) in the USA and most other countries.
Their next step: they developed a PNT Framework to evaluate the importance and impact of GPS and other PNT sources. Their analysis was eye-opening: their research revealed "the economic impact on the UK if the GNSS were to be disrupted. It found that a 24-hour outage could result in a £1.4 billion loss to the UK economy, with a 7-day outage costing the economy £7.6 billion."
While GPS is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to PNT, they quickly realized that a future sovereign PNT architecture will draw in a lot of technologies and "also supports the PNT ambitions as set out in the National Quantum Strategy." Quantum technologies provide a lot of the pieces of this architecture: optical clocks provide timing stability in networks; quantum sensors can provide position knowledge by accurately measuring changes in the Earth's magnetic and gravity fields; and Xairos' own Quantum Time Transfer provides an accurate and resilient sync layer for these elements.
