LONDON, July 11 — What began as a Cold War military project to guide submarines and bombers has quietly become the invisible skeleton of modern life. The Global Positioning System, or GPS, is now so woven into daily routines—driving, banking, farming, even synchronising power grids—that it is easy to forget it is a constellation of US military satellites, built and paid for by the Department of Defense. The story starts in the early 1970s.
The US Department of Defense wanted a successor to older navigation systems such as LORAN and Transit. The vision for GPS was something far more ambitious: a constellation of satellites that would let anyone, anywhere on the planet, determine their position.
The first experimental satellite, Navstar 1, launched on February 22, 1978. It was the beginning of a long, slow build. The system needed 24 satellites to provide continuous global coverage, and that milestone was not reached until April 27, 1995, when the system was declared fully operational.
A tragedy that changed the rules
A pivotal moment came in 1983. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down after straying into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board. The disaster prompted President Ronald Reagan to issue a directive: once GPS was fully developed, it would be made available for civilian use.
But there was a catch. For years, the system deliberately degraded the accuracy of civilian signals through a feature called Selective Availability.
Civilians could get a fix, but it was only accurate to about 100 metres. Military receivers, using encrypted signals, were far more precise. That changed on May 1, 2000.
President Bill Clinton ordered Selective Availability turned off. The improvement was immediate and dramatic: civilian accuracy jumped from roughly 100 metres to about 20 metres.
It was the moment GPS became truly useful for ordinary navigation, and it set the stage for everything that followed—from in-car satnavs to location-based apps on smartphones. The US government has since committed to maintaining GPS as a global public good. It is free for anyone to use, anywhere in the world.
That policy has been crucial to the explosion of location-based technology over the past two decades.
Who runs the satellites
The system is operated by the US Space Force. The 2nd Space Operations Squadron, based at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado, manages the constellation day to day. GPS has been modernised over the years.
The first GPS III satellite, designated GPS III SV01, launched on December 23, 2018. These newer satellites are designed to deliver three times better accuracy and enhanced signal power, making them more resistant to jamming and more reliable in difficult environments such as city canyons or under tree cover.
Each satellite broadcasts a precise timing signal, and a receiver on the ground calculates its position by measuring the time delay from at least four satellites.
A quiet infrastructure
Intriguingly, GPS is not just about knowing where you are. The timing signals from the satellites are used to synchronise financial transactions, mobile phone networks, and the electrical grid. A failure in the system would ripple far beyond lost navigation.
The story of GPS is a reminder that some of the most transformative technologies begin as military projects, designed for purposes far removed from civilian life. The decision to open it up, first by Reagan and then by Clinton, turned a Cold War navigation tool into a global public utility.
It is a rare example of a system that has become more valuable the more people use it.
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