Stratosphere StratosphereSecurity applications will also proliferate. For example, an alarm that has GPS ability would be able to sound an alert whenever a car, computer or other object was moved from its programmed position. A handheld Personal Guardian will be released next year. One touch of a button will alert the central station of an emergency and the location will be forwarded to a local emergency service.
It is expected that current expensive inertial navigation systems will largely be replaced by the much less expensive GPS technology. Already, the FAA has landed both 737's and 757's with GPS-based landing systems. Using this system, planes would not have to change their approach (as they currently do) in inclement weather, thus airport efficiency would not be slowed appreciably by weather.
Downside- Much of the future applications rely on increased accuracy of GPS signals. Until now, the military has been reluctant to descramble the nonmilitary signals and allow the accuracy that already is built into the technology. The military counters that foreign militaries could use our nonmilitary system for their own nefarious purposes. However, opponents counter that any foreign military could use the current system and boost the accuracy as business has done already. Interestingly, during the Gulf War the US military bought many GPS units from industry because it did not have enough of its own units. These all received civilian signals. Fortunately, in March of this year, the National Security Council released a fact sheet with its intentions to end the scrambling within a decade. Most writers on the subject believe that this will occur before the turn of the century.
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