Top Department of Defense officials appeared in person before the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday to call on the FCC to reverse its unanimous decision to allow the communications company Ligado to set up a 5G network that would disrupt GPS use by the military.
“We don’t want the warfighter to have to call an 800 number to report interference,” said Gen. Jay Raymond, Commander of U.S. Space Command, describing what the FCC prescribes as a solution if a GPS system used in a tank, airplane, or weapon fails.
“GPS allows us to shoot, move, and communicate with speed, precision, and over great distances,” Raymond added. “It is employed in every step of the kill chain to defeat our adversaries.”
The April 20 FCC decision was made over a weekend amid the coronavirus outbreak distraction, said committee chair, Sen. Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. The unanimous approval gives Ligado the go-ahead to develop a 5G network using a ground emitter on a radio spectrum adjacent to the mobile-satellite services band used to receive faint signals from space.
In his testimony, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin gave a metaphor comparing the sound of a signal coming from space as zero decibels, or about as faint as rustling leaves.
“If zero decibels is barely audible and 140 decibels is a jet takeoff, then what we are trying to do with GPS is to hear the sound of leaves rustling through the noise of 100 jets taking off all at once,” he said, describing how loud Ligado’s ground-based signal would be.
“We will have to redesign and redeploy equipment, and the cost will be hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of deployment time,” he said.
Raymond further emphasized the importance of preserving the spectrum used for space signals.
“These signals have to operate in a noise pristine environment,” he said. “It’s recognized globally as a zone reserved for satellite signals coming from space, not for emitters operating on the ground approximately a billion times more powerful than the GPS signal. These ground emitters will interrupt, reduce the accuracy of, or jam the GPS signal.”
Pentagon Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy could not quantify the cost of removing GPS chips from millions of military assets, including highly classified systems, and reporting each disruption to Ligado, as the FCC approval suggests.
“It’s not like you can pull that asset out and simply install a new one that won’t cause interference,” he said, noting tests conducted by the Air Force in 2016 demonstrated interference at the levels proposed. “FCC needs to reverse their decision.”
Deasy said the department will prepare a National Telecommunications and Information Administration petition calling on the FCC to reconsider its approval.
Raymond said if the United States does not reverse course, it risks ceding operational advantages to rivals like China and Russia.
