GPS & Satellites vital to operation of financial system
Global navigation 2.3
There is an increasingly wide range of applications for satellite-sourced information. This is especially true of the global positioning systems (GPS), which may account for nearly half global spending on satellite services.[3] The best known of these is the US-operated GPS. This is shortly to be joined by the European Galileo, a revamped Russian Glonass and China’s Beidou. Australia should have access to all these systems which will give greater precision in establishing locations than just using one system.
2.4 The GPS are vital to the operation of the financial system. The timing signals are used to synchronise our national power grids, the time stamping of financial transactions and our mobile phone networks. the timing signals of those satellites are perhaps more pervasive than all of the navigation information…Were someone to deny that time signal, you would have an immediate consequence in the transaction and therefore potentially the economics of our finance industry.[4]
2.5 The committee heard warnings of the vulnerability of GPS systems: …jammers can be bought on the international market or constructed from readily available electronics parts to designs that are available on the internet. Australia has conducted no study on the magnitude of our risk exposure. We have no quantification of the risk of denial of GPS, no backup plans at national level, and no national approach to responding effectively to GPS interference events.[5]
