After 16 years and $8B, the military's new GPS software still doesn't work(arstechnica.com)

13 pointsby strongpigeon4 months ago4 comments

After 16 years and $8B, the military's new GPS software still doesn't work

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/after-16-years-and-8-billion-the-militarys-new-gps-software-still-doesnt-work/

4 comments

scrubs3 months ago

Sometimes I think the US federal government has too much money. The management function is to say yes to resources in set A and no to everything else. Now, if there's too much money so |A| can grow quite big, you don't have to be good at management anymore to pay for A. Same thing on munitions. Does every damn thing need to be $100k+? Maybe the Pentagon needs less cash.

Our ability as Americans to run large complex projects sucks apart from nasa and a few national labs.

pseudohadamard3 months ago

That's fine, we've got Gallileo and BeiDou now so don't really need GPS that much any more. BeiDou-3 doesn't seem to have the same problems that GPS-III does.

inemesitaffia3 months ago

This is a ground component of GPS that assists in getting better fixed and works if GPS is lost.

It's like GPS next but the "next" part isn't working.

homeonthemtn3 months ago

It's interesting that we're so afraid of cancelling projects because it's seen as wasteful...and yet deeper we march into the swamp.