How Imperialism Works
GPS is great. It lets you bugger off to the Artic, get horribly lost, and then get found quickly when you are cold or bored. It was developed by the US military, who let civvies use it for free. Why? To prevent anybody else needing to develop a rival system. So should they end up in a tricky warfare situation (think Vietnam) they have the aid of this capability, and they can block the signal to the enemy, giving them an edge.The EU is a trading conglomeration which some European countries allow to dictate various laws and crazy rules. It doesn't want to fight the US. It does have (far) more money than sense. So it is developing an alternative to GPS called Galileo, which will be better than GPS and not have any military involvement.
The US are cross, and are already warning that if they suspect Galileo is being used by terrorists (aka enemies of America) they will blow up the satellites. If you want to know how scary these people are look at this extraordinary policy document, produced by the US military, and called Vision2020. It includes the frightning assertion that: "The medium of space is the fourth medium of warfare, along with land, sea and air...Space superiority is essential." Yikes!
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The Russian's already have a rival to GPS called Glonass (global navigation satellite system) which has been going for some years now so the Gallileo system is not the first rival to the Septics gadget. Given this, it does seem a little strange that the self-styled 'stewards for military space' are kicking up such a fuss about this. One would think that they would be more worried about the (ex) Reds system given the problems ('terrorism') that the collapse of CCCP has given rise to in the -stans than the Western Capatilist EU!
"The United States has not declared war on anyone since World War II and has thus been legally neutral throughout such episodes as the Korean War, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961), and the Vietnam War."
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0835327.html
God Bless America.
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