USA are considering encrypting all the GPS signals for a couple of years - said he heard it on BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine show yesterday.
There is no real talk about encrypting anything at all, there are however ongoing mounting problems with existing satellite reliability, as of last week there where as many as 8 (out of 31) satellites at the final stage of permanently breaking down, meaning one technical failure away from total loss.
Normally it was planned that the maintenance/replacement was scheduled to start 3 years ago but the whole program has severely (where have I heard that before?
) overshot its budget (between 800mill-1 bill$) and has run into serious delays.
In November 2009 the first replacements/maintenance is planned to go into effect but they first need to get the go ahead from the budget oversee commission because they overshot the budget by a too wide margin.
That's what I understood what's going on, plz feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.