re: #100 ericblair

At least theoretically, you could make a SATNAV receiver chip that bypasses these restrictions, because it’s all in the receiver chip. The satellites have no idea you exist, of course.

For Galileo, there is an encrypted mode like GPS has and, presumably, GLONASS (Russian) and Beidou (Chinese). It’s not called a military mode, but does require a formal agreement between national governments and the EU to obtain access to the hardware and encryption keys.

The high-accuracy Galileo mode (down to a few centimetres) is available for mere money, the other constellations reserve that level of accuracy for military purposes. It CAN be used by military forces for warfare but it’s not its primary purpose and Galileo was not funded out of a military budget (GPS is owned, controlled and operated by the US War Department).

The big row over Galileo was because of Brexit. The UK was the main developer of Galileo,

Uh, no. Britain had a big part in its initial development including building the first pathfinder prototype satellites, the GIOVE series (a company I was very peripherally involved with in its very early days, SSTL was the prime contractor) but the work was distributed over the EU in approximate proportions to how much each country contributed to the Galileo budget. US readers may recognise this sort of pork-barrel funding. Thales in Germany is the prime contractor/integrator for the production Galileo satellites (including the 2nd generation satellites which which will start to launch in 2024) but components, software, launch systems etc. will come from all over the EU.