how important is global positioning system?

Answer 1

GPS has become very important to many industries. GPS systems have been embedded into almost all commercial trucks and ships to track them on highways and oceans.

Besides tracking ships, almost all boats and ships have GPS systems just to navigate open water, now. Except for military uses, this is the single most important use for GPS.

GPS systems have been embedded into some cell phones, so the user may be located.

The military has developed some smart bombs that have GPS systems, and all the bombardier has to do is program the coordinated of the target into the bomb, drop it in the general direction of the target, and let it go. The bomb will hit those coordinates accurately.

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Answer 2

since there's also Glonass, and soon Galileo with improved resolution, GPS is about to become the dinosaur.
Thanks that Glonass never really entered the civilian market, but experts say Galileo will succeed once being complete.

GPS is important in our dayly life, for giving us the capability to navigate safely. But on the other hand this advantage has its dark side on days like september, 11th . Not only for making navigation easy for terrorists, but for all of us being forced to get along without it, after the DoD decided to switch it off completly for a limited time, aftaer these incidents

GPS has severe disadvantages in precision. So one needs to have complex equipment to pinpoint exact positions down to centimeters.

Along with the limited availability in specific areas at specific times GPS is soon to become #2 on the market, which is more caused by politics than technology itself