[infocollector]

The problem I see with investing in such technologies:

  1. Satellites are too far to fight anything on ground (Power per unit area (i.e., intensity) decreases as the square of the distance)
  2. If the Satellites are relaying to things on the ground, they are also relaying their location (easy adversarial targets)
  3. In a war (they mention Ukraine in the article), first thing that is toast is these satellites.

I don't think this is the right replacement for GPS. Perhaps someone here can correct me if I am wrong?

[icegreentea2]

It's probably worth considering the military and non-military uses separately.

The USG military uses is attractive not as a replacement of GPS, but as a supplement/complement. If they could truly manage to use the same receivers, then this provides an extra layer of redundancy. There are 32 GPS satellites in the current constellation. Being in MEO means you need pretty beefy ASAT to take it take them down, but we could assume that China could pull it off. Xona's constellation would add redundancy (splashing 258 is just a lot more targets).

For non USG uses, I imagine Xona is making two different pitches.

a) You can achieve GPS+RTK level accuracy without needing RTK base stations.

b) Increased jamming/spoofing resiliency, intended for short of war (aka hybrid war/grey zone) situations. For example, I imagine Xona will attempt to setup a private encrypted signal which they'll sell to friendly/allied nation airliners and similar industries.

[dieselerator]

> I don't think this is the right replacement for GPS. Perhaps someone here can correct me if I am wrong?

Though I do not agree with your reasons, I do think this Xona is not the right replacement for GPS.