Air Force Space Command reacted fairly quickly to stamp out the latest “declining GPS sats” story, using Twitter to clear up a Dec. 28 Associated Press report picked up by Fox News and making the Internet rounds that attributed the three-day stranding in Oregon of an elderly couple to poor GPS directions. An Air Force Space Command official posted a Twitter note: “While we do not want to speculate on what caused the couple to get stuck in the snow; the cause was not due to the GPS signal.” That got picked up by Space.com and, in turn, MSNBC, Fox, and others. According to the Space.com report, AFSPC spokesperson Toni Tones said, “All I can say is that the signals that are coming down are very strong and healthy,” she said, adding that questions about GPS device instructions should go to the GPS unit manufacturer.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…