Galileo satellite system - post brexit
With all the recent political debate in the UK over recent months, the European Galileo satellite system has been discussed on many political programmes.
The UK invested £1.2bn in Galileo, the EU’s satellite navigation system.
Galileo has been developed by the EU as a rival to the US GPS and the Russian Glonass GPS systems.
In the outdoor world, we have seen a number of outdoor GPS units (mainly Garmin Fenix 5x GPS watch, the SatMap Active 20 and late last year the Garmin GPSMAP66s).
We have seen phenomenal accuracy with these new outdoor GPS units that are utilising the European Galilea satellite system with accuracy coming in at just over 1m, which is truly phenomenal compared to what we have ever experienced before.
So, will all this stop, post Brexit?
No, it will not. For leisure services, we will be able to utilise the satellites for navigational purposes post Brexit.
In 2020 some military variants are coming online, and this is what the UK will not have access to post Brexit.
Britain has already contributed £1.2bn to the creation of Galileo, which has an overall cost of £9bn, but the EU has begun to exclude Britain from the security aspects of its development.
British armed forces were due to have access to Galileo’s encrypted system when it is fully operational in 2026. However, government and security agencies have concluded it would not be in the UK’s security interests to use the system’s secure elements if it had not been fully involved in their development.
But in the ‘leisure’ outdoor sector we will still be able to utilise the Galileo satellite system going forward and it has been great to see them performing so well.