Desperate to prove the Britain was after the ideologically perverse Brexit, Boris Johnson's government thought it would be a wizard wheeze to build its own GPS system.  What could go wrong?  After all Britain had worked with the Europeans to help build the Galileo system, only to be shut out from it due to Brexit. So, Boris’ crack team of advisors were given a budget and told to sort it.

Unfortunately, this crack team fell for the sales pitch of a satellite broadband company called OneWeb. OneWeb had this idea of piggy-backing a GPS system on shedloads of its low-orbital internet satellites.

However, Johnson’s government did not appear to have asked any real experts as to whether the idea would work.  The satellites will be in low Earth orbit at 12,000km altitude, compared to other navigation systems at 20,000km.

Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester said: "The fundamental starting point is, yes, we’ve bought the wrong satellites. If you want to replace GPS for military-grade systems, where you need encrypted, secure signals that are precise to centimetres, I’m not sure you can do that on satellites as small as OneWeb’s.”

Giles Thorne, a research analyst at Jeffries, agreed. “This situation is nonsensical to me”, he said. “This situation looks like nationalism trumping solid industrial policy.”

Then OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March after experiencing a bit of a cash flow problem.

Adrian Steckel, Chief Executive Officer of OneWeb, stated: “OneWeb has been building a truly global communications network to provide high-speed low latency broadband everywhere. Our current situation is a consequence of the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. We remain convinced of the social and economic value of our mission to connect everyone everywhere. Today is a difficult day for us at OneWeb. So many people have dedicated so much energy, effort, and passion to this company and our mission. Our hope is that this process will allow us to carve a path forward that leads to the completion of our mission, building on the years of effort and the billions of invested capital. It is with a very heavy heart that we have been forced to reduce our workforce and enter the Chapter 11 process while the Company’s remaining employees are focused on responsibly managing our nascent constellation and working with the Court and investors.”

So while the company is hopeful it can work its way out of trouble, it is in this state before strapping Boris’s GPS system onto the satellites.  The FT claims that the UK Government has decided to invest £500 million to help rescue OneWeb as part of a wider private-sector consortium bid, which would potentially see them holding a stake of up to 20 percent in the company.

The UK wants OneWeb to move its manufacturing base out of the USA and to Blighty. Secondly, the Government is insisting that OneWeb adapt its LEOs in order to support an innovative new global positioning technology from Satellite Applications Catapult.

To be fair, Boris’s Government is trying to save money because it thinks it will be cheaper than investing £4 billion to £5 billion to develop its own system. But it does seem surprising that it is willing to invest shedloads of cash on a company which has been burning through cash and on technology that sensible minds say will not work.