The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is moving forward to establish a backup for the position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information provided by GPS. This month the agency assumed the lead in a yearlong effort to specifically define the requirements for an alternative source of timing information to and released a solicitation for research to help protect critical infrastructure from timing disruption or spoofing.
The backup envisioned by the National Executive Committee for Space-Based PNT (ExCom) will be a complementary PNT system (CPNT) that runs continuously, side-by-side with GPS, said Harold “Stormy” Martin, the director of the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Space-Based PNT. The NCO provides support to the Space-Based PNT Executive Committee (ExCom), a multi-agency group led by the departments of defense and transportation that guides federal PNT policy.
