For nearly three decades, the Defense Department has entrusted the Global Positioning System with delivering positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services critical to U.S. military operations. Over the last several years, though, the global navigation satellite system, prized for its high availability and deadly accuracy, has been under attack. GPS’s reliability, say proponents and detractors alike, has created a dangerously dependent military. This reliance, in turn, makes GPS an irresistible target for cybersecurity attacks.
With assured PNT (A-PNT) as the end goal, the Pentagon and other stakeholders have intensified efforts to secure funding, identify existing systems and develop new technologies to augment GPS.
“We still believe GPS is a very capable system,” says William Nelson, director, Army’s Assured PNT Cross-Functional Team (CFT), who also serves as director of programs and technology for USASMDC/ARSTRAT. “Our goal isn’t to replace it, but to augment it to provide assured PNT in GPS-degraded environments.”
Indeed, while several augmentation options are on the table for A-PNT, they’ll work together to assist and back up GPS, not replace it, according to Brad Parkinson, a professor at Stanford and vice chair of the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board and the retired Air Force colonel who’s known as the “father of GPS.” Instead, he says, stakeholders should strive to “protect, toughen and augment” GPS and other PNT systems.
For instance, by better protecting frequencies, toughening GPS sets, and augmenting GPS with backup systems, “we’d get a pretty robust package,” says Parkinson. “What we can’t get is anything that approaches the timing and position accuracy of GPS.”
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DOD Strives for Reliable, Resilient and Trusted GPS Technology
The Assured PNT Cross-Functional Team has several programs underway, and they fall into three segments.
The first covers A-PNT user equipment programs, which include the fast-tracked Mounted Assured PNT System (MAPS). The project seeks to develop a universal box capable of distributing A-PNT from GPS and alternate systems to multiple GPS clients onboard mounted platforms. Able to access A-PNT in GPS-degraded and denied environments, MAPS incorporates integrity monitoring and anti-jamming capabilities to assess and ensure PNT accuracy.
