Complementary PNT Demonstration – Logan Scott

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February 5, 2021

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Blog

Written by Editor

Image: US Dept of Transportation’s Volpe Center, credit U.S. DOT

Blog Editor’s Note: An insightful short piece by highly regarded technologist Logan Scott. While generally finding the DOT report useful, he makes excellent points about things that the report didn’t address.

These include non-demonstrated technologies, performance during jamming, and much consideration of cost to widely implement a given technology.

Worth a read!

Complementary PNT Demonstration

Published on February 1, 2021

Logan Scott

GNSS/GPS Expert

The DoT’s “Complementary PNT and GPS Backup Technologies Demonstration Report” released this January has some excellent data on the relative performances of various systems in timing and positioning. Figures 130 and 131 of the report rank the systems on “performance sensitive” and “cost sensitive” bases respectively and has received a lot of attention. While I don’t disagree with the general assessments, there is considerable hazard in applying them blindly to select a national strategy.

PNT is the quiet backbone of everything but too many leaders still don't see the risk.

But you do. You understand the systems, the dependencies, the failure chains. That insight is rare — and it's exactly what your country needs right now. Contact your government leaders and industry decision-makers and tell them resilient PNT isn't a feature — it's the foundation everything else depends on.

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