We Need GPS Alternatives ASAP – DOD CIO (Defensescoop)

by | Mar 27, 2023 | Blog

Image: US Navy/DVIDS, DOD CIO John Sherman and USAF LGEN Robert Skinner

What’s New: The Department of Defense CIO said adversaries are going attack GPS on the first day of any conflict. Getting alternatives now is a high priority,

Why it’s Important:

Things to Know: 

  • The CIO also has a lot of other duties and PNT isn’t even listed on the office’s primary web page.
  • CIO  is supposed to coordinate DOD PNT efforts, but is not responsible for executing any.
  • Alternative PNT projects are scattered across the armed services. There is no day-to-day department-level management or leadership as might be found in something like a joint program office.
  • DOD GPS program officers and industry lobbyists have long opposed and obstructed systems they see as possibly threatening funding. 

 

Pentagon CIO places high priority on developing GPS alternatives with growing threat of great power conflict

The events that have unfolded over the last year in Ukraine have shown the need to accelerate the fielding of new technologies like GPS alternatives and other forms of satellite communications, John Sherman said.

BY

GPS has served as the “gold standard” of position, navigation and timing (PNT) technology for the last several decades, Department of Defense CIO John Sherman said Tuesday. But with global tensions rising in ways reminiscent of the world wars, the DOD needs to quickly identify and adopt alternatives to GPS ahead of a potential conflict with great power adversaries because it will be those nations’ first target in a modern war, he said.

“The thing I talk about often is our potential adversaries also know how much we rely on GPS,” Sherman said at AFCEA NOVA’s Space Force IT Day. “The adversary is going to try to come at it on day one of any potential conflict, whether it’s kinetically, whether it’s in the [radio frequency] spectrum, whether it’s using other mechanisms … they’re going to try to use GPS to frustrate our ability to get long-range fires or other types of fires on the target and to get our forces to where they need to be.”

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