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What’s New: Another report and perspective on the PNT Advisory Board’s recent memo to the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation.
Why It’s Important: The previous media on this was in GPS World, an industry journal. Breaking Defense has a broader scope and appeal,
What Else to Know:
- This inattention has existed for 20 years. The most proactive thing done over that time was negative, in our view.
- The last administration’s Executive Order 13905 of February 12, 2020 reversed the government’s commitment to provide a backup and alternative to GPS and essentially said to the American public “GPS is vulnerable, go protect yourselves.”
- We have no information as to whether this message was sufficiently direct. It has been almost a month since the memo was signed. We have not heard of any reactions from the administration.
Space
White House advisory group blasts US government, DoD inattention to GPS woes
The President’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board recommends that the Biden administration create a new “locus of authority and accountability for PNT decision-making beyond DoD GPS program management.”
WASHINGTON — The independent White House advisory group on GPS is taking the US government to task for failing to adequately address increased risks of interference with the Pentagon owned satellites, and for lack of progress in finding alternative positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems — suggesting that control of GPS functions should lie outside the Defense Department.
“America’s continued over-reliance on GPS for PNT makes critical infrastructure and applications vulnerable to a variety of well documented accidental, natural, and malicious threats,” Thaad Allen, chair of the President’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board, wrote in a recent memo to the Defense and Transportation Department deputy secretaries.
“Simply put, the Board believes that the 20-year-old framework for GPS governance and the current policy statements establish neither the priority that the system deserves nor sufficiently clear accountability for its performance,” he added.
