Image: Map of Arctic, U.S. Department of Defense
What’s New: Department of Defense Arctic Strategy that hardly mentions PNT. It does say:
In addition to nuclear, conventional, and special operations threats, Russia seeks to carry out lower level destabilizing activities in the Arctic against the United States and our Allies, including through Global Positioning System jamming…
But there is no mention of the need to improve and ensure Arctic PNT to support virtually every military capability.
Why It’s Important:
- PNT is essential to maneuver, comms, IT, etc. in any theater.
- Counter PNT (call it EW or cyber, doesn’t matter) is popping up everywhere, especially places where Russians and Chinese have interests.
- Russia thinks it owns the Arctic. China has been building icebreakers to extend its influence and claim a slice of the pie, even though it is not an arctic nation.
- If the problem wasn’t bad enough, GPS doesn’t work particularly well at high latitudes. GLONASS works better, by the way.
What Else to Know:
- Russia’s version of Loran, called Chayka, serves the eastern and western portions of their arctic coastline. In 2015 they stated their intent to ensure the entire arctic maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (generally offshore to 200 nautical miles) was served by and upgraded, eLoran system. We have heard nothing since.
- The U.S. and Canadian Loran-C systems served a portion of their arctic coastlines and waters until 2010.
- We understand several U.S. government entities are transmitting eLoran signals. And that this is happening at three or more locations.
- The strategy does talk about the need to improve arctic infrastructure and in other general terms. PNT is such a fundamental requirement, though, we would have hoped it would have been called out specifically.
- In our experience, government organizations often write strategies when they are concerned about something, but don’t have the budget or leadership support to address the problem. Publishing a strategy can give the impression of action without the need to actually do anything. We very much hope that is not the case here.
ACCESS DOD ARCTIC STRATEGY HERE
