Image: NASA
What’s New: A short piece from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Why It’s Important:
- This paper helps raise the issue to the policy level where it has long belonged but not been considered.
- CSIS has a lot of credibility, especially in Democratic/ progressive circles.
- This is intended to be a “transition document” informing the incoming administration, whichever flavor it may be.
- It is written by a recent DoD space policy official.
What Else to Know:
- While Mr. Plumb says DoD is “…actively pursuing more resilient PNT solutions for use on the battlefield” our impression is that the department suffers from the same governance and lack of focus for PNT as we see in the rest of government.
- Mr. Plumb also talks about US government investment – RNT Foundation advocates for the government to lead a resilient national PNT infrastructure, and to obtain the services it needs through contracts with commercial entities.
Notable Quotes:
- “A combined space and terrestrial architecture, one in which the different layers have no common dependencies, would both strengthen deterrence and devalue attacks against the space layer in the first place.”
- “As the United States has seen with GPS, the long-term value to the U.S. economy of a modernized, more resilient PNT infrastructure is likely to be many times any investment.”
This series, Space in Focus, explores key space trends, challenges, and policy issues that will confront the next administration as well as offers recommendations for how to navigate them.
All Americans rely on the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) for position, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. While GPS is widely used for navigation on phones while driving, PNT plays a much more critical role in the economy and society: U.S. GPS satellites provide timing signals for the internet, for cell phone networks, and for credit card transactions. Police, fire departments, and emergency medical services all rely on PNT services to get to the right place at the right time, as do buses, trains, planes, and ships. PNT is essential to the U.S. economy. PNT is also essential to U.S. military operations, whether in peacetime, crisis, or conflict.
