How to maximize the resiliency of PNT – Breaking Defense – Opinion

by | Mar 20, 2025 | Blog

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What’s new: An Op-Ed about the Defense Department’s efforts with resilient PNT.

Why it’s important: The author makes a number of excellent points about the department’s lack of focus and leadership in PNT. 

What else to know:

  • GAO has said similar things about DOD’s not having their PNT act together.
  • From what we have seen, we must agree with the author on almost all points.
  • The author is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

 

How to maximize the resiliency of PNT

The Pentagon “needs to double down its focus on bringing M-code fully online, rather than getting distracted by efforts like R-GPS,” Clayton Swope of CSIS writes in this op-ed.

By   on March 19, 2025 at 1:48 PM

Military leaders have long recognized the need to improve the resilience of the Global Positioning System (GPS), due to its essential role providing positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services for joint operations. But there is neither a comprehensive Department of Defense strategy nor one official assigned to ensure PNT resilience and finish GPS modernization, resulting in an uncoordinated cornucopia of service-level puzzle pieces that might not exactly fit together, putting at risk assured military PNT access during a conflict.

To minimize this risk, DoD needs to consolidate responsibilities for the PNT architecture into one role and create a comprehensive strategy, with two focus points. First, pushing the department to complete current GPS modernization efforts as quickly as possible, and second, prioritize and harmonize the various service-level efforts to develop and integrate PNT alternatives, with emphasis on ones that do not rely on satellites, as backups. This approach would also present opportunities for cost-benefit analyses of service-level programs, identifying those where the juice is not worth the squeeze and which could be cut.

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