Image: RNT Foundation International Advisory Council member Jason Kim

What’s new: An excellent opinion piece by Jason Kim, recently retired from his position as Chief of Staff at Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce.

Why it’s important: We rarely have the opportunity to hear from people who have been intimately involved with government PNT policy making and execution.

What else to know: Jason was involved with government GPS and PNT policy for over 25 years. See his bio here.

Is the U.S. Losing Leadership in GNSS?

Jason Y. Kim

The National Space Policy of 2020 set a national goal to maintain U.S. leadership in the service provision and responsible use of GNSS. This goal statement, reiterated in Space Policy Directive-7 (U.S. Space-Based PNT Policy), is often interpreted to mean GPS needs to “keep up with the Joneses” in terms of its technical features.

That’s certainly an element of GNSS leadership, and one that is woefully off track. When I joined the federal GPS community in 1998, we spent the better part of a year evaluating and selecting the frequencies for the new civil GPS signals dubbed L2C and L5. They became marquee elements of the GPS modernization initiative announced in 1999 by Vice President Al Gore. Fast forward over a quarter century to my 2025 retirement from civil service, and these long-promised signals are still not fully deployed and operational!

Meanwhile, Europe and China leapfrogged us with multi-frequency GNSS constellations offering signal authentication and other features that make GPS look like a landline in the smartphone era. For those of us who have waited decades for GPS modernization, it is frustrating. But does it mean the United States has actually lost leadership in GNSS?

I would argue no. The goal statement does not refer to the government’s GPS program but the United States as a whole. It includes U.S. industry’s role in augmenting GPS to deliver extremely accurate and reliable PNT. Commercial companies have been doing so since the 1990s, and they are now fielding new PNT constellations in low Earth orbit that will extend U.S. leadership into the future. Driven by economic forces and competitive innovation, U.S. commercial enterprises will close the capability gaps to meet market needs at a much faster pace than the government.

More broadly, GNSS leadership is not about offering the latest bells and whistles. It’s about earning public trust through decades of demonstrated dependability—indeed, like a landline—and stable, transparent policies on public access. It’s about reaching out to the stakeholder community, listening to their feedback, and fighting important battles to protect their interests. Leadership is also about being a role model that others follow, and engaging the world in international collaboration.

During my years of federal service, the U.S. government did all these things and more. Today, GPS remains the default, baseline capability built into nearly every GNSS device in the world. From a mindshare perspective, the term “GPS” is synonymous with navigation, even when U.S. satellites aren’t involved. I know this because as webmaster of GPS.gov, I received weekly emails from the public asking how to correct address locations in Google Maps.

While I believe the United States remains a leader in GNSS service provision, I’m not so sure about the other half of the goal statement: leadership in “responsible use of GNSS.” This is a reference to Executive Order 13905, Strengthening National Resilience Through Responsible Use of PNT Services. The EO assigns federal agencies with tasks meant to incentivize the private sector to develop and adopt resilient PNT solutions. The agencies completed many of the tasks, such as publishing guidance on PNT resilience that can be referenced in contract requirements for federal acquisitions. But without continuous oversight of the EO’s implementation, several steps are years overdue.

To compel action on PNT resilience, I again think it will be up to the private sector to carry the water. Vendors of resilient PNT solutions can market them as insurance against disruptions to revenue-generating operations, from power distribution to communications. With the ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East revealing to the world how dangerously vulnerable GNSS is to jamming and spoofing, PNT resilience has never been an easier sell.

Does the United States currently lag other nations in PNT resilience? Hard to say. It seems likely that we are behind China, which has built out a robust PNT architecture over decades and has the command economy to force domestic adoption. We know other countries have fielded nationwide PNT alternatives like eLoran, but the extent of user adoption is less clear. Similarly, it is difficult to know how many U.S. system operators currently back up GPS with complementary technology, as they tend to keep such information confidential to protect their vulnerabilities and trade secrets.

So, is the U.S. losing leadership in GNSS? Not yet—but it’s at risk. Government progress on GPS modernization and PNT resilience has been slow, and other countries are catching up or pulling ahead. Still, U.S. leadership continues through our track record of reliability, our open, collaborative policies, and the strength of our commercial sector. To stay ahead, we can’t rest on our laurels. Whether it’s through policy enforcement or private sector innovation, the United States will need to keep showing up, investing, and adapting to remain the leader the world expects it to be.