AFRL’s NTS-3 Satellite Experiment Tinkers with GPS But Doesn’t Really Fix America’s PNT Problem – Forbes

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May 1, 2023

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Written by Editor

NTS-3-city-lights – USAF 2d Lt Jacob Lutz AFRL RV

Image: US Air Force

What’s New: Senior aerospace executive acknowledges DOD does not seem interested in doing anything other than tinkering with better PNT.

What to Know:

The Government Accountability Office issued three reports in 15 months criticizing the way DOD approaches, prioritizes, manages, and leads alternative PNT efforts.

Quotes from article (emphasis added):

“When pressed, Kelle Wendling, L3 Harris’ space systems sector president, acknowledged the incremental nature of the capabilities NTS-3 is supposed to test…”

“We can’t do nothing. Absent [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] saying we really want to re-think PNT and are going to put billions into a new architecture, this is the current opportunity to experiment [with PNT] and that’s how they’ve chosen to move forward. We’re responding to the appetite that the government has now.”

We agree with the author of the article:

“When it comes to facilitating the U.S. military’s basic way of fighting, tinkering with GPS just isn’t good enough.”

AFRL’s NTS-3 Satellite Experiment Tinkers with GPS But Doesn’t Really Fix America’s PNT Problem

Eric Tegler

Contributor

The American military is almost wholly reliant on a constellation of 34 Global Positioning Satellites to perform just about any mission. The military writ-large says they understand the vulnerability of GPS but the first of the USAF’s priority Vanguard programs does little to address the risk to the crucial navigation system.

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What Can YOU Do? How Can YOU Help?

PNT is the quiet backbone of everything but too many leaders still don't see the risk.

But you do. You understand the systems, the dependencies, the failure chains. That insight is rare — and it's exactly what your country needs right now. Contact your government leaders and industry decision-makers and tell them resilient PNT isn't a feature — it's the foundation everything else depends on.

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