Image: PNT System of Systems Approach – RNT Foundation
What’s New: A paper published by Toffler Associates s and written by retired RADM Dave Simpson, USN, now a professor at Virginia Tech calling for resilient PNT.
Why It’s Important: Two noteworthy organizations, Toffler and VA Tech, saying a lot of the same things RNT Foundation, NSSA, the President’s PNT Advisory Board, and others are saying.
What Else to Know:
- NextNav funded the paper, though it does say the opinions are those of the author.
- NextNav has a request for spectrum before the FCC. Almost all of the public comments recommend against the request.
- We think NextNav said some things about their system in the application to the FCC, that were totally bogus. Like their system the only viable terrestrial PNT available. Here is what we told the FCC.
- Most of the paper is pretty good stuff, though it repeats a lot of what we and others have said. Some questionable items:
- The paper says “The EU is developing Galileo, a satellite navigation system…” – Galileo has been operational since 2016.
- There is some inference that eLoran is only fit for maritime because of SWAP-C issues, especially wrt antennas. Loran-C was used in aviation for years. And we recently posted about ESA’s project that produced an eLoran antenna for handhelds.
- We saw several references to PNT via cellular, 6G, etc. NextNav talks about such things a lot in its FCC application. We think there is potential there. Yet terrestrial cell service will never reach all the places across the US landmass (think Alaskan mountains and the Arctic, for example) or our 200 mile maritime Exclusive Economic Zone. These areas are challenging for crewed vehicles that really need PNT and will be for autonomous vehicles as well.
