Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: A good reminder about the importance of GPS to agriculture. Some estimate that today's agriculture is 30% more efficient and food is much less costly and more plentiful than before GPS. If signals were to go away, so would those...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: This paper is another reminder that PNT is infrastructure for a host of technologies, including telecommunications. The better, more resilient the PNT, the better, more resilient our telecoms. This has been a theme at the ATIS...

Image Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: With a passenger aircraft almost crashing into a mountain, drones big enough to kill someone crashing in back yards, and aircraft enroute nearly departing controlled flight, it is no wonder ICAO told its members addressing GNSS...

Blog Editor's Note: We heard this piece from Colorado Public Radio on NPR today. The title was hopeful, but as you will see reading the transcript or listening to the four minute piece here, a lot of the information has a kernel of truth, but is presented in a way...

Our friends in the UK have a series of interesting seminars coming up soon! 18 Feb 21 - Why PNT systems are vulnerable, recent disruption examples and impacts 25 Feb 21 - System requirements, systems-of-systems 11 Mar 21 - Risk assessment & prioritization 25 Mar...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note - There are lots of reasons to worry about GPS vulnerability and our over-reliance on it. Disruptions can lead to accidents (like the near crash of a passenger plane in 2019), a halt to farming operations and digital broadcasts,...

Blog Editor's Note: In the1990's after the advent of GPS, the FAA planned to decommission its ground-based navigation aids and have aircraft rely entirely on space-based systems, essentially GPS and its augments. In 2001 a Volpe Transportation Systems Center report...

Blog Editor's Note; A great five minute video summary of all the bad things that happen when we don't have satellites.  A lot of talk about GPS, as you can imagine, and the need for terrestrial backups for all our space systems. Of course, in addition to the two...

Image: US Dept of Transportation's Volpe Center, credit U.S. DOT Blog Editor's Note: An insightful short piece by highly regarded technologist Logan Scott. While generally finding the DOT report useful, he makes excellent points about things that the report didn't...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: This article by Sputnik is interesting as it has some nuggets of information that haven't been widely known. For one, it reveals their spoofing capability exists simultaneously in hundreds of locations. Earlier analysis of...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: This problem impacted aircraft within 25 miles of the Wilmington, NC airport and had been documented since May 2020. This long standing problem was finally resolved due to the persistence of the airport 's highly dedicated...

Image: Lotte Camillia Holst Hansen, NRK The report was completed on the 19th of December 2019. With the speed of government, it was reviewed, approved and finally posted for public viewing on the 18th of December 2020. Titled "GNSS/GPS Disruptions in Aviation," the...

Blog Editor's Note: The author is president of the RNT Foundation. James Litton, GPS and precision ag pioneer, dies January 26, 2021 By Dana Goward James Litton James D. Litton, GPS pioneer and founder of NavCom Technology Inc., died over the weekend at his home in...

Image: George Mason University Blog Editor's Note: The author is president of the RNT Foundation. University revises PNT backgrounder In response to concerns January 26, 2021  - By Dana Goward George Mason University has revised a briefing paper on positioning,...

NOAA / NASA Drone.  NASA Image Blog Editor's Note: We were interested to see this navigation sensor fusion effort sponsored by NOAA. According to Jack Elston at Black Swift, the $400K contract will result in a prototype navigation receiver that will probably fly first...

Professor Robert Hampshire. Univ. Michigan Photo President Biden has appointed Professor Robert Hampshire from the University of Michigan as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). DOT is the...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: Great opinion piece by Kate Murphy of the NY Times. Not much new in here for our regular readers, but very good to see this in such a well respected and widely read outlet. Note that she says the RNT Foundation "...advocates for...

Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: Perhaps the title of this article should have been "GPS Jamming Set to Crash Passenger Aircraft."  One thing I learned in Aviation Safety Officer school is that aircraft accidents are not random. If you are paying attention, you can...

Blog Editor's Note: One hour and fourteen minutes before its end, the Trump administration published the "National Research and Development Plan for PNT Resilience." Does it matter?  Many of those who authored it are no longer in a position to do anything about it....

Monty Johnson of OPNT demonstrates precise time transfer through 100 kilometers of spooled fiber-optic cable. (Photo: RNT Foundation) Blog Editor's Note: The article's author is President of the RNT Foundation.     DOT report: L-band, UHF, LF and fiber PNT...

Blog Editor's Note: This is an interesting companion article to our last blog post in which a rep of the UAV industry talked about the need to protect drones from GPS interference. We hasten to point out that this FAA approval for BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight)...

Image: UK Aircraft Accident Investigation Board Blog Editor's Note: We wonder how many UAVs have already been lost because of interference. The only formal accident report we have seen is from the UK. We imagine there are a lot of incentives for drone operators to not...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: In the context of this journal "ITS" stands for "Intelligent Transportation Systems."   Resilient wireless navigation and time are key for improved transportation systems, whether it is traffic flow, signal coordination, or...

The National Maritime Cybersecurity Plan issued on the 2nd of December and recently made available joins a list of national strategies and plans addressing security for the 95% of all U.S. trade that depends on maritime. It outlines a number of challenges and threats...

Image: RNT Foundation The Department of Transportation, Office of Research and Technology, is looking to hire a senior spectrum engineer for work on a wide variety of transportation issues.  The position is a GS-15 program manager job with a salary range of $142K to...

Multi-function jammer capable of disabling GNSS, Lowjack, Wifi/Bluetooth/2.4GHz, and key fobs. Photo: Chronos Technology __________ Blog Editor's Addendum - we first published this item incorrectly crediting the image to the Scottish Police rather that to our friends...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note:  It is kind of jarring to realize that this has been going on so long that we can talk about "the history" of spoofing. One would have hoped that, given the potential dire implications, a serious effort to eliminate the problem...

Image: NASA Blog Editor's Note: Dr. Scott Pace's ability to move the nation's space policy forward was impressive.  Especially so In an administration not known for bipartisan and non-controversial efforts. For example, check out the list of policy documents he led...

Photo: Andrea Izzotti/Shutterstock.com Blog Editor's Note: The author is President of the RNT Foundation. 2021 Defense Act signals turning point for Congress and PNT   December 29, 2020  - By Dana Goward Senate poised to join House this week and override Trump’s...

Image: Shutterstock With Edinburgh Castle looming over all, Scotland was to be the site of next year's combined European Navigation Conference and the biennial International Navigation Conference hosted by the UK's Royal Institute of Navigation. But, for now, the...

Image: Office of Senator James Inhofe Blog Editor's Note: An interesting take on the FCC/Ligado Networks issue.    Commentary Ligado investors should be scared of its future By: Sen. Jim Inhofe By now it shouldn’t be any surprise that I oppose the decision by the...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: One of our alert readers sent us a link to this item (always appreciated). We discussed a similar article about Android phones in 2018. One of the first things with this item we were struck by was that, while the "Tech Times"...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: Normally we report about jamming and spoofing. But GPS receivers are really computers with radio receivers attached. So we have to also worry about more conventional cyber security issues. This event had a big impact on...

Image: DownDetector.com 25 Dec 2020 Blog Editor's Note: It looks like the blast itself only impacted a block or two of downtown Nashville. Yet telecommunications customers in Seattle, VA and Vancouver, Canada were impacted as were those in other far flung cities....

Image:  U.S. Air Force photo by Paul Ridgeway Blog Editor's Note: Guy Buesnel is a widely recognized and insightful observer of GNSS issues, especially impacting the aviation sector. This is an interesting review of the year showing impacts across sectors and the...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: The Sun is a British tabloid known for its sensational take on most things. Sensationalism aside, we need to ask ourselves, what in this article is not true or likely true?   . 'UNLEASH HAVOC'  Russian and Chinese space...

Image: Department of Defense Blog Editor's Note:  We have posted on this before and, while it is not in the center of our normal lane, it is worth raising the issue again. And, with the Ligado decision, the PNT community has certainly had to contend with the challenge...

Image: James Caverly, Department of Homeland Security Blog Editor's Note: Good to see a major news conglomerate picked up on this. We reported about it in 2015, and have been hoping it would come to the attention of others. The report was actually drafted in 2011 -...

Blog Editor's Note: The community and government have long struggled to define "resilience" when it comes to GPS/GNSS receivers. While it does not provide the "procurement language" so many have called for, this is a huge step forward for the community. We will likely...

Blog Editor's Note: We greatly admire the Galileo project, all they have achieved and are still achieving. As a civilian project focused on economic and public benefits, the system has been designed with features not available in older and military systems such as GPS...

An Orolia sponsored webinar yesterday "Resilient PNT - The European Perspective" included a presentation by EUROCONTROL. Gerhard Berz discussed the greatly increasing number of reports of GNSS disruption his organization has been receiving. EUROCONTROL has an...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: The author of the below article is president of the RNT Foundation.   First Fix: National timing architecture needed now December 14, 2020  - By Dana Goward Dana Goward, President, Resilient PNT Foundation The Empire State...

Image: UK Aircraft Accident Investigations Branch Blog Editor's Note: We are not sure the drone and autonomous community have really come to grips with this issue.  The article mentions interference with a display involving hundreds of drones. There have been other...

Blog Editor's Note - Toward the end of the article, Bob Poole discusses FAA's failure to refresh the aviation terrestrial navigation system consisting of VORs and DMEs.  He also suggests the Department of Transportation should focus on, not just a backup system for...

Image: Shutterstock Blog Editor's Note: A disturbing Op-Ed discussing China's dominance in rare earths and progress on 5G, quickly suggesting that the score might already be 0-2. Or maybe 0-3 if you throw in AI. However you are scoring, the U.S. is another point down...

Image: University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Lab The Department of Transportation's Virtual Workshop on GPS Jamming and Spoofing in the Maritime Environment was held on the 3rd of December. Over 200 attended the afternoon session that had a recurring theme of...

Images: NASA and Shutterstock It's never a good idea to bet against Mother Nature. Though it looks like we might have won this time. Solar flares have always been a threat to technology. In 1859 and 1921 flares (more correctly - coronal mass ejections, or CMEs)...

Image: US Coast Guard, Petty Officer John Masson Blog Editor's Note: It was a dark and eerily calm night. The worst-case scenario for a helicopter rescue of someone from the water. On dark and stormy nights at least the pilots can at least see the waves. That night...

Image: European Space Agency "LEO is an orbital space junk yard. There are millions of pieces of space junk flying in LEO. Most orbital debris comprises human-generated objects, such as pieces of space craft, tiny flecks of paint from a spacecraft, parts of rockets,...

Vessels from around the world report they are off Pt. Reyes and sailing in circles in newest location spoofing phenomena. Image: Skytruth Blog Editor's Note: This is a repost of Guy's excellent article on Linkedin. We are reposting on all our social media to help...