BLOG EDITOR UPDATE: Our hat's off to the folks at the USCG Navigation Center. Shortly after we posted the below bemoaning the lack of followup information - they posted followup information!  Seems that it WAS an equipment problem. Even better, the manufacturer...

The Royal Institute of Navigation is holding a one day seminar that should be of interest to all our readers. Lots of big names in the PNT world will be presenting (see below). We highly recommend it for any and all who can possibly make it.  Here is the web link in...

Blog Editor's Note: We are VERY pleased to send this along from the University of Texas website about our friend, the good Prof. Humphreys. Among his many achievements, last year Todd led a team that used a single sensor aboard the international space station to...

Blog Editor's Note - Good "awareness" article in Ars Technica discussing offerings from Regulus. Full disclosure - Regulus is an RNTF corporate supporter. Other companies, including other RNTF supporters, also offer solutions & mitigations for jamming and...

The USCG Navigation Center continues to receive and post reports of problems with GPS reception from around the world. Our recent check of the site showed numerous reports from the eastern Mediterranean, as expected, along with a goodly number scattered around the...

Blog Editor's Note: This article complements the one we posted yesterday and provides some additional information.  One correction to the below - we understand that there will be multiple awards under the RFP and that each will be from $700,000 to $2M.  DOT Ready to...

Blog Editor's Note: The author of the below article is the President of the RNT Foundation. US DOT moves aggressively on GPS backup, RFP this month September 4, 2019  - By Dana Goward The last two U.S. presidential administrations failed to follow through on promises...

Image: Wikimedia Commons Strange GPS in Hong Kong – China Government Responsible? RNTF Original Report, 4 Sept 2019   Reception of satnav signals in major metropolitan areas is often problematic. Tall buildings can block the view of the sky or reflect GNSS...

Visitors look at a model of the BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province. File photo: Visual China Group   Blog Editor's Note: We reported on this cooperation last month and assessed the concerns for GPS and America. It...

Thanks to RNTF member John Hartzell for sending this along, and to Jeff Bacon for great naval humor since 1986. Best wishes for a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

This FAA graphic shows locations and altitudes where GPS interference testing scheduled for Aug. 30 and Sept. 5 could affect GPS-based aircraft navigation and ADS-B operation.   Blog Editor's Note: A very powerful graphic above showing how a jammer at sea level...

Blog Editor's Note: Some interesting reporting on remarks made at the National Space Council last week. Much of what the report says seems to have been sourced from somewhere other than the DoT rep's comments. We obtained a transcript of his remarks and provided them...

Beidou satellite inside the payload fairing and ready for stacking at Xichang in 2016. Photo: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. Blog Editor Notes: The below was drafted and submitted before we saw the item we posted yesterday about China's efforts to push...

Blog Editor's Note: A very disturbing article for those (like us) wanting GPS to remain the "gold standard" for GNSS. Some of the more alarming items in this piece: As of June 28, Chinese satellites were observed more frequently than GPS satellites in 130 of 195...

A headline in "The Telegraph" this week read "UK seeks 'Five Eyes' alliance on satellite rival to EU's Galileo." The United Kingdom has a golden opportunity with this initiative to be a world leader in PNT. To capture this title, they must be innovative and not just...

Blog editor's Note: A couple notes and questions about the issue described in the article - It seems very much like the long standing controversy about whether or not the FCC should allow Lightsquared/Ligado to operate in an adjacent band.  The laws of physics have...

Blog Editor's Note: This is a great example of making a system more resilient with a better user interface. As a helicopter pilot, at every new duty station it would take me several weeks to memorize the latitude and longitude of a new base so I could program the...

Blog Editor's Note: Great effort and expense is taken to put satellites in space and transmit quality GNSS signals.  Yet when these signals arrive on Earth, too often they are made useless by interference, or worse, corrupted into hazardously misleading information. ...

Blog Editor's Note: The author is President of the RNT Foundation GPS Jamming and Spoofing Reported at Port of Shanghai BY DANA GOWARD 2019-08-13 18:40:25 Reports have been filtering through the maritime community over the last month about strange AIS and GPS readings...

Image: New board members Jeff Hathaway and Pauline Cook join President Dana A. Goward recognizing Senators Cruz and Markey for their work on and passage of the National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018. The Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation...

Image: Iranian patrol boat and British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero: Associated Press Blog Editor's Note:  Below are a warning published by the US Maritime Administration, and a press report that quotes an unnamed US defense official. Long time readers will discern...

Image: Aircraft taking off Ben Gurion Airport Nov 2018 - Flash90 Blog Editor's Note: While it seems like two months is a long time to have this problem, it is good to remember that it took US officials three months to resolve the first problem at Newark International...

Electrical grid fire in underground, Central London, 2015: Image Credit Merlin Fox Blog editor's note: Systems engineering calls for multiple sources of critical data and other inputs to ensure there are no single points of failure. The below article indicates that...

Blog editor's note: The below item isn't in the center or our normal "PNT  lane." Even if a GPS/GNSS satellite were to suffer the same fate, the incident would likely not have much impact to service from the constellation. This article does remind us, though, that...

Blog Editor's Note: The below article is an interview with Professor David Last by the popular German media outlet "Der Spiegel."  Prof. Last is a member of the RNT Foundation's International Advisory Council. Translation courtesy of Chrome "translate this page."...

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is the international group where nations come together to make global civil aviation safer and more efficient. Recently it recognized long-standing problems with GNSS disruption in the Middle East by issuing a...

Image: Wikimedia Commons Blog Editor's Note: We haven't published a lot about GPS and other navigation problems in the rail industry. For one thing, it is hard for most people to imagine a train getting really lost. They tend to stay fairly close to where the rails...

Image: Maritime Executive Magazine Blog Editor's Note: We were wondering the same thing. Several of our members mentioned this as a possibility. But  news reports made it seem like the ship was boarded in international waters under the excuse of "improper use of...

LiDAR Point Image of Washington, DC: USGS.gov Blog Editor's Note: Last summer we saw a paper from researchers who spoofed all the GNSS constellations at once, and at the very modest price of $400. - If you are on a fixed income and $400 seems to be a lot, think about...

Image: European GNSS Agency Blog Editor's Note: This article appeared over the weekend on the site for the popular German magazine "Der Spiegel." About half of it is behind a paywall. We signed up for a free trial subscription, read the whole thing, and summarized the...

Last week a team from CBS Sunday Morning visited and interviewed RNTF President Dana A. Goward for most of a day. The crew traveled from New York City to northern Virginia to conduct the interview. The morning was spent at the foundation's world headquarters. After...

OPINION By Andrew F. Bach Now that Europe’s problems with Galileo have abated, at least for a while, I would like to offer a few thoughts. I am personally very reluctant to second-guess the poor people sitting in the operations hot seat having spent many a year in...

Blog Editor's Note: The best and most successful organizations are customer focused making sure the user experience is high quality and seamless. It seems as though governments often don't focus on the user experience, but are dazzled by an exciting technology or...

Blog Editor's Note: We are very glad to see Galileo initial service restored. You have undoubtedly seen speculation and reports as to the causes of the outage. Inside GNSS reported that two sources identified the Precise Time Facilities in Germany and Italy as the...

RNTF Commentary At the US PNT Advisory Board meeting last month, Regulus discussed its spoofing trials using a Tesla automobile. The company was able to cause the car to rapidly accelerate, brake, and exit the highway on command and counter to the auto-drive’s...

Image: FAA GPS Interference Prediction Tool showing areas of known GPS interference for 16 July (brown circles)   Blog Editor's Note: ADS-B is a flight safety system that, among other things, helps pilots and air traffic controllers ensure aircraft don't come too...

The initial warning on the 11th of July from the European GNSS Service Centre said: "UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, USERS MAY EXPERIENCE SERVICE DEGRADATION ON ALL GALILEO SATELLITES. THIS MEANS THAT THE SIGNALS MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE NOR MEET THE MINIMUM PERFORMANCE LEVELS...

Blog Editor's Note: "Galileo" is Europe's navigation satellite system - their version of America's GPS. As the below article from Inside GNSS points out, it is having some problems at the moment. Before folks in the United States start talking about how the U.S. GPS...

Photo: IlkerErgun/Shutterstock.com Blog Editor's Note: The author of the below article is the President of the RNT Foundation. NASA report: Passenger aircraft nearly crashes due GPS disruption   July 8, 2019  - By Dana Goward   A report filed with NASA’s...

RNTF Commentary A report titled "Economic Benefits of the Global Positioning System (GPS)" by RTI International was released last month. Sponsored by the National Institutes for Standards and Technology, it offered seemingly contradictory conclusions. On the one hand...

Blog Editor's Note: On this USA Independence Day it is good to recall that not all peoples enjoy the liberties we have in the west. There are forces in the world threatened by our freedoms and constantly probing for weaknesses to exploit. Unguarded technologies like...

Blog Editor's Note: This was the second of two presentations we did last week. As with the one for the Senators, a thanks for the hard work and skill of our member and volunteer videographer, Gary Thomas, and to Ms. D. B. Goward for her help coordinating and producing...

Blog Editor's Note: Despite a lot going on in the Capitol at the time, we had a nice visit with the two Senators. Thanks to RNTF Member and volunteer Gary Thomas for the video and to Ms D. B. Goward for helping manage the event. Senators Cruz, Markey Address GPS...

Image: Wikimedia Commons Blog Editor's Note: Interesting follow-on report below from the BBC. Now we know it is spoofing vice jamming. Some of our thoughts: The below article posits that this could be a spill over from Russian operations next door in Syria. Quite...

Blog Editor's Note: We have seen reports of aviation GPS disruptions, sometimes chronic disruptions, from other places in the world. The Philippines, Egypt, the Koreas, and the eastern Mediterranean are all known trouble spots. And we understand that across Europe,...

Blog Editor's Note: The author of the below article is the President of the RNT Foundation. Maritime Groups Call for International Resolution Against Jamming & Spoofing June 25, 2019 By Dana A. Goward Fourteen maritime organizations have petitioned the U.S. Coast...

Blog Editor's Note: The below article from Ars Technica is sharply critical of the overt claims, and perhaps unstated but implied consequences, in Regulus' recent briefings and press releases (full disclosure - Regulus is an RNTF corporate member). Note that while a...

Image: Washington Post UPDATE 27 June 2019 - We just saw the following report by the New York Times that relates to our original post: "But a senior Trump administration official said there was concern inside the United States government about whether the drone, or...

Image: The Project Blog Editor's Note: The author of the below article, Mr. Dana A. Goward, is President of the RNT Foundation. Jammers at dachas add to Russia’s ability to silence GPS June 19, 2019  - By Dana Goward Est. reading time: 3 minutes   A new...