Blog Editor's Note: The Areospace Corporation is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) and does a lot of work for the Air Force. Notice that they have already licensed the technology described in the article to Orolia (an RNTF member), and they...

Blog Editor's Note: Disclosure - The author of the below article is the President of the RNT Foundation. DOT to Congress – ‘We Are Working to Implement a Terrestrial Timing System’ May 14, 2019 By Dana A. Goward In a response to an inquiry by House Transportation and...

Blog Editor's Note: We think you will enjoy this fun, five minute video that is surprisingly thorough. The next time someone asks you the question, or you need to give a presentation, show them this. It gives a great overview, and points out how Einstein's...

Blog Editor's Note: Dr. Betz, among his many accomplishments, is also a long serving member of the National PNT Advisory Board where he helps advise the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation on GPS issues. USAF Press Release John Betz inducted into 2019 GPS...

Blog Editor's Note: And Russia is using it more and more - in Scandinavia, the Middle East, at home... It's a great tactical weapon, but perhaps an even better strategic one. - "Dear Europe and United States - We can take away one of your most important assets and...

Image Credit: Kestral Blog Editor's Note: An important question ship owners and operators are asking themselves more and more often. Here is a link to a presentation on this topic RNTF president Dana A. Goward gave last week to a group of shipping industry executives...

Blog Editor's Note: It is always good to see the government prioritizing PNT, though in this case it is one of 55 very important things they are concerned about.  This also highlights the fragmented approach to PNT within the federal government.  Defense transmits the...

Image Wikimedia Commons Blog Editor's Note: This article describes two of the many efforts underway to reduce the risk from GPS jamming and spoofing. Like many reports, it can leave the false impression that these solve the problem rather than just mitigating it. This...

Today the US Department of Transportation will publish a Request for Information seeking vendors interested in participating in a demonstration of technologies: "... that are capable of providing backup positioning, navigation, and/or timing services to critical...

Recent years have seen an increase in drivers turning to cheap GNSS jamming devices in order to move around undetected or to thwart built-in anti-theft systems or road tolling systems. These jammers not only knock out their own GNSS receiver, they also block GNSS signal reception in a radius of several hundred of meters.There is a growing demand for automatic detection of these illegal jammers to help catching the offending driver.Septentrio GNSS antenna placement on highway gantry. (Photo: Septentrio)

RNTF President Dana A. Goward and C4ADS Chief of Analysis Thomas Ewing appeared on VoA television in Ukraine last week discussing Russian spoofing in the area. The video is in Ukrainian, but English speakers can still get a pretty good idea of what is going on.  The...

Blog Editor's Note: This item was written by RNTF President Dana A. Goward at the request of the editor at Inside GNSS. It recently appeared in the periodical's March/April print edition. It includes some information that updates a blog post we did on the topic last...

"Access to Assured and Accurate Time II" was the title of a workshop held by NIST on the 25th of March. The event was the day before the annual ATIS Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems (WSTS) in San Jose. If, like us, you weren't able to attend, you can...

The recent C4ADS report on GPS spoofing in Russia and the Middle East provided a number of interesting and new revelations. One of which was that GPS interference can be detected from space. Working with a sensor aboard the International Space Station, a team lead by...

Congress is considering appropriations for fiscal year 2020 which begins the first of October of this year. There are two minor, but important items that must be funded to keep GPS the gold standard for GNSS, and to protect its signals and users. First is the $15M...

Image Wikimedia Commons Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America Blog Editor's Note: We got the spectrum numbers wrong in the original of this post. Ligado actually has a long term lease for 1670 - 1675 MHz vice the spectrum mentioned by the Chairman....

Image: ESA - Jürgen Mai   The European Space Agency (ESA) has begun thinking and talking about PNT user needs, regardless of whether or not the signals come from space. This is a welcome development as GNSS providers are often the only government entities who...

Image: Wikimedia Commons Emilii_Plater_w_Warszawie_radek_kołakowski Blog Editor's Note: We periodically check the US Coast Guard Navigation Center's website for interesting GPS disruption reports. The USCG NavCen is the reporting point for GPS users around the world...

The U.S. Supreme Court's answer seems to be "yes." Earlier this year it declined to hear an appeal from Fiat Chrysler and let a class action suit against the company go ahead. The plaintiffs assert that their vehicles were designed without sufficient cyber-security...

Blog Editor's Note: It's the weekend and we thought you might enjoy this clip from the Daily Show that aired the other night. The second item about what happened to the poacher is pretty good also.  Click here: Russian GPS Spoofing on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah...

Blog Editor's Note: Australian weather balloons and NYC traffic lights, plus, of course, airplanes. A very diverse set of applications and emblematic that GPS is used almost everywhere!       GPS Rollover Hamstrings New York City Wireless Network and a...

Blog Editor's Note: This report adds KLM, 777's and Honeywell's name to the mix on this issue. We recommend you check out the original Ars Technica post and read the very Interesting comments section. It is as informative as the post itself.   We also have seen a...

Image: Wikimedia Commons   Blog Editor's Note: We were wondering if we would hear any reports of problems accommodating GPS week rollover. Thanks to alert member Mitch Narins at Strategic Synergies LLC for finding this and posting it on his Linkedin feed!  ...

The Westin Old Town in Alexandria, Virginia will be the scene of several events of interest to the PNT community, and especially to members of the RNT Foundation, from the 5th to the 7th of June. The RNT Foundation will sponsor a reception for its members, the US...

Aircraft have VORs, DMEs, and ILS - a whole network of terrestrial beacons to use when GNSS isn't available. Vehicles have road signs and can stop to ask directions. Trains... well it's pretty hard for them to get too far lost. Ships don't have any of these advantages...

White House Image - Wikimedia Commons/AgnosticPreachersKid   GPS is a critical component of our national infrastructure and backups are needed, according to USAF Colonel Curtis Hernandez, Director National Security Space Policy for the National Space Council. The...

Image: NOAA Blog Editor's Note: Thanks to the folks at Freightwaves for highlighting this panel last week at the Brookings Institution. We reproduce their article below. If you are interested in more, a transcript of the panel discussion is available here and video of...

Blog Editor's Note: This is an interesting and promising development. GPS receivers are a cybersecurity concern in two ways.  First, they are vulnerable to denial of service from jamming and misdirection from spoofing (some consider jamming and spoofing "computer...

Image NASA Blog Editor's Note: In 2017 London Economics issued a report commissioned by the UK government on the economic impact of GNSS outage to the nation. Last month they issued a report for the Danish government on that nation's economic vulnerability to GNSS. ...

Blog Editor’s Note: This report by C4ADS outlines in exceptional detail extensive Russian spoofing and jamming in the Black Sea and Middle East. Some interesting takeaways from the report: Over 9,000 instances of ships being spoofed to airports A strong linkage...

Blog Editor's Note: Our observation is that the UK seems, in many ways, to be more focused on technology resilience than many countries. A report issued in September at the request of the UK government recommends a list of business practices for organizations to help...

US Navy photo by Chief Petty Officer William Clark Blog Editor's Note: On the heels of Russia's announcement of a new navigation system for its navy that does not rely on space-based signals, comes this US Navy announcement that they are opening a laboratory to...

Image: UK National Crime Agency Blog Editor's Note; Police in the UK have increasingly been using jammer detection as a part of their fight against crime - especially criminal organizations. We have some indication that this is also being done elsewhere. But our...

Image: JALOPNIK and Julian Thomas   Blog Editor's Note: The below is from an automotive-oriented website. Regular readers will know that this is not a unique occurrence. A similar thing happened at the ION GNSS+ 2017 conference in Portland. And, of course, Russia...

Featured photo: Emilio Pérez Marcos   Blog Editor's Note: The below article was authored by RNTF President Dana A. Goward.   Year-long ocean cruise finds GNSS interference…everywhere March 13, 2019  - By gps editor A year-long project aboard a commercial...

Blog Editor's Note: As we have been reporting, Russia has repeatedly jammed the northern regions of Norway since 2017. This has resulted, of course, in significant concern among the nation's intelligence, military and security services. See this report in Defense...

Accurate and assured time is essential to so many facets of technology and modern life. Yet this "invisible utility," most often provided by weak and easily disrupted GPS signals, is little understood - even as far as agreed definitions of "accurate" and "assured!"...

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Oregon State University Referring to a requirement for a GPS Backup Technology Demonstration in a letter dated the 7th of March, House Transportation and Infrastructure committee chair Peter DeFazio told Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao...

Image: Aerospace America     Blog Editor's Note: Open systems with well understood formats and characteristics are easily adopted. That can be a good thing. It has led to the internet, GPS, and other such systems being great enablers of efficiencies and...

Blog Editor's Note: Late last year Durk Van Willigen gave a presentation at the Royal Institute of Navigation's International Navigation Conference at Bristol. In addition to providing his insights on resilience, the presentation included these images of a really,...

Blog Editor's Note: While aviation users are not as dependent upon GPS/GNSS as those in other modes of transportation, outages do have significant impacts.  We have written before about the tension between the government's need to test and exercise, and the impacts...

Blog Editor's Note: The Danish firm Risk Intelligence recently made its September 2018 report on government interference with GPS and its impact on shipping available on its website. The report cites numerous areas around the globe subject to chronic GPS jamming and...

Blog Editor's Note: This article was written by RNTF President Dana A. Goward with input from several well informed members.  Thanks to all who contributed!   Report: Russian Navy Gets New Precision Terrestrial System to Backup GPS/GLONASS   February 28,...

SAE International is a global association of more than 128,000 engineers and related technical experts in the aerospace, automotive and commercial-vehicle industries. They are perhaps the world's largest voluntary consensus standards development organization. Last...

Image: Inside GNSS Or Just Navigation? Blog Editor's Note: Another great article by Dee Ann Divis. It is interesting that while researchers say they are working on PNT, often they are only looking at positioning and navigation. Timing is important to land mobile...

Image: ROSTEC/KALASHNIKOV   Blog Editor's Note: Russia has been very active using GNSS jamming and spoofing techniques to counter drones. Spoofing across broad areas that causes receivers to report their positions at airports regardless of their true location has...

The 116th Congress has organized itself and committees are beginning to develop their agendas for the next two years. As a part of this they will often hold a hearing to get input from the public on what issues need to be addressed within the committees' areas of...

Blog Editor's Note: We often talk about "GPS dependency" in terms of technologies and systems that use GPS/GNSS signals. Rarely do we think of people as being one of those systems. But people, unlike most technological systems, can learn and unlearn. Even those who...

Blog Editor's Note: We wonder if the Defense Intelligence Agency might go one step further and say that, of all our satellites, GPS satellites and signals are the most vulnerable.       OPINION China, Russia see our satellites as a vulnerability by Erin...

Blog Editor's Note: We have posted on this before, but this alert bears repeating. It is the kind of thing where if we can help one person avoid one problem, it will have been worth the effort. MEMORANDUM FOR U.S. OWNERS AND OPERATORS USING GPS TO OBTAIN UTC TIME...