At the Arab Institute of Navigation Conference, Cairo, Egypt Several themes have emerged from among the many and varied technical and policy presentations at this annual conference. First and foremost, of course, is that GNSS is a wonderful utility that provides the...

Blog Editor's Note: We are always glad to see government officials engage with an important issue. At the same time, 2018 marks the 14th year the US government has failed to act on its own mandates to protect and augment GPS signals. Studies and analysis do little to...

Blog Editor's Note: An excellent article that reflects an important shift in the way people are thinking about this problem. We have recently been talking to very senior officials at the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the White House.  All...

Blog Editor's Note: Authentication is a real and important issue, whether its something we hear on the news or PNT information. In a world where purported data is ubiquitous, how do we know what is real. The United States Air Force vouches for the quality of the...

We depend upon GPS signals for so many important things, it's often difficult to think of them all.  We were reminded of just how important some of these uses are when we read this problem report on the US Coast Guard's website: "My son wears a GPS watch due to the...

Blog Editor's Note: The below article from Inside GNSS discusses an issue that many are trying to get their heads around. Europe has started to address it with their Radio Equipment Directive and the STRIKE3 project. This is going to be an issue to follow closely as...

Blog Editor's Note: GPS disruptions have brought down networks, disabled end use devices, and provided bad data to users which has been used and stored. Yet few in the cybersecurity field see it as something they are responsible for worrying about.  Good to see this...

Blog Editor's Note: Standards for Loran-C were effectively set by the US Coast Guard. This enabled receivers world-wide to use signals whether they came from Russia, China, Europe or the USA. SAE has assumed this role for eLoran. With South Korea implementing its...

Blog Editor's Note: Spoofing seems to have become the concern of the moment, almost eclipsing jamming/denial of service in the public consciousness. Certainly the idea of hazardously misleading information is more disturbing than no information at all. Interestingly,...

Blog Editor's Note: BZ (Well Done!) to the US Coast Guard for posting GPS problem reports on the internet for all to see and learn from. Reports from 2018 are available now (we counted 43), new ones will be added, as will reports from previous years. Members of the...

Blog Editor's Note: We just ran across this article from 2016. While it is a couple years old, it has some tidbits we had not seen before. For example that the Russian government is spoofing both GPS and GLONASS in Moscow. Also confirmation that this is related to...

Blog Editor's Note: Protection of GPS satellites must be a national priority. Probably even more important is protection of GPS signals. The nation has had policy for 14 years to do just that, but very little has been done. We are glad that Space Force, according to...

Blog Editor's Note: This article from the most recent Institute of Navigation Newsletter reflects the widely held belief that the current governance system for GPS/PNT in the US, which was established in 2004, has not been able to protect, toughen and augment GPS as...

Blog Editor's Note: Dag Pike is a navigator of note from both the old and new schools. We have always found his insights helpful on a variety of issues from boat handling to GPS.  The Daily Telegraph requires you subscribe to their site to access much of their...

Blog Editor's Note: The most disturbing parts of the below article: "The failure to understand and plan for the probability and severity of loss [of space capabilities] may well lead to the culmination of the United States during war." "Combatant command staffs must...

Blog Editor's Note: We came across this paper at the IEEE website. It discusses DME/DME, Multi-DME, the L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System (LDACS) and eLoran as alternatives. The abstract for the paper is below and a full copy is available for a modest...

Blog Editor's Note: The author of the below article from "Inside GNSS" is the President of the RNT Foundation. The Death of Old Time? – NIST Cutting WWV August 20, 2018 By Inside GNSS The deck of a tall ship rolled heavily beneath me as a freshening wind whistled...

Blog Editor's Note: The South Korean eLoran project has been delayed several times over the last five years, we understand due to changes in administrations and government focus on other issues. It is good to see some progress in this resilient PNT effort. - Full...

Blog Editor's Note: "Domestic Preparedness" published this article by RNTF President, Dana A. Goward, yesterday.   RESILIENCE Combating the Single Point of Failure by DANA GOWARD  Wed, August 22, 2018 On 25-26 January 2016, many first responder radio systems...

Blog Editor's Note: Last week we reported on and linked to a debate about whether or not the US military should "double down" on space. The below two stories seem to come down on the side of relying less on space and increasing resilience by establishing complementary...

Blog Editor's Note: The US Coast Guard issued the below warning last week. Seems the power conversion circuitry on LED lights, especially inexpensive ones, can generate a broad spectrum of electromagnetic interference.  As one of the experts we contacted said "It's...

Blog Editor's Note: We have heard conflicting reports about GPS effectiveness at high latitudes. Also that Russia's GLONASS satnav system is specifically designed to provide good coverage to the Arctic. This makes sense as the Arctic is a big area of investment and...

Blog Editor's Note: Two different opinions recently published by Defense One. It is interesting, though, that their disagreement is based on the costs of satellites and anti-satellite weapons. Both agree that over-reliance on space systems is a really bad idea. From...

Blog Editor's Note: I have an analog clock in my office that I never have to adjust because it is synced with WWV. While neither WWV nor WWVH are sufficiently precise for most commercial applications, it would be interesting to know which users will be impacted if...

Blog Editor's Note: This new risk center was mentioned at the recent DHS Cyber Security Summit. Mr. Bob Kolasky, it's new leader, has told us that GPS and PNT issues will be one of the center's focus areas. "It is very much top-of-mind" Kolasky told us before the...

Blog Editor's Note: The National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board is a Federal Advisory Committee Act body established by Presidential directive and administered by NASA. It reports to the US government's PNT Executive Committee...

Blog Editor's Note: It seems that every forum lately that talks about positioning, or navigation, or timing, is focusing on resilience.  GOOD! The tools for all kinds of disruptions are becoming more widely available, cheaper and easier to use. We need to be prepared,...

Blog Editor's Note: GPS is really great and the the US government has actively encouraged its use for decades. It has has brought untold increases in efficiency, brand new services, and new businesses. At the same time it under girds every network and most of our...

The Senate delivered the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to the President last week, without provisions proposed by the House supporting efforts to provide a complementary and backup service for GPS. Hill insiders tell us that this was due to...

Blog Editor's Note:  This is a reprint of a piece we published today with "Inside GNSS." 3 August 2018 One of the big challenges to Protecting, Toughening, and Augmenting GPS is the huge number of GPS/GNSS receivers already in use — often referred to as “the installed...

Blog Editor's Note: Tracking and peoples' reaction to it is an entire field of study on its own. While reading "Pinpoint - How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds" we were surprised to come upon an entire chapter devoted to behavioral science. On...

Blog Editor's Note; If you don't want to give up your car's electrical outlet to power your GPS jammer, this new device uses the On Board Diagnostic (OBD) port. We like that the vendor is very careful to explain the limitations of the equipment. It only impacts L1,and...

Blog Editor's Note: There are those in the FAA and the aviation industry who, when asked about the importance of GPS to aviation claim that they have backups and can do without.* Never mind that the entire system would slow down, become less efficient and more...

Blog Editor's Note: Whenever we have spoken to folks from the electrical grid sector, their position on GPS vulnerability has been "we can operate the grid without GPS, we just can't manage it." This has always seemed a strange way to approach the issue to us.  Who...

Blog Editor's Note: We love interesting articles that talk about new PNT technologies.  But when they talk about "replacing GPS," well, that's a bit of hype too far, in our opinion. Especially since, while all the systems described seem interesting, all fall short...

Blog Editor's Note: More recent incidents and concerns tend to make many of us forget about the lessons of the January 2016 GPS timing glitch. I wonder how much we learned and how much different things would be today if it happened again. This article first...

“PNT vulnerability very much top of mind” says Assistant Secretary We were misinformed that the DHS Cyber Summit was not going to include discussion of PNT issues. DHS’ Acting Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, Bob Kolasky told us that PNT issues will...

The National PNT Advisory Board will meet by teleconference/WebEx at noon EST on the 6th of August. Agenda items are: Finalize and Approve the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board Topics Paper Finalize and Approve the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board...

Blog Editor's Note; It is good to see DHS concerned about this issue. We wonder why, though, they are focusing only on GPS sensors as GPS/GNSS signals are inherently NOT resilient ...     2018 Resilient GPS Equipment Demonstration for sUAS  ...

Blog Editor's Note: The RNT Foundation has filed several items with the FCC concerning adjacent band interference with GPS/GNSS. Subsequent to Ligado's most recent modification to their application, we joined a number of other organizations expressing continuing...

Blog Editor's Note: A recent "Inside GNSS" article discussed broad efforts being made across organizations and companies to address increasing concerns about GPS vulnerability. One of the events cited was a NIST workshop the RNT Foundation helped develop. A MITRE...

Blog Editor's Note: First they said "It's really hard to spoof GPS." Then hackers made it easy, and reduced the cost to nearly nothing. Next they said, "Use multiple GNSS constellations because it's almost impossible to spoof them all at once." Then hackers showed how...

Blog Editor's Note - We  are really, really good with guarding GPS.  But the real threats to are to the signals, not the satellites, and come from the ground not space. Perhaps we should worry about that first...   Bloomberg Politics Trump’s Space Force Will...

Blog Editor's Note: We aren't suggesting you pay $5795.00 for this market analysis report. But it is interesting to see that the jammer market is big enough to warrant such an effort. Also that all the companies cited as feeding the market are major players,...

Blog Editor's Note: Everyone agrees that the DoD needs to exercise to stay ready and defend the nation. At the same time, commercial aviation companies have businesses to run, customers to serve, and costs to control. Aviation operations are not as efficient, and some...

Blog Editor's Note: A couple interesting things about this. First, while the event was put on by the Royal Institute of Navigation, it was sponsored by two government agencies. Further evidence of the UK government's seriousness in addressing this issue.  Second, the...

Blog Editor's Note: It's interesting that the rouge antenna was about 60ft away from the antenna it was jamming. Also that fixing the problem automatically improved service to the company's customers. The Equinix LD4 Data Centre in Slough had been suffering...

Blog Editor's Note: Improving the way we are organized to better focus on space is a good idea. But the real underlying threat to the nation is not that we are poorly organized. It's that we critically depend on our space systems, and they are very vulnerable....

Two perspectives on the role and importance of timing in electrical grid operations were on display in San Jose the week before last. One presentation was at the NIST Assured Access to Accurate Time Workshop  and was by the Electric Power Research Institute. It said...

Blog Editor's Note: The Department of Homeland Security is hosting another opportunity for equipment manufacturers to evaluate their equipment's performance during live disruption conditions. This could be a valuable opportunity for some to...