National Defense VIEWPOINT: GPS Spoofing Incident Points to Fragility of Navigation Satellites 8/22/2017 By Dana Goward A relatively innocuous safety alert from the U.S. Maritime Administration last month belied the dramatic impact upon vessel navigation in the area....

There are many possible causes for the recent tragic collisions of USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain with merchant vessels. Several media outlets have speculated that they could have been the result of cyber attacks against the Navy vessels.  See news.com.au  and msn.com,...

By Dana Goward 2017-08-21 00:51:37 Maritime has historically played an outsize role in world affairs. Sailors, few in number compared to the population as a whole, have changed the world immeasurably with their skills, boats and ships. For thousands of years, maritime...

Editor's Note: During last year's GPS 13.7 microsecond timing error, most all the first responder/public safety radio networks in North America reported faults or failures.  This article, while addressing the larger issue of over-dependence, discusses the impact of...

Editor's Note: EUVs, TECs, TIDs and gravity waves - NASA thinks GPS service in the US will be "OK"  during the eclipse next week, but they aren't entirely sure.  Another reminder that the behavior of highly complex systems with ultra-fine tolerances under non-standard...

Editor's Note:  Kudos to Matt Leonard for beginning this article by identifying purposeful GPS disruption as a cyber-attack. Despite the disruption of communication pathways, impact on end-use devices, and the potential for inserting false information into data bases...

Editor's Note: The Black Sea incident in June is almost inexplicable.  The theory put forth below is plausible as to the mechanics of  what happened, but one wonders why the Russian military would reveal its capability is such a haphazard manner. As a warning of what...

The European Commission has reported detecting over 140,000 unique electronic signatures of GPS/GNSS jammers during the limited sampling it has done on the continent. While there are undoubtedly an equal or larger number of jammers operating in the United States,...

Editor's Note: Good article from "The Diplomat." About two-thirds the way through the reporter makes the point that the issue more important than navigation for navies (and everyone else) is the reliance on GPS for network timing. He clearly did his homework....

Editor's Note: A couple things of note about this very short item posted last week. First, it is published by "GPS World."  It shows wide recognition in the satnav community that space-based sources for positioning, navigation and timing should be complemented with...

Reuters Article carried by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others. Editor's Note: A good article from Jonathan Saul below.  For those new to the topic a couple points of clarification may be warranted: The focus of this article is maritime, though the most...

Editor's Note: The below article from "Inside GNSS is a good follow-on to our June post about the UK government report on the economic impact of GNSS disruption. The report's conclusion was that both eLoran and the low earth orbit satellite system Satelles could serve...

  "Inside GNSS" reported today that the House Defense Appropriations Act for 2018 provides $10M for the GPS complementary and back up system proof of concept called for in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This was as a result of an amendment...

Criminals stealing high value cargo, delivery drivers hiding from their employers and those hiding illicit affairs from their spouses aren't the only ones who regularly jam GPS reception. "Electronic countermeasures" are employed by a wide variety of security...

Editor's Note: Cameras, radar, and "sensors" will complement GPS in the navigation suite. We have asked for more detailed information from our friends at Kongsberg. It seems to us that having resilient navigation would be important. Wall Street Journal Norway Takes...

Editor's Note: Last week the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 2825 - the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Act of 2017. Part of that bill included provisions for the US Coast Guard, a DHS agency, which require establishment of an eLoran system to provide a...

Editor's note: The author is a USAF intelligence officer assigned to the Pentagon. After an interesting description of the problem he concludes with: "Military officers and war planners need to better understand how their operations are reliant upon space...

Editor's Note: While the Department of Transportation is the lead for civil PNT issues in the US government, the Coast Guard has long assisted them in this role by running the Civil GPS Service Interface Committee (CGSIC), collecting interference reports, and the...

Editor's Note: Scott Pace has been a long time adviser to the National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board. He is a big supporter of Protect, Toughen, Augment, and is eminently well qualified for this new role.  We our congratulations and...

Blog Editor's Note: The MarEx editors added the question mark in the title. See photos at the end of the text. Maritime Executive Article Here By Dana Goward 2017-07-11 20:22:39 An apparent mass and blatant, GPS spoofing attack involving over 20 vessels in the Black...

  The US National PNT Advisory Board reaffirmed its position on allowing signals in frequencies near the GPS/GNSS spectrum in a letter posted to its site yesterday. Dated July 5th, the letter essentially restates information the board provided to the deputy...

At the most recent National PNT Advisory Board meeting Dr. Gene McCall, former Chairman of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, called for the nation to focus on PNT services instead of systems.  By doing that, he said, we would realize that a combination of...

The two biggest challenge using GPS precise time in critical applications is that so many things can corrupt the signal after it leaves the satellite and before it gets to the user. At the National PNT Advisory Board meeting on the 28th of June, iPosi and UrsaNav gave...

Editor's Note: The below information was recently posted on GPS.gov. The United States continues to progress toward fulfilling the commitments of the Bush and Obama administrations on this issue. News from GPS.gov Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2017   More info:...

Last year two Department of Defense officials gave seemingly conflicting testimony at the same hearing. In response to a question about the importance of GPS, one said that it was "needed for everything." Moments later the other said that the Department of Defense did...

Mr. Steve Kitay has been selected for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy position vacated when Mr. Doug Loverro retired. Mr. Kitay has an extensive background in national security space issues and until recently was a member of staff for the...

The recently released House version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) calls upon the Secretary of Defense to figure out how to incorporate the EU's Galileo global navigation satellite system, and Japan's QZSS regional navigation satellite system...

  A recent Air Force press release describing GPS performance as "near-perfect" raised eyebrows at the National PNT Advisory Board meeting in Baltimore this week. During Q & A after a GPS system update by Col. Gerry Gleckel, the deputy at the Air Force GPS...

In a letter to the FCC Tuesday, twenty-two companies and organizations opposed Ligado's spectrum use proposals. Diverse as Thales and AccuWeather, the letter effectively refutes Ligado's media claims that all opposition to its proposals has vanished. The letter was...

Dr. Brad Parkinson, widely known as the "Father of GPS," opened a presentation Tuesday night with a call for immediate implementation of an eLoran system in the United States as one of several measures needed to protect GPS and the positioning, navigation, and timing...

Editor's Note: Unless there is a crisis, the government almost always takes small steps on things. The below announcement about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2018 is a good example.   Several things to keep in mind for those prone to be too eager...

Blog Editor's Note: An excellent article showing the wide variety of products available to help users resist jamming and spoofing (GPS/GNSS is a very weak signal so it will never be jam-proof). More users should employ anti-jam technology, especially if they use GPS...

Editor's Note: An excellent article by Spirent's Guy Buesnel. Guy is slated to speak at the US PNT Advisory Board meeting in Baltimore next week about "GNSS Threats, Attacks, and Simulations." We strongly encourage anyone who is able to attend. If you can't attend,...

Last week the US Air Force boasted in a press release "New reports confirm near-perfect performance record for civil GPS service." The press release is misleading, at best.  At worst, it could endanger the public. Misleading because the title refers to performance...

A just-posted study from London Economics says that a 5 day disruption to GPS/GNSS services would cost the nation at least £5.2B or about $1.32B US per day. To address the threat it says: "The most applicable mitigation strategies for the largest number of...

Blog Editor's note: Maintaining GPS as a world premier and secure system is essential. The US government is spending a lot of money to make some parts of GPS more secure.  But even though the cost would be lost in the rounding error of other GPS programs, the...

Editor's Note:  Another excellent article by award-winning reporter Dee Ann Divis. A great summary of where these projects stand in the US and Europe. It is interesting to reflect that, after much controversy, the US shutdown it's Loran-C system and has yet failed to...

Editor's Note: Last week we published a thought experiment about how a cargo ship could be spoofed and sailed into the hands of bad actors.  This week we discuss how masters, companies and nations can help prevent such things from happening. By Capt. (ret) Dana A....

Editor's Note: Maritime probably has the greatest potential for early commercial use of unmanned cargo vessels. Human pilots could navigate ships out of and into harbors, and automated systems could take them across wide oceans. But, as Capt Joe Burns of Sensurion...

Editor's Note: This working paper published by Inside GNSS is some great work by a group of satnav notables. It encourages use of sophisticated antennae with GPS/GNSS receivers as a way of greatly reducing the threat of spoofing. We heartily agree. There are number of...

Wednesday, Mr. John Acton testified at one of a series of House of Representatives hearings on national infrastructure needs. Two Coast Guard Vice Admirals and an official from the Government Accountability Office testified also. Mr. Action is a retired USCG Reserve...

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) does a lot of things but it was designed to help prevent collisions between ships. AIS transceivers use Global Positioning System (GPS) data and enable all equipped ships to "see" each other, usually on  electronic chart...

Editor's Note: The Department of Homeland Security has long been concerned with the lack of an alternative for GPS to support critical infrastructure, particularly for time synchronization. It has had a Wireless Precise Time Cooperative Research and Development...

The US Army seems to be ramping up its concern and efforts over GPS denial in Europe and Korea. Last week, Maj. Gen. Wilson Shoffner told an AFCEA gathering that his Rapid Capabilities Office, which is concerned with fielding cyber and positioning, navigation, and...

The Ligado company (formerly Lightsquared) has asked the FCC for permission to broadcast in frequencies adjacent to those assigned for satellite navigation signals like GPS. Problem is that signals from satellite navigation systems are very, very faint. About 12,500...

Editor's Note: Here is a follow-on Linkedin post to a item we posted a couple days ago: How is GPS SVN-49 behaving? Published on May 30, 2017 Fabio Dovis Associate Professor at Politecnico di Torino We have highlighted in our previous post how, in these days it is...

The Council of American Master Mariners wrote to Senator John Thune and the other members of the Senate Commerce Committee today expressing support for provisions in a House bill calling for an eLoran system to complement GPS.  Their concerns are bout the impact of...

Editor's Note: "The Hill" is a publication widely read by members of Congress and their staffs. They published an opinion piece by RNTF President Dana Goward this morning. Link To Piece on TheHill.com The U.S. Coast Guard Authorization Act is up for renewal in...