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...

Editor's Note: The below article by Dag Pike caught our eye. Dag is an old salt of the finest sort. He has been merchant captain, tested rescue boats and is an authority on fast boat navigation. He has won a string of trophies for powerboat races around the world,...

We recently saw the below interesting post on a Linkedin group and obtained permission from the author to re-post it here. Inquiries we made to various parts of the US government about this have not yet turned up any information. Some folks have had ideas, all of...

View Post The world’s premier body for development of maritime electronics requirements and standards, Radio Technical Commission Maritime (RTCM), is supporting legislation requiring establishment of an eLoran navigation and timing system in the US. In letters to each...

Editor's Note: There are all kinds of reasons why people buy and use illegal GNSS jammers. Sometimes they are even inadvertently advertised by the media. Last year we posted a newspaper story about criminals who had used a GPS enabled tracking device to follow a man...

On Friday a bill was introduced into the House of Representatives that contained language requiring the Secretary of Transportation to work through the Coast Guard to establish an eLoran system. This follows recent discussion of the topic in two Senate hearings, a...

Yesterday Congressman Duncan Hunter introduced HR 2518, the House version of the US Coast Guard Authorization Act for 2018 and 2019. Chapter 807 begins: “80701. Land-based complementary and backup positioning, navigation, and timing system. “(a) eLORAN.—Subject to the...

Editor's Note - The authors make excellent points about the dominant importance of the "T" (time) in PNT (positioning, navigation and timing). Their suggestion for the military to dis-aggregate it and focus on time alone is an interesting idea for the military. It is...

This week the US Director of National Intelligence informed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are expected to continue their efforts to disrupt GPS signals along with other space assets.  His unclassified report...

Things seem to come in batches.  Two reports by DHS of interest to our readers popped up on the radar the other day. The first is one on mobile device security. Congress required the report as a part of 2015 appropriations and it was just submitted last month (April)....

Bill Calls for Protection of Critical Infrastructure, National Security Assets On the first of September 1859 the Earth was hit by a massive solar flare. It was so strong that currents induced in telegraph wires set offices afire.  Later dubbed "the Carrington event,"...

Blog Editor's Note: A great article by long-time RNTF member Guy Buesnel.  As you read through the article, you will see that clock failures have not been unique to Galileo.  Problems like these are good reminders that no system is perfect and all will fail at some...

This month Canada's Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence has recommended that the nation's satellites be declared critical infrastructure. In a report on military funding dated April 2017 the committee said: “In this connection, space assets fall...

"Tomorrow Never Dies," a  James Bond movie, premiered in 1997 and featured GPS spoofing that caused an international incident. Fourteen years later, in 2011, Iran used GPS spoofing to capture a CIA drone flying next door in Afghanistan and caused an international...

Blog Editor's Note: Several interesting things about the below article: A NASA facility monitoring the cyber-security of US satellites to ensure they don't get hacked by adversary nation states is in Russia. NASA needs Russia to get people into space because the US...

Editor's Note: There is a lot of good technology out there, but not nearly enough people are using it.  Good article in GPS World by Michael Jones about one such. Controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs, pronounced “serpers”), adaptive antennas, null-steering...

On the 4th of April General Hyten, Commander of Strategic Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Cruz asked about threats to space assets. As part of his answer, General Hyten discussed the military's reliance on GPS. He also talked...

Here is the presentation that we gave at the ATIS Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems yesterday in San Jose, CA. We were surprised to see some of the interesting coincidences of conflicting and supporting announcements and events. If you want to know more...

A couple weeks ago one of our members, Reelectronika, showed us an eLoran/Chayka/GNSS receiver that was only 6cm long with a 5cm antenna. Yesterday our member Continental Electronics sent a press release announcing they had patented a smaller eLoran transmitter...

It was the same day the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees were being warned by experts that GPS signals are weak, easily jammed and spoofed.  Also that the nation did not have a much overdue complementary and backup system that could virtually...

From discussion and passage of a United Nations' Resolution calling on member states to address threats to critical infrastructure: "JÜRGEN STOCK, Secretary-General of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), spoke by video teleconference, saying...

In an unusual move the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, and the House Homeland Security Committee held a joint hearing yesterday -  "Threats to Space Assets and Implications for Homeland Security." The witnesses were GEN William...

Blog Editor's Note: A great opinion piece by GPS World editor Alan Cameron.  His editorials regularly speak for the GPS community at large and this one is, as usual, right on. March 27, 2017  - By Alan Cameron “It’s always been time.” That was the first answer out of...

We will save you some time if you don’t want to wade through the 37 pages of the FAA’s Navigation Strategy 2016. It says: More of the same Except fewer VORs & ILS While unmanned systems are mentioned once, it is only in the introduction, and by way of saying ‘Oh...

From Bloomberg Government Hearing on State of the Coast Guard, 22 March 2017 Senator Cruz (R-TX): Let me shift to a different issue, which is -- as you're aware, our nation's GPS system is used by a number of our critical infrastructure and key resource sectors. In...

“GNSS – Is It Time for Backup?” was the theme of this year’s Munich Satellite Navigation Summit. The answer seemed to be a resounding “YES!” A conference panel charged with answering that question agreed that one or more “complementary and backup” systems for GNSS...

Blog editor's note: Great article below.  See also report here of aircraft that almost lost control due to GPS jamming. March 6, 2017  By  Guy Buesnel and Paul Crampton Several jamming incidents in 2016 highlight the increasing reliance on GNSS by commercial aviation...

Guest Post by CAPT Joe Burns, CEO, Sensurion Aerospace A major challenge facing the unmanned systems industry, especially in aviation and upcoming Beyond Visual Line Of Site (BVLOS) operations, is its reliance on weak, easily disrupted Global Positioning System (GPS)...

This is a re-post from NPSTC.org - Note that quite a way down in the post it reads "The report presents a huge amount of data, including numerous plots of test results, but it does not reach conclusions about whether LTE signals would cause harmful interference to GPS...

The Department of Homeland Security has announced an opportunity for GPS receiver manufacturers to test equipment performance in an active jamming and spoofing environment. The 13 February announcement said: "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and...

Guest Post by Mitch Narins Last month a letter sent to the FCC by lawyers representing the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), provided great detail into the illegal marketing of video links and amplifiers for use by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), more commonly...

Editor's Note: This is an interesting report that coincides with things we have heard from government officials. Longtime RNTF member Guy Buesnel from Spirent will be speaking next week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco and the Oceanology International North...

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo) questioned progress on establishing a system to protect GPS. Sen. Blunt asked DOT Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III: "Let’s talk about GPS for a minute. In 2015 the Department of...

We have seen and heard a lot over the last year about Satelles and their new satellite PNT service. Recently, their efforts were bolstered when they partnered with Orolia. Last month Orolia had an operating GPS/Satelles integrated receiver, the Spectracom SecureSync,...

At a New York Stock Exchange industry event last month a representative from the Department of Homeland Security said that adversaries of the United States are interested in doing the nation harm by disrupting GPS signals, and the threat is growing. DHS Deputy...

In this post we are pointing you to two interesting papers about locating GNSS disruption sources on the ground using satellites. We like this idea because locating disruption is an important part of the "Protect" in RNT Foundation's  "Protect, Toughen, and Augment...

Blog editor's Note: This is a good overview of the impacts on maritime and features comments from long-time RNTF Advisory Council member Prof David Last, BSc(Eng), PhD, DSc, CEng, FIET, FRIN. We have met a lot of  smart people with many letters after their name who...

On January 6th the Radio Technical Commission, Maritime (RTCM) issued its "Minimum Performance Standards for Marine eLoran Receiving Equipment." This 71 page document is the result of several years of effort by RTCM member volunteers from industry and government. RTCM...

The ATIS "Time and Money" workshop at the New York Stock Exchange last week had something for everyone. There were technical presentations, panel discussions, and even a sales pitch or two. Some of the things that we heard: 'People often buy GPS timing receivers...