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...

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...