I had a flight the next morning. Rather than wait and return with the group I walked to a dark lonely city street corner and  fired up the Uber app on my phone. The car was only two minutes away. Sweet. The app's map display showed the progress of the car as it came...

Editor's Note: Some folks in the FAA will dismiss the role of GPS in aviation and claim that commercial aircraft don' have the same dependencies as other modes of transportation. As with many claims of government officials who don't have the authority nor funds to do...

On the 26th of October NIST and IEEE hosted a workshop on “Timing Challenges in the Smart Grid” at the sprawling and attractive NIST campus in Gaithersburg, MD. Here are some quotes and observations from the morning and early afternoon sessions, and from a couple of...

The RNT Foundation has actively endorsed specific legislation to provide more resilient PNT services. In a letter to selected members of the Senate the foundation endorsed HR 5978 which would require the US Coast Guard to establish an eLoran system to serve as a...

Photo: By Kremlin.ru Despotic regimes have to be paranoid. Two recent news items show that the Russians are particularly and extremely concerned about the power that GPS and other satnav systems give to both nations and ordinary people. The first is the Russian...

The planet doesn't seem to care about how fast or slowly we think it should rotate. Perhaps it is a good reminder that we aren't really in charge of all that much and have to accommodate ourselves to the way the world really turns... Once again we are facing a leap...

Editor's Note: The below item is re-posted from "The National Interest." It is disappointing to see that, in all the discussions in academia, think tanks, and even by Defense Department officials, no mention is made of eLoran - the system the Deputy Secretary of...

Some really smart and clever people are figuring out how to navigate without GPS - or so their headlines claim. Take for example this recent post by the University of California, Riverside - No GPS, No Problem: Next-Generation Navigation UC Riverside Team is...

Editor's note: In June we posted a South Korean news item that contained much of this same information. The most significant difference with this news item is that in June the lawmaker making the fuss was from the opposition party. The one cited in this article is...

Editor's Note: Many futurists see the coming decade as the real dawn of the age of robotics and autonomous systems. This post from "Maritime Executive" seems to reinforce that.  It should also remind everyone how navigation is an invisible utility for all of these...

Blog editor's Note: Not a bad overview article on Kiplinger.com Two points, though.  First, the bit about "What's the value of oxygen?  GPS is oxygen" is from Greg Milner's book "Pinpoint - How GPS is changing technology, culture and our minds." I mentioned that in...

Blog Editor's Note: In 1998 President Clinton directed a study of the growing dependency on satellite navigation and timing systems. In 2001 the resulting report confirmed it was a problem, recommended studying upgrading Loran-C to be a complementary system, and...

Editor's note: The legislative progress on this important issue continues.  A link to the bill itself, HR 5978 Links to materials submitted to the Congressional Record associated with the bill: 2004 fact sheet on National Security Presidential Directive 39 directing...

Discussing his agency's efforts to protect GPS and the Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) services it provides, a government official was recently quoted saying that a major problem was that the issues were decentralized and so many agencies were involved. His...

Editor's note: This is the first open press item we recall that discusses China's use of GPS jamming against US forces. GPS jamming and spoofing are often classified as "electronic warfare" by US officials instead of "cyber warfare."  We don't understand why that is...

Government officials tell us that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is standing up a Program Management Office (PMO) for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) issues. The PMO will reside within the Office of Infrastructure Protection which is a component...

Editor's Note: This is a re-post from the blog of our friends at SPIRENT. Very interesting example of how GPS vulnerability impacts so many areas that most people never consider. GPS Interference at Le Mans: What Motorsport Teams – and Device Developers Everywhere –...

From Congressman Garamendi's Web Site: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Passes Strong Legislation Co-Authored by Ranking Member Garamendi and Chairman Hunter on GPS Backup Systems and Heavy Icebreakers Sep 15, 2016 Issues: Military and Veterans,...

Military & Aerospace June 28, 2016 By John Keller Editor How much do you trust and rely on your personal GPS satellite navigation device to tell where you are or how to get to where you're going? It may be subject to GPS jamming. If you depend on GPS a lot, then...

Editor's Note: Jammers for every budget and use can be easily found  on the internet from sites like Jammerall.com. We thought that this item from IHS was worth repeating, though. KB Radar develops UAV-based SATCOM, navigation jammers Huw Williams, London - IHS Jane's...

A CEPT Electronic Communications Committee report from 2014 that was recently posted giving practical guidance for TDD networks lists four ways to provide essential timing and synchronization for cell phone networks.  From the report: GNSS – Main source used today,...

Aerospace Corporation - The purpose of Sextant is to improve resiliency by combining existing and new PNT signal sources. (Illustration: Joseph Hidalgo) Aerospace is pioneering a study to enhance position, navigation, and timing (PNT) resiliency, challenging an...

Last year NIST released a report with the tag line:  "Lack of Effective Timing Signals Could Hamper ‘Internet of Things’ Development." In it the authors described over-reliance on weak and easily disrupted GPS and GNSS timing signals as an Achilles Heel for future...

Blog editor note: Our Google Alerts dug this up over the weekend. SAE International is the largest automotive and aerospace standards-setting body in the world. They set standards for the design, manufacturing, operation, and maintenance of automobiles, aircraft,...

By MarEx 2016-08-15 18:04:59 Defense contractors Polaris Consulting have developed a software system to use visual and radar data to compute a vessel's position in littoral waters – independent of GPS. The research was funded by the UK Ministry of Defence's Centre for...

Blog Editor's Note: Recently a video using a Rohde & Schwarz signal generator to cheat Pokemon Go went viral. We hear that the opportunity to spoof Pokemon Go and roam the world from your couch caused a lot of talk about GPS spoofing generally at this year's Def...

Blog Editor's Note:  This outstanding guest post first appeared on Linkedin and is courtesy of member Guy Buesnel.  Guy's company, Spirent, is very much concerned with GNSS vulnerability and has recently become a premium RNTF member.  Thanks for this great report,...

Blog editor's note: We think that multi-function receivers integrating diverse signals are part of the future for resilient PNT.  Good job Spectracom! "Backup" might not be the best term, though, since all signals will be available all the time.  "Co-primary" maybe?...

August 19, 2016 12:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Anti-Jamming Market for GPS by Technique (Nulling System, Beam Steering System, Civilian System), Receiver Type (Military & Government...

INSIDE GNSS NEWS GNSS Forum: Seven Easy Ways the Administration or Congress Could Get a Quick Win Protecting GPS and America Dana Goward August 16, 2016 The U.S. Secretary of Defense has said “I hate GPS” and “I want to unplug the military from GPS.” Senior officials...

/ CORY DOCTOROW / 8:24 AM THU AUG 4, 2016 GPS security is increasingly implicated in both physical and information security: from steering a super-yacht (or a super-tanker) into pirate-friendly waters to diverting self-driving cars or even unlocking geo-tagged tokens...

This is a great set of Q&A from "GPS World." It lays out the case for the R&D budget requirements for protecting GPS from jamming. Some highlights - receiver manufacturers must now: Include options for jamming. It is no longer something to simply...

AUG 8, 2016 @ 10:55 PM Kalev Leetaru ,  Contributor This past March Bloomberg offered a compelling look inside the world of election hacking in which campaigns and their supporters hack into their opponents and steal or destroy data, saturate the online space with...

IN 1967, THE SUN HEATED UP THE COLD WAR By Mary Beth Griggs August 9, 2016 Five years after the Cuban Missile crisis brought the Soviet Union and the United States to the brink of war, another event occurred that brought the two superpowers once again to the brink....

by MIKE BRUNKER 8 August 2016 Once the province of hostile nations, electronic warfare has arrived with little fanfare on U.S. highways and byways. Criminals, rogue employees and even otherwise law-abiding citizens are using illegal "jamming" devices to overpower GPS,...

Blog Editor's Notes: Really interesting article from "Inside GNSS" below.  Until now, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) has had the lead on evaluating the possibility of interference with GPS services from transmissions on adjacent frequencies, like those...

By: Kerry Tomlinson Some say the rise in “location-spoofing” could lead to more GPS attacks on cell towers, drones and more. It’s not enough to play the game. Some fans of Pokemon Go are cheating their way to success. Though some players report trying ceiling fans,...

Ships can be led astray with fake GPS signals. If signals for navigation of vessels are jammed or spoofed, positional and other critical data, such as course and speed, can be affected. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und...

Blog Editor's Note: A good article by Professors Psiaki and Humphreys on how to improve GPS receivers.  One method they don't mention is protecting GPS receivers from spoofing by pairing the GPS signal with another electronic, preferably non-space, navigation signal,...

HSHQDC-15-R-B0008 Assured Timing for Critical Infrastructure This BAA solicitation (HSHQDC-15-R-B0008) is a call issued against Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Science & Technology (S&T), Resilient Systems Division (RSD), 5-Year Broad Agency...

(Thanks to Dennis Bryant and his excellent blog for bringing this to our attention) USCG NAVIGATION CENTER HIGH HORIZONTAL DILUTION OF PRECISION (HDOP) ADVISORY FOR 29 JULY 2016 Users of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in an area extending to the Northeast from...

This is another in our irregular series of guest blogs, this time from Mitch Narins at Strategic Synergies, LLC.   The old adage tells us that “Time is money,” but in today’s world, time is so much more.  Precise time is the basis for safety, for security, and...

"Wait, wait - you can make your phone think it is someplace it is not? What if you could mess with GPS and do that for other things like automobiles, airplanes, cargo trackers, ankle monitors, or oil tankers ?" While the world's militaries, intelligence services and...

"The Atlantic"... "The New Yorker"... "The Christian Science Monitor"... "The Economist"...NPR's radio shows "Science Friday" and "Here and Now"... "The National Space-based PNT Advisory Board"... the new book "Pinpoint - How GPS is changing technology, culture and...