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Home »Air Force To Boost Budget to Prepare for Conflicts in Space
National Defense - June 2015 By Stew Magnuson A potential conflict on Earth that escalates into space has prompted the Air Force to find and extra $5 billion to spend on offensive and defensive systems to protect national security satellites. Read More [big_button...
Device Tracks Soldiers’ Movements without GPS
By GPS World Staff When GPS satellites can’t be seen due to dense jungle canopy, or they are blocked due to enemy interference, soldiers will still be able to track their location digitally using the Warfighter Integrated Navigation System (WINS), a device now under...
Father of GPS on IMUs, eLoran, GPS
At the 15th meeting of the National PNT Advisory Board last week in Annapolis, the board’s vice chair and generally recognized “father of GPS”, Dr. Brad Parkinson, made the case for using a combination of GPS, eLoran and inertial systems in order to achieve the nation’s goal of “Assured PNT.”
Baidu Kicks Off Its ‘Indoor GPS’ Rollout In China
BY MICHELE CHANDLER, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY China search leader Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has begun the rollout of indoor location services powered by indoor mapping provider IndoorAtlas to the 270 million monthly active users of its Baidu Maps service. IndoorAtlas had...
What Would Happen If All Our Satellites Were Suddenly Destroyed?
George Dvorsky Filed to: DAILY EXPLAINER Since their inception 60 years ago, satellites have gone on to become an indispensable component of our modern high-tech civilization. But because they’re reliable and practically invisible, we take their existence for granted....
New tool could predict large solar storms more than 24 hours in advance
R&Dmag.com by Hayley Dunning, Imperial College London Large magnetic storms from the Sun, which affect technologies such as GPS and utility grids, could soon be predicted more than 24 hours in advance. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are eruptions of gas and...
Guided-Bomb Makers Anticipate GPS Jammers
Defense News by Joe Gould WASHINGTON — The makers of precision-guided munitions no longer take for granted that simple GPS-guidance systems will always work on their own. Jammers and spoofing equipment threaten to populate future battlefields; manufacturers have taken...
Federal Radionavigation Plan Touches on NDGPS, eLoran
May 27, 2015 - By GPS World staff The 2014 Federal Radionavigation Plan, just released from the U.S. Department of Transportation, touches on funding for the Nationwide Differential GPS and the use of eLoran as a precision timing alternative. The plan is signed by the...
‘GPS of the Aisles’ – LEDs and Indoor Positioning
Supermarket LED lights talk to smartphone app By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor, BBC News French shoppers have become the first to experience a new LED lighting system that sends special offers and location data to their smartphones. [big_button url="[big_button...
Breaking News: Agreement for eLoran Test Signal In US!
Today, the US Department of Homeland Security agreed with the Exelis and UrsaNav Corporations to put an eLoran signal on the air for testing and demonstration.
US Agrees to Putting Test eLoran Signal On Air
Today, the US Department of Homeland Security agreed with the Exelis and UrsaNav Corporations to put an eLoran signal on the air for testing and demonstration at former Loran-C sites. The goal of the effort is to test eLoran as a complement to the GPS system and for a...
Jammer Hunting with a UAV
GPS World By James Spicer, Adrien Perkins, Louis Dressel, Mark James, Yu-Hsuan Chen, Sherman Lo , David S. De Lorenzo and Per Enge, Stanford University A fully autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based system for locating GPS jammers, currently under...
US Weighs UAS-Friendly GPS Backup System
Inside Unmanned Systems By Dee Ann Divis The comment period is about to close on a potential navigation backup system for GPS that could be very useful for unmanned systems. Enhanced Loran or eLoran is an invigorated version of the old Loran system formerly operated...
Euroship Installs GPS Backup Techology
Marine Technology by Laura Stackhouse Ship management company, EuroShip Services Ltd, has installed eLoran as a back up to GPS to ensure the safety of its vessels operating off the coast of the UK. Read More
Exelis upgrades and tests GPS threat detection technology
From Intelligent Aerospace Exelis engineers have enhanced the company’s Signal Sentry 1000, which detects and locates sources of intentional and unintentional interference to GPS signals, with sensors that increase detection accuracy to better pinpoint the jamming...
What if a Cybersecurity Attack Shut Down Our Ports?
By Lily Hay Newman in Slate It’s a real, and frightening, possibility. It’s easy to forget when you’re on dry land that 90 percent of the world’s goods are shipped on boats. While we worry about the cybersecurity of power grids and nuclear missile silos, most of us...
Jammers Used to Disrupt Global Supply Chain
Here is an advisory from US Customs and Border Protection that shows how jammers are confounding the efforts of yet another governmental agency. [big_button url="https://rntfnd.org/wp-content/uploads/CPB-gps-jamming.pdf"]Read More[/big_button]
House Funding Bill Could Fuel Scrutiny of OCX, GPS Backup Options
Inside GNSS by Dee Ann Divis The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is considering legislation that would fully authorize the White House’s funding request for GPS and possibly add provisions aimed at evaluating the new, troubled GPS ground system and pushing the...
Ash Carter’s Idea of Disruptive Innovation: Unplug the Military From GPS
National Defense magazine By Sandra I. Erwin One of the Pentagon’s best-known inventions, the GPS satellite, could be replaced in the foreseeable future by technology that is far cheaper and more resistant to jamming. Finding an alternative to GPS not only could save...
DARPA looks beyond GPS for positioning, navigating, and timing (from “Physics Today”)
By David Kramer Cold-atom interferometry, microelectromechanical systems, signals of opportunity, and atomic clocks are some of the technologies the defense agency is pursuing to provide precise navigation when GPS is unavailable. [big_button...
60 Minutes “The Battle Above”
Did you see “60 Minutes” last night on CBS? David Martin did an excellent piece called “The Battle Above” about America’s dependence on space and the threats posed by anti-satellite weapons, especially from the Chinese. It featured interviews with General Hyten, commander of Space Command, and Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James.
In GPS+ We Trust
Bernie Madoff. Enron. Michael and Lowell Milken. That red sports car you bought second hand when you were in college. It doesn’t matter how great something or someone looks, or how well they seem to perform if you can’t trust them. A lack of integrity in a person or a technology means that, sooner or later, they /it are going to let you down.
Indoor Never Looked Better – Member iPosi Featured
RNT Foundation member iPosi (the "Pos" is pronounced as in "position" so - "eye-pos-ee") was the main focus of an "GPS World" article about how far indoor positioning has come. Congratulations to CEO Rich Lee and his team for their successes and for getting this great...
GPS Terrestrial Complement/Backup Bill Gathering Support
The Congress is back in session this week and HR 1678, a bill that would require establishment of a strong, difficult-to-disrupt terrestrial system to complemment GPS, and to serve as another source of PNT when GPS isn't available, has been referred to the Committee...
SPAWAR wants white papers: Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT)
New FedBizOps Posting: The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), in support of the Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (PEO C4I) Communications Program Office (PMW/A 170), and Program Executive Office...
Drones, Wither Goest?
If something is really important you need more than one. You don’t need to have a degree in safety or systems engineering to know that. A Washington Post report last year showed that large autonomous aircraft are particularly vulnerable to GNSS as a single point of failure.
Google’s Cerf & DOD’s Halvorsen – Different, but Complementary, Views on APNT
Vint Cerf and Terry Halvorsen offered interesting and different, yet complementary, observations on the importance of assured PNT at last night’s RNT Foundation dinner. The event at the Metropolitan Club, hosted by former FAA Administrator Langhorne Bond, was attended by a broad cross section of members from industry, government and academia.
From Harriman’s A4 to Future Nav
While the cherry blossoms are only just beginning to make themselves known, tomorrow (Wednesday the 8th of April) is still going to be a great day to visit Washington, DC for members of the PNT community.
New GPS/eLoran Bill in Congress
Yesterday, a bi-partisan group of legislators led by Congressman John Garamendi (D, CA) introduced a bill that would require the Secretary of Defense to establish a backup for the Global Positioning System (GPS). Called the “National Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2015,” it was co-sponsored by Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R, CA), Peter DeFazio (D, OR), and Frank LoBiondo (R, NJ).
Vint Cerf, Terry Halvorsen, New FRN Add Spice to RNT Annual Dinner
This week’s Federal Register Notice (FRN) that the government is considering eLoran to complement and backup GPS, and asking for public comment, is sure to add a lot of interest to the RNT Foundation’s annual dinner meeting. The FRN and a recent RFI for 50,000 eLoran...
“Do We Want Faster Horses?”
Henry Ford is reputed to have once remarked “If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said “faster horses.” The federal government might be facing a similar challenge with the Federal Register Notice it published this week about Complementary Positioning, Navigation and Timing. In it they asked for public comment about whether establish eLoran in the US would be useful and if it would be used.
US Announces it is Considering eLoran – Wants Public Comment
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Dennis Cantrell While there were a few coding problems the first time the Government Printing Office (GPO) posted it on line, the Abstract portion of the Federal Register Notice that our web crawler discovered...
European Navigation Conference 2015
The 2015 ENC conference will be hosted by the Institut Français de Navigation (IFN) and TOPOS Aquitaine and will be held April 7 through 10 at Centre de Congrès Cité mondiale in Bordeaux, France. It will be a showcase for state-of-the-art technology and for...
US Losing Internet Lead?
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) publicized a report yesterday that outlined how further development of the internet, specifically the “Internet of Things,” will be hampered by the lack of an effective time signal. Interestingly, this “lack of effective time” could be a problem for the US, and for many third world countries, but not for Russia, China, Europe and others.
DHS Helps Protect GPS
Great progress by DHS in helping to protect critical infrastructure was reported this week by “Inside GNSS.” Led by DHS Science and Technology Program Manager Sarah Mahmood, DHS and NIST have developed and published a ten page guide of “Best Practices for Improved Robustness of Time and Frequency Sources in Fixed Locations.”
21 Ways to Disrupt
We have always been a fan of the interesting, methodical and technically astute ways Dr. Sally Basker (PhD, BEng, FRIN) has of looking at and explaining things. In one of her recent efforts she outlined 21 different types of GNSS disruptions.
Meet DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen and Google’s Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer
Tech Industry Leaders Highlight Critical Need For Resilient Timing and Navigation Systems [featured title="Contact" header_color="004c89" ] Jen Hitchcock Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation Phone: 703-489-7024 Website: RNTFnd.org [/featured] Washington,...
The Real Star Wars: Air Force Heads to the Heavens for Weapons Guidance
Mark Thompson, Time Magazine, March 8, 2015 If a foe disables or destroys GPS, Pentagon still needs to drop bombs accurately The success of precision-guided bombs in 1991’s Gulf War was a revelation. The world watched transfixed as U.S. generals briefed before screens...
Caring For PNT
This month “Coordinates” magazine published an RNT Foundation paper presented at the 2014 European Navigation Conference in Rotterdam. The paper discusses ways that nations and companies must think about and care for the PNT systems that are so important to their...
GNSS Vulnerability Scores at Wide-Ranging INC 2015
Almost half of the sessions at the International Navigation Conference (INC) 2015 held this week (February 24–26) in Manchester, England, were devoted to the theme of resilience and vulnerability, a topic that Dana Goward of the Resilient Navigation and Timing...
DARPA – “GPS Use by Military a Vulnerability”
The Strategic Technology Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has six focus areas it is currently working on – one of which is Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT).
US DOD “Triples Down” on Assured PNT
Russian Military Jamming Vehicle, Belspetsvneshtechnika Photo An alert RNT Foundation member recently noticed that the US Department of Defense is requesting three times the funds for “Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT)” research and testing for next...
GPS Interference: Origins, Effects & Mitigations Webinar
Logan Scott is a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation and a well-recognized authority on these issues. This webinar is well worth your time. GPS Interference: Origins, Effects & Mitigations WebinarNow Available On-Demand If you missed the live event with...
GPS/GNSS: First, Admit You Have A Problem – Investigative TV News Starting to Help
The first step in Alcoholics Anonymous' famous 12 Step recovery program is "Admit you have a problem." Technologists not only admit the problem of GPS/GNSS vulnerability and the lack of an alternative for North America, they have been talking about it for years. They...
GPS Disruption Halts Ports, Endangers Ships – US Coast Guard
Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection At a public meeting last month, US Coast Guard officials described how interference with GPS signals disrupted operations for seven hours at a major east coast port last year. You can watch the entire meeting below, the...
PTA for GNSS
Last week the “Father of GPS,” Dr. Brad Parkinson, renewed his call for PTA when it came to global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). When we hear “PTA” in the US, most of us have flashbacks to grade school and think “Parent-Teacher Association.” But what Dr....
Resilient PNT Forum II – Presentations
The second Resilient PNT Forum was held on Monday the 26 of January as a parallel evening event to the Institute of Navigation's International Technical Meeting a Dana Point. After drinks and hors d' oeuvres, approximately 120 attendees were welcomed by hosts Martin...
Korea eLoran At RPNT Forum II
A very good "Inside GNSS" article about Korea's announcement at Resilient PNT Forum II of a re-invigorated project after a number of contracting delays. [big_button url="https://insidegnss.com/south-korea-relaunches-its-eloran-program/"]Read More[/big_button]
US Government Tiger Team Report – “GPS Complements”
A rare glimpse into the thoughts and processes of the federal inter-agency in the arcane field of Position, Navigation and Timing, especially regarding GPS alternatives, was provided at the Stanford University PNT Symposium in October. An FAA presentation revealed the existence of a “Complementary PNT Tiger Team (CPNT3).” We learned…
GPS Interference – A Cyber Problem
The most recent edition of the U.S. Coast Guard’s journal of safety and security at sea, “Proceedings” included interference with GPS as one of the cyber-vulnerabilities mariners needed to be concerned about.
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IATA – Aviation remains resilient during unrest in the Middle East
Image: Shutterstock What's New: A statement by the head of the International Air Transport Association, the trade association for major airlines. Why It's Important: The statement shows the differences in point of view and communications between airlines and national...
War Game: China will attack Taiwan’s comms tech, GPS – SpaceNews
Image: RNT Foundation What's New: The results of a war game outlining how China will cut undersea cables, attack GPS, and otherwise isolate Taiwan in a conflict to take control of the island. Why It's Important: Like most advanced nations, Taiwan has not widely...
Hurricane Helene took out most tech in NC. GPS keeps on goin’.
Image: Shutterstock What's New: A reminder that, even when electrical service is down, cell towers are out, and everything seems to be going wrong, America's GPS becomes even more important. If that is at all possible. Why It's Important: Search and rescue, recovery...
China completes national eLoran network – The Paper
Image: RNT Foundation What's New: A Chinese newspaper article that their national eLoran network is complete. Why It's Important: This completes China's "PNT resilience triad" of getting signals from space, terrestrial broadcast and fiber. Three highly diverse methods...