Experts to PNT leaders: “It’s not working!”
The President’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board has warned United States leaders that the nation is highly vulnerable to disruption of GPS services. Also, national PNT issues have not received sufficient priority and attention for the last 20 years, and no one is accountable for system performance.
The warning came in a four-page memo to the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation from retired Admiral Thad Allen, Chair of the advisory board. The memo was nominally a report of the board’s April 2024 meeting in Colorado Springs.
The overwhelming majority of Allen’s message, though, dealt with GPS and U.S. PNT being vulnerable, the importance of PNT to the nation’s safety and security and the failure of the government to do the things it said it should and would do. It says:
“America’s continued over-reliance on GPS for PNT makes critical infrastructure and applications vulnerable to a variety of well-documented accidental, natural and malicious threats.
…our conclusion is that PNT, in general, and GPS, in particular, have not been accorded their rightful prominence in the national policy agenda.
Simply put, the Board believes that the 20-year-old framework for GPS governance and the current policy statements establish neither the priority that the system deserves nor sufficiently clear accountability for its performance.”
The reason for this was assessed to be that the leadership and governance structure established by 2004’s NSPD-39 and confirmed in 2021’s SPD-7 was not working.
Allen gave a recent policy document on critical infrastructure as an example. All critical infrastructure sectors use PNT, and most depend on it.
“These findings were reinforced just earlier this year by the release of the National Security Memorandum on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience (NSM-22, April 30, 2024). We were surprised to discover that GPS is nowhere mentioned in that important document.”
While not mentioned in the memo, PNT was also not mentioned in national cybersecurity documents issued last year. This is despite timing being essential to the operation of IT systems, and time and location data being key elements in many applications.
Allen’s memo also emphasized that the real issue is not about GPS, but overall national PNT capability. He went so far as to say, “Space Policy Directive 7 (SPD-7), U.S. Space-based PNT Policy, must be revisited and the term ‘space-based’ should be removed from its title” (emphasis added).
Reinforcing this message, the following table comparing U.S. and Chinese national PNT systems was included in the memo.
“The Board believes it is time to take a fresh look at our approach to PNT governance and establish a clear strategy for re-establishing an unquestioned position of leadership for the United States. To be successful, such a strategy requires a governance structure characterized by clearer authority and accountability. Ideally, the administration should propose legislation to Congress that would support this goal with a clear mandate (authorization) and resources (appropriations) adequate to the task.”
As part of his report of the April meeting, Allen’s memo reaffirmed the board’s nine recommendations from January of last year and added three more:
- Direct the U.S. Space Force to establish a way for “good enough” monitoring of GPS L5 signals using existing capabilities and set L5 signals healthy subject to a “use at your own risk” caveat, just as is done with L2C today. We recommend establishing a deadline of September 2024.
- Direct federal Chief Information Officers to acquire and install multifrequency dual-system (GPS-Galileo) receivers to complement GPS use. The Department of Transportation and the Department of Homeland Security should actively encourage critical infrastructure users to adopt multifrequency dual-system (GPS-Galileo) receivers.
- Assign a lead agency and single individual with clear responsibility and authority for the end-to-end prompt detection, characterization, and removal of significant sources of interference to GNSS in the United States.
Allen’s memo comes on the heels of a similar warning to United States leaders about the nation’s vulnerability to GPS disruptions. On July 18, the
National Security Space Association published a report titled “America’s Asymmetric Vulnerability to Navigation Warfare: Leadership and Strategic Direction Needed to Mitigate Significant Threats,” which cited several national PNT shortfalls from the Federal Radionavigation Plan as significant concerns.
Two of that paper’s key findings are:
“Long-standing lack of progress on issues important to U.S. national, homeland, and economic security,” and
“Focused leadership, properly empowered and resourced, is essential to the national PNT strategy’s success.”
It warned that significant disruption to GPS “…could have cascading effects which…