Navigation security

Decisive Measure to Meet GPS-Dependency Challenge

There are currently over two billion GPS users in the US. Yet the reliance on GPS services is threatened more and more by the risk of disruption to critical infrastructure. 

Positioning, navigation timing (PNT) capabilities are crucial both to national and economic security and the traveling public, and has become an integral part of civilian and military applications. PNT data provides a reference to calculate longitude, latitude, altitude, or transmission of time or frequency data. The data is conveyed by GPS technology – users receive signals from satellites placed into orbit by the US Department of Defense, which made the technology available worldwide, through a constellation of about 31 satellites that orbit the Earth.

Now, the US wants to actively mitigate the risks of disruption to critical infrastructure that rely on PNT services. On February 12, US President Trump signed an executive order that calls for a government-wide effort to improve the security and resilience of services that depend on the Global Positioning System for positioning, navigation and timing.