Mariam Sorond is NextNav (Nasdaq: NN) Board Chair and CEO focused on solving a national security challenge.
America has a proud history of being a leader in many key technologies. Today, however, its adversaries are racing to take this place, often with government backing.
As noted in a National Security Space Association report, China and Russia already have terrestrial complements to space-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), decades after the U.S. originally invented the Global Positioning System (GPS). They’ve built layered, more capable and resilient backups to global positioning systems, while the U.S. has not taken all the steps necessary to address active national security threats.
Government officials are sounding the alarm about how far the U.S. is falling behind our adversaries. At a Hudson Institute event, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Nathan Simington said GPS vulnerabilities and the comparative strength of China’s BeiDou is “becoming one of America’s biggest security issues.”
Caitlin Clarke, National Security Council senior director for cyber and emerging technology, warned of a global race to set the standards that will shape our wireless future. Noting other nations are subsidizing their industries, Clarke emphasized the need for the U.S. government to set up the private sector for success to lead the world in 5G and 6G and build the digital and critical infrastructure to make that happen.
A Vision For Strengthening PNT Infrastructure
As CEO of NextNav, a leader in next-generation PNT technologies, I couldn’t agree more with these comments. The widespread bipartisan consensus around such an urgent problem is justified. This is why NextNav has petitioned the FCC to reconfigure the lower 900 MHz band, aiming to provide more 5G broadband spectrum and enable a terrestrial (ground-based) PNT service—at no cost to taxpayers. We believe terrestrial PNT can serve as a critical complement and backup to the U.S. GPS, helping strengthen national security while easing America’s current spectrum crunch.
Since former President George W. Bush first acknowledged the need to build GPS redundancy in 2004, every presidential administration has recognized the problem. During President Trump’s first term, he signed an executive order to strengthen American resilience by identifying and promoting approaches to manage the risks to critical transportation systems and supporting the needs of commercial infrastructure from the disruption and manipulation of PNT services.
GPS signals can be easily disrupted by intentional spoofing and jamming, and even by unintentional interference. These signals weaken as they approach Earth—a vulnerability we’ve seen exploited on the battlefield—and threaten civilian industries in Europe and the Middle East.
GPS also struggles indoors and in urban canyons, posing challenges for first responders trying to locate people in emergencies. Public safety, telecommunications, financial systems and utilities—including the power grid and water supply—depend on GPS. Without it, modern life as we know it would grind to a halt—delayed ambulances, extended power outages and serious telecommunications service disruptions would all be realities.
The Growing Importance Of A GPS Backup
The lack of a backup to GPS is one of the U.S.’s biggest national security risks. Former Department of Defense CIO John Sherman has said any “adversary is going to try and come at [GPS] on day one of any potential conflict, whether it’s kinetically, whether it’s in the [radio frequency] spectrum, whether it’s using other mechanisms.”
But this is not just a national security issue; it’s also an economic one. A one-day loss of GPS could cost the U.S. economy an estimated $1.6 billion, according to a Brattle Group report, which also estimates the quantified value of a terrestrial PNT backup to be at least $14.6 billion.
Even small failures have lasting results. A 13-microsecond discrepancy in timing data in 2016 caused by the retirement of an older GPS satellite “affected police and emergency communications equipment in parts of North America for hours and caused power grid anomalies.” Recognizing this, the Department of Homeland Security’s Civil GPS Service Interface Committee classified PNT vulnerabilities as cybersecurity threats.
A reliable terrestrial complement and backup to GPS is one critical solution to help meet the national security, economic and public safety needs of America. To ensure continued PNT services in the event of GPS failure, enabling terrestrial PNT as part of a system-of-systems approach can help reach the goal of complementing GPS.
This includes space- and ground-based options. Many innovative solutions are being worked on to tackle this complex problem, including the use of unlicensed, licensed wireless, broadcast and satellite spectrum. In space, the U.S. Space Force is upgrading and augmenting existing GPS infrastructure to be more resistant to attacks and jamming. On the ground, there are multiple organizations—including a variety of both commercial and academic players—each tackling some or multiple aspects of PNT.
All of these are part of the solution to ensure the U.S.—the inventor of GPS—does not fall further behind our adversaries in building critical resiliency.
Building Resilience Through A System-Of-Systems Approach
The Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing National Advisory Board shared recommendations I believe all business leaders should consider. These insights are crucial for exploring policy remedies to make GPS more resilient.
A presentation by U.S. Department of Transportation PNT and Spectrum Management director Karen Van Dyke further highlighted three principles that resonated with me. These principles emphasize the need to protect, toughen and augment.
The need to protect focuses on implementing interference monitoring capabilities to identify, locate and prevent interference threats. Companies including Shift5 are developing tools like its GPS Integrity Module to detect and map when and where GPS is down.
Then we must toughen GPS signals against attacks. The Department of Defense is collaborating with contractors and agencies to launch the next generation of space-based GPS satellites, which are more resistant to cyber threats and other vulnerabilities.
Augmenting stresses the need for complementary PNT services to build resilience through a system-of-systems approach. That’s where we believe a complement to GPS, such as a terrestrial solution, is essential to building greater redundancy into America’s critical PNT infrastructure. There couldn’t be a more critical time for a backup to GPS to help solve this critical national security challenge for our nation. NextNav and I are committed to being part of the solution.
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