Congress and the Department of Defense (DoD) must prioritize oversight of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology modernization to address vulnerabilities and delays in developing improved GPS system resilience, and to keep pace with advancements being made by U.S. adversaries, tech experts said at a Hudson Institute event on Nov. 4.
Panelists at the event talked about threats to the 50-year-old technology – including the ability to jam GPS signals to prevent accurate location tracking, and even solar storms that can interfere with location services – and long delays in U.S. efforts to modernize GPS tech.
A quicker U.S. approach to GPS modernization is necessary as foreign adversaries outpace the U.S. in GPS capabilities, said Dana Goward, president of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
“Recently, we have found that it’s quite likely that both China and Russia have the ability to interfere with GPS and all kinds of other navigation signals from space,” said Goward.
“Russia has almost certainly deployed a long planned nuclear powered electronic warfare device in space that is able to not only impact GPS on the ground and other signals, but a wide variety of communications and other links … the United States is incredibly vulnerable,” he said.
GPS technology is overseen in the U.S. by the interagency National Executive Committee for Space-Based PNT (PNT EXCOM), and its modernization priorities include completion of the GPS III satellite constellation, which will put up to 32 satellites into orbit under a 2008 contract with Lockheed Martin.
The new satellites provide better accuracy and are less susceptible to jamming – but four of the 10 satellites already built are currently stored at a Lockheed Martin facility in Waterton, Colo.
“GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] satellites have been launched, are in orbit, but inexplicably, without oversight from Congress, four remain in storage in Colorado,” said Robert McDowell, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
“We are now way behind a decade, maybe 15 years behind Europe and China,” McDowell said.
Panelists also raised concerns about the delayed launch of the next generation Operational Control System (OCX), which is essential for modernizing GPS. OCX will command all GPS satellites, and require new ground control stations and updated Military GPS User Equipment through a contract with Raytheon.
“The Department of Defense has screwed up its oversight and management of Raytheon, which is eight years into a two-year project to get the OCX system up and running,” said Mark Montgomery, senior director for the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
To help break the GPS modernization logjam, panelists suggested enhancing the FCC’s role in GPS outage reporting and response, as well as having the agency investigate the use of foreign GNSS systems by terrestrial devices in the U.S. They also recommended that DoD and Department of Transportation agree on the necessary number of GPS satellites for safety-of-life applications – systems where dependable performance is crucial for protecting lives.
Pushing Congress to hold agencies accountable to timelines and prioritizations is also key in modernization efforts, the panelists said, with speakers said, with current FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington saying that the GPS community needs to “forcefully” tell Congress what is needed.
“[There needs to be] a record that Congress can’t ignore …[saying] come in and finish on this work,” said Simington. “What are you doing about GPS outages? Wave a bloody shirt. It’s not visible at the Commission unless I actively go out and look for it.”
