The independent White House advisory group on GPS has sharply criticized the U.S. government for not adequately addressing the increasing risks of interference with Pentagon-owned satellites and for the lack of progress in finding alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems. The board suggests that the control of GPS functions should be reassessed to lie outside the Department of Defense (DoD).
“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,” stated Thaad Allen, chair of the President’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board, in a recent memo directed to the deputy secretaries of both the Defense and Transportation Departments.
“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,” he added. The memo, released to the public on August 9 but sent on July 19, summarizes the outcomes of the board’s 30th session that took place on April 24-25 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
GPS satellites are owned and operated by the DoD, but as the network has evolved into a de-facto public utility benefitting government agencies and commercial entities domestically and abroad, its utilization is overseen by an interagency executive committee (EXCOM). This committee is co-chaired by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg, with members from various departments, including State, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, Energy, and Homeland Security, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, and NASA.
Allen’s correspondence highlights the advisory board’s dissatisfaction with the EXCOM’s scope and effectiveness. The EXCOM serves as an advisory body, lacking budgetary authority to influence DoD decisions regarding GPS or the funding of its upgrades and alternatives.
„While GPS is a Department of Defense (DoD) program, the well-intentioned framework of an EXCOM to manage the interrelation of military and civil users is ineffective and non-responsive to existing and emerging risks regarding not only GPS, but the larger spectrum of U.S. PNT capabilities. 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,” Allen articulated.
The board urges the Biden administration to „revisit SPD-7 to establish a clear strategy, bolstered by a revised governance framework with clear roles and responsibilities extending to the creation of programs of record with resourcing plans to accomplish agency-assigned responsibilities.” This recommendation includes establishing a “locus of authority and accountability for PNT decision-making beyond DoD GPS program management.”
Furthermore, the board expressed concerns that other PNT systems, such as the European Union’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou, are surpassing GPS in performance, particularly in terms of jamming resistance. The letter suggests that this issue could be partially addressed by the DoD activating a new signal for non-military users known as L-5.
The board strongly recommends that the DoD activate the “long-awaited” L-5 signal as soon as possible. Another proposed solution involves lifting International Traffic in Arms Regulations on advanced antennas. Finally, the advisory board advocates for the PNT EXCOM to “assign a lead agency and a single individual with clear responsibility and authority for the end-to-end prompt detection, characterization, and removal of significant sources of interference” affecting GPS and other PNT systems within the United States.
