America Needs GPS Backup

No one knows what Russia will do next, including potentially jamming America’s Global Positioning System (GPS). With Congressional passage of the omnibus spending bill for 2022 imminent, reasonable people should ask: Where is the funding in the budget to back up GPS?

America’s economy depends on GPS, a free service provided by the government. It is essential to vehicle navigation systems, general aviation, financial transactions, the electrical grid, precision agriculture, surveying, and construction. Americans use over 900 million GPS receivers.

In November Russia destroyed one of its own satellites, and warned that it could destroy the 32 U.S. satellites that produce GPS signals. This would eliminate GPS.

Because GPS is so important, three separate laws, most recently the National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018, instructed the Transportation Department, which is responsible for civilian GPS, to provide a complement and backup for the service. With such a system in place, if the satellites were taken out, Americans would have an alternative. The Act required the Secretary to put in place a backup system for GPS by the end of 2020, subject to Congressional appropriations—which so far have not materialized.

Congress this week votes on H.R. 2471, which contains 12 fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills, as well as supplemental funding to support Ukraine. The Transportation Department receives $103 billion, but no funds to implement Congress’s prior instructions to provide a terrestrial complement to GPS. In light of new dangers posed by Russia, this is a serious oversight.

Neither did the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law in November, designate funding for a terrestrial complement to GPS, which is fundamental to all aspects of infrastructure.

The agricultural sector spends $1 billion a year on equipment with GPS, highlighting its importance to food production, especially important now that Ukraine’s wheat production may be reduced. Drivers use their navigation systems daily, and fire fighters and ambulances use GPS, not paper maps, to find houses where people need emergency services.

Preventing GPS from operating could cause tens of billions of dollars in potential damages, according to the Transportation Department.

In order to jump-start the process of backing up and complementing GPS, the Transportation Department in January 2021 published a report outlining the advantages and disadvantages of 11 different technologies to back up GPS capability.

The Department methodically worked with companies to test technologies that could be used in the absence of GPS signals. These technologies, tested under the same conditions for an apples-to-apples comparison, included terrestrial radio signals, fiber networks for timing, Iridium satellites for encrypted signals, and Wi-Fi and cell signals for localization.

The Department concluded that multiple technologies should be used to complement GPS. Signals from space, including low earth orbit satellites, combined with those from terrestrial broadcast stations, was the combination most likely to ensure Americans always have the essential GPS-like services needed to keep the economy going.

For instance, NextNav’s Metropolitan Beacon System, a 3GPP-compliant terrestrial network of long-range broadcast beacons, transmits a GPS-like signal in licensed spectrum in the sub-GHz range.

Beacons are ideal for cities but less practical in rural and maritime areas. For those areas, Satelles delivered timing and location solutions using the Iridium constellation of low earth orbit satellites.

One promising technology already in use in various parts of the world is eLoran, which uses towers to send signals. America had a version of eLoran until 2010, when budget cutters eliminated it because GPS, in their minds, was all that was needed. Russia has a type of eLoran that it is using in its invasion of Ukraine while it jams GPS signals in the area to confuse defenders. China, South Korea, and Iran have eLoran-based systems.

The Transportation Department report showed these technologies are mature and commercially available. The government could select and lease a suite of services from multiple existing providers. The additional cost would likely be less than 10 percent of what is already being spent on GPS each year.

Since the report was published, other technologies have no doubt been developed. Congress should allocate funding to the Transportation Department to lay out performance criteria and ask for bids, then decide how to put in place some backup systems.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown Americans that the world’s actors don’t always play fair and that time is of the essence. Hoping that GPS will not be targeted is not a plan.