Commanders in the field have increasingly been slapping DoD with “joint urgent operational needs” for equipment that does not need to rely on GPS because their current systems are increasingly being jammed and/or spoofed, these sources said.
“But, they are getting no love from the Pentagon,” one insider said. This is in part because DoD officials don’t want to undercut the costly GPS III program, designed to include improved anti-jam features including the higher-fidelity M-Code signal for military users, the source said.
… In an April 13 op-ed in National Defense magazine, former Air Force chief scientist Gene McCall argued that DoD is “overselling” GPS III jam resistance to the detriment of both military and civilian users. McCall charged:
“Military coded GPS III signals will still be incredibly weak compared to the strength of the signals commonly used to disrupt them. Rather than an eight-fold improvement, GPS III would have to improve by a factor of 10 million to begin defeating the threat.
Second, “eight times more resistant to disruption” only applies to coded signals for military users with equipment that has not yet been built. The vast majority of GPS users and critical infrastructure will see no improvement at all.”
That was from a nice BreakingD article, “SASC wants alternative GPS by 2023.”
The FY21 budget request includes $7.93 million for alternative precision, navigation, and timing capabilities. Compare that to the program elements under the GPS umbrella totaling $1.8 billion:
- NAVSTAR GPS User Equipment: $390.7 million
- GPS III Space Segment: $10.8 million
- GPS III Follow-on: $263.5 million
- GPS III Operational Control Segment: $482 million
- NAVSTAR GPS Space and Control Segments: $2 million
- (Procurement) GPS III Follow on: $627.8 million
- (Procurement) GPS III Space Segment: $20.1 million
- (Procurement) Global Positioning (Space): $2.3 million
I think GPS is a good example of how, when the DoD creates organizations to go after some bureaucratic program, the rank-and-file are forced to defend the program to keep their careers and influence on track. If the former chief scientist of the Air Force has grave doubts about the resilience of GPS, then a more significant hedge should be in place. By the way, here’s a good article on one alternative PNT concept using magnetic fields.
I forget who said this, but for every military program there should be an alternative system design funded at something like 10% of the total. That would imply that alternative GPS systems should be something $180 million and GPS at something like $1.62 billion. That kind of split doesn’t seem outrageous. But it increases funding for alternative PNT by 2,169 percent (!!!) while GPS is only decremented by 10 percent.
Of course, contractors and program officials will say GPS is already underfunded to the requirement. Even if their budget were double what it is today, they would say the same. Hard decisions must be made, and if their not, national security will suffer.
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