Today the Army has few choices for Position, Navigation, and Timing: standard GPS and the higher-end solution called MAPS that is only in limited deployment. A third, even-more-costly solution for key-leader vehicles called CMOSS Mounted Form Factor (CMFF) isn’t expected until FY26 or later.
To address that gap, Leonardo DRS’ AC²ES (A-PNT Converged Computer-Embedded and Scalable) solution for tactical vehicles equipped with the Mounted Family of Computer Systems (MFoCS) creates a bridging capability to fill the gap in A-PNT availability.
In this Zoomcast, Bill Guyan, senior vice president and general manager of Leonardo DRS Land Electronics, talks about current US Army requirements and Programs of Record for APNT, how AC²ES is unique compared to other offerings, and how it addresses the US Army’s drive toward use of MOSA and CMOSS.
Breaking Defense: Hello and welcome. I’m Barry Rosenberg with Breaking Defense. Joining us is Bill Guyan, senior vice president and general manager of Leonardo DRS Land Electronics. We’re going to be talking about Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing and how it can be quickly installed in tactical vehicles in the fleets of the US Army and Marine Corps.
Leonardo DRS is the leading provider of Army platform computing and display systems for battle management. Tell us about your work in the APNT area.
Guyan: Thanks, Barry. Battle management systems are widely used both in the US and internationally. Our company, Land Electronics of Leonardo DRS, is the largest provider of these systems and altogether over the last 20 years we have fielded more than 300,000 systems to both US and other international forces.
Critical to every battle management system is knowledge of position location. That’s always provided by the Global Positioning System, or GPS. For the longest time, there has been knowledge and awareness of the potential for spoofing or jamming of GPS. Early on in the fielding of battle management systems in the US we started delivering embedded SASM GPSes. These are selective availability anti-spoofing-module GPS’s. This was an effort to try to get ahead of the threat, which was presented by potential adversaries that could jam or otherwise spoof the GPS signal.
Now with peer adversaries that have even greater capabilities, the Army has recognized that Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing is a critical capability. Not only battle management systems but many of our other systems depend upon having assured location and timing data in order to operate effectively.
We started more than two years ago testing for the integration of the Military GPS User Equipment, or MGUE, which would be embedded into our systems and replace the SASM GPS or the legacy capability. This Military GPS User Equipment is the foundational element of Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing. As I said before, we’ve already tested and we’re ready to start inserting that APNT capability into our systems.
There is a much more extensive set of other capabilities that the military wants in order to battle the threat against PNT. To make sure that our systems remain relevant, we’ve also embedded those in our technology roadmap and started to demonstrate those capabilities, as well.
Breaking Defense: What makes your approach to APNT particularly unique compared to other APNT solutions.
Guyan: Right now the Army has a couple of different options for Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing capability. Each of those available options are single-purpose options, which require the placement of a standalone, single-purpose box inside of an Army platform. Unfortunately, Army platforms are really constrained when it comes to space availability.
The most unique thing about our offered solution is that we take a product which is already in high-volume production and an Army program of record. It already has space-claim in Army vehicles. We upgrade that box by adding capabilities inside of it. This doesn’t require the addition of a new box to a vehicle, doesn’t require any additional space-claim, and doesn’t require any additional installation kit. This can permit easier fielding, easier installation, and leverages the existing footprint on platforms and the investment that the Army has already made. This is what is the most unique attribute of our APNT solution — the fact that it leverages program-of-record hardware which is already fielded already in production
Breaking Defense: Along the same line, if a customer is interested in Leonardo DRS solutions for APNT what specific offerings can you provide them?
Guyan: One of the things that is important about our offering — in addition to the ability to leverage existing footprint and already paid for Army investment — is that we offer a scalable capability that’s not one size fits all. APNT capability is not inexpensive. But the need for APNT capabilities is wide because every single vehicle and every single system that the Army that uses either position, location, or synchronized timing requires Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing. This is a big burden for the army.
What we’re proposing is that the Army has the opportunity to tailor the capability that they field based upon the threat, the risk, and the budget that’s available. So some systems may have a full suite of capabilities, some may have a lesser capability. But all of those capabilities can be housed inside of the same MFoCS computer, which we already field to all Army vehicles and Marine Corps platforms.
Breaking Defense: How does your APNT solution help the Army drive toward what it’s doing with MOSA and CMOSS.
Guyan: This is important because the Army has had a vision for some time of open architecture, and the ability to leverage investment for continued upgrade of capabilities and obsolescence management. We’ve always designed our computers with expandability and upgradability, and we’ve demonstrated it many times over the years.
The systems we currently deliver to the Army are Victory compliant. This Victory standard was the Army’s initial effort to identify interoperability standards so that they could be drop-in plug and play capability on onboard Army vehicles.
In addition to providing Victory compliant Position, Navigation, and Timing, we also provide the ability to upgrade the system which has already been fielded. This is in keeping with the spirit of open architecture in MOSA.
In the near term and mid-term, the capability we’re offering can help the Army to pull capability left. In the longer term, it’s the Army’s intent to start fielding a capability called CMOSS. These future CMOSS-compliant housings or chassis will house a number of interoperable cards and the Army’s vision is that there’ll be APNT cards provided by various vendors. They’ll plug and play inside of the CMOSS chassis to provide APNT capability.
For a long time, though, there’ll be a mix of legacy platforms and CMOSS-chassis-equipped platforms. The threat of APNT resilience is a constant threat; it’s a near-term threat. It’s our position that the Army needs near term and mid-term capability, and we think we can offer that. In the longer term, the fleet will be transitioning to CMOSS, but that transition could take decades.
In the meantime, the threat is real and present. We think this is a capability that meets a need that is demonstrated right now in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. There are widespread reports of jamming, spoofing, and other GPS interference, reminding us that the threat to Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing is real and possessed by our adversaries.
Breaking Defense: How is the Army addressing their requirements and programs of record as it relates to APNT? You addressed some of this in your prior answer but can you expand on that a bit.
Guyan: Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing is one of the critical capability gaps that the Army identified in their modernization plan. As such, they’ve identified a Cross Functional Team, or CFT, dedicated to addressing and guiding the Army’s efforts to address Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing capability.
As an offshoot of that capability effort, the Army has a program of record that is meant to provide tier-one APNT capability to the Army force. Right now it is programmed to provide up to 25,000 systems to the Army fleet. This is far short of all the vehicles and systems that the Army possesses. In fact, the Army possesses hundreds of thousands of vehicles and systems which require Assured Position, Navigation, and Timing capability.
I’ll call those other systems tier two and tier three systems — systems which aren’t currently provided for under the Army’s program of record. What we’re trying to do is offer the Army a capability which can be ready now, delivered sooner, and more cost effectively to provide scalable capability to tier two and tier three systems as a complement to the already funded existing programs record for APNT.
We’re not a competitor to the current Army’s plans or program of record. What we are is a complement to those — something that would allow for the ability to pull capability to the left in an affordable way and complement the Army’s current plans for APNT.
Breaking Defense: Thanks so much, Bill. We appreciate your informative responses. And thanks to everyone who’s watched today.
