White House advisory group blasts US government, DoD inattention to GPS woes

WASHINGTON — The independent White House advisory group on GPS is taking the US government to task for failing to adequately address increased risks of interference with the Pentagon owned satellites, and for lack of progress in finding alternative positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems — suggesting that control of GPS functions should lie outside the Defense Department.

“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,” Thaad Allen, chair of the President’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board, wrote in a recent memo to the Defense and Transportation Department deputy secretaries.

“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, which was made public on Aug. 9 but transmitted on July 19, was designed to report on the outcome of the board’s 30th session held on April 24-25 in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The GPS satellites are owned and operated by DoD. But because the network has become a de-facto public good serving government agencies and commercial entities both in the US and abroad, their use is governed by an interagency executive committee, or EXCOM, led by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg. Other member organizations are the Departments of 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 letter makes clear that the 29 advisory board members, comprising experts from industry, academia and international organizations, are unhappy with the EXCOM’s remit and performance. The EXCOM in essence is itself advisory, as it has no budgetary authority over DoD decision-making about GPS or its funding of upgrades and/or alternatives.

“While GPS is a Dept. 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 wrote.

The board is urging 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 execute agency assigned responsibilities.” This includes creating a “locus of authority and accountability for PNT decision-making beyond DoD GPS program management.”

The Board further is fretting that other PNT systems such as the European Union’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou are outstripping GPS’s performance, including with regard to jam resistance. That could in part be remedied, the letter asserts, by DoD activating a new signal for non-military users called L-5.

Thus, the board is recommending that DoD activate the “long-awaited” L-5 signal as soon as possible.

Another potential solution would be for the Biden administration to lift International Traffic in Arms Regulation on advanced antennas, the board suggested.

Finally, the advisory board recommended that the PNT EXCOM “assign a lead agency and single individual with clear responsibility and authority for the end-to-end prompt detection, characterization, and removal of significant sources of interference” to GPS and other PNT systems within the United States.