The following is an excerpt of an op-ed from GPSIA Executive Director, J. David Grossman. It was published on April 22, 2021 by C4ISRNET and Defense News.
In our increasingly connected society, our dependence on the Global Positioning System for critical applications and services including the electric grid, financial networks, and aviation, has never been greater. To protect those capabilities, there has been recent focus on GPS backup technologies. For critical technologies where failure is not an option, redundancy makes sense.
Responding to this need, in 2017 Congress required the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Transportation, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, to develop a joint plan for demonstrating various GPS backup technologies developed by the private sector. A year later, Congress instructed the Department of Transportation (DOT) to establish the requirements for a land-based system to complement and backup the timing component of GPS. In January of this year, the agency issued a comprehensive report detailing its findings from the 11 technologies tested during the Congressionally-mandated demonstrations.
To read the full piece, click here.