Broadly, GPS refers to a satellite-based navigation system that supplies information about locations and time on Earth. It’s increasingly vulnerable to intentional attacks and other disturbances, partially due to its historic dependence on weak, unencrypted signals beamed from space. 

Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and James Lankford, R-Okla., recently introduced the GPS Resiliency Report Act to help get ahead of GPS-related hazards to America’s foundational systems and public safety.

“GPS technology plays a critical role in both our national infrastructure and our national security, and so we need to remain vigilant about the risks to GPS,” Hassan told DefenseScoop in an email on Tuesday. “This commonsense, bipartisan bill will ensure that the Department of Defense is learning from conflicts around the world, and preparing for the possibility that it cannot rely on GPS satellite technology.”

If passed, the bill would require the secretary of defense to submit a report on “the Global Positioning System and associated positioning, navigation, and timing services” within one year of enactment, according to the legislative text.

That review would be unclassified, with a classified annex if warranted.

Elements of the report would need to include descriptions of risks during a potential conflict in which the U.S. is involved — or in the case of an attack on an ally. Notably, the bill defines allies as members of the NATO alliance, non-NATO partners listed in section 644(q) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and Taiwan.

The lawmakers also call for a full assessment of “the capabilities of competitor countries, including the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to degrade or deny” U.S. GPS access.

Additionally, the report would need to cover current DOD pursuits to develop and buy assets that provide redundant global positioning and positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities — including space-based, terrestrial-based and quantum-sensing technologies. 

Defense officials would also be expected to evaluate the ability of the Space Force’s Resilient Global Positioning System (R-GPS) program to achieve full capacity to provide resilience to existing U.S. satellites, and separately, produce framework for enabling a full-scale terrestrial-based GPS redundancy system that could be operational no later than 15 years after the legislation is enacted.

“By reviewing the risks to current GPS technology, we lay the groundwork for the next generation of position, navigation, and timing systems that will keep us safe, secure, and free,” Hassan said.

Following its introduction, the bill was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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The GPS III SV-08 was launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s the eighth space vehicle for the GPS III constellation to go on orbit. The series of satellites, built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, brings significant improvements over previous GPS constellations by offering greater accuracy and advanced anti-jamming capabilities for military users.

Notably, the Space Force was able to execute the mission just three months after the service notified both Lockheed Martin and SpaceX to prepare for liftoff — a much faster pace than traditional national security launches, which could take up to two years from the initial contract award, said Walt Lauderdale, mission director and chief of Falcon systems and operations at Space Systems Command.

“The volume of data for the Falcon launch system allows us to focus our attention on the most critical areas and confirm acceptable flight risk,” Lauderdale said earlier this week during a media roundtable ahead of Friday’s launch. “This experience over time allows us to leverage SpaceX’s commercial tempo, optimize our own review timelines and utilize previously flown hardware — as with our last GPS III launch.”

Friday’s mission marks the second GPS III launch executed under what the Space Force calls a “rapid-response” schedule, demonstrating the ability to prepare and deploy a satellite on a rushed deadline. In December 2024, the service conducted a secretive mission dubbed Rapid Response Trailblazer that saw the seventh GPS III satellite go into orbit onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 after five months of planning.

Work conducted during the Rapid Response Trailblazer mission and other previous GPS III launches allowed the Space Force to streamline Friday’s launch even more because most of the mission profile and analysis for launch was already completed, Lauderdale said.

“The ability to once again demonstrate a quick-turn launch of crucial capability helps us understand the key aspects that enable such a capability and further prepare for similar mission timelines in the future,” he said.

With adversary advancements in the space domain putting more demand on the Space Force, the service is exploring ways to increase the resiliency of its constellations. While one method has been proliferating large numbers of satellites on orbit to add redundancy, the Space Force also wants to reduce the time it takes to put new systems in space.

One such effort is SSC’s Victus mission series under the Tactically Responsive Space program, which focuses on launching small payloads on commercial rockets with only 24 hours notice. While the recent pair of rapid GPS III missions are separate from Tactically Responsive Space and are geared towards payloads in the National Security Space Launch-class, the efforts share a common goal of reducing overall launch cadence.

“We’re trying to prove that we can quickly respond to an on-orbit failure of a vehicle, but we’re also trying to show the best ways to be resilient,” Col. Andrew Menschner, Mission Delta 31 commander, told reporters Wednesday. “Now that we have the timelines of launch headed to much shorter durations, one form of resilience is having a completed vehicle in the factory and ready to go to respond. Said another way: We don’t always have to have a vehicle on orbit for it to be providing resilience in the constellation.”

The Space Force initially planned to launch the eighth GPS III satellite onboard one of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rockets later in 2025. However, the service announced in April that it would pivot to using a SpaceX Falcon 9 in order to get critical capabilities on GPS III — such as the jam-resistant M-code signal — on orbit faster, Lauderdale said.

“What we’re doing this time is, we’re trying to make sure that we address getting some M-code capability up, and it was an opportunity to work with SpaceX and ULA to make sure we are equipped among all the parties and make sure that we could balance making sure that we can get M-code up there while taking care of both of the companies,” he said.

Menschner noted that because the GPS III satellites are qualified for multiple launch vehicle providers, it provided additional flexibility to switch to the Falcon 9 — a lesson that Mission Delta 31 is passing to others across the Space Force and Pentagon.

Moving forward, Lauderdale said he expects that lessons from the GPS III missions will open doors for other NSSL launches on faster timelines. 

“So what we’re proving out with our GPS teammates shows the capability and capacity that we could do from the NSSL program. Multiple launch vehicles gives us assured access to space,” he said. “And so when we look the future, what we’re demonstrating here is that it is possible, with our current vehicle systems, that if there is a need to get something on orbit quickly, something that is unpredicted at the time we put it under contract, we have a capacity, and we know what it would take in order to make that happen.”

The remaining two satellites for the GPS III series are currently slated to launch onboard ULA’s Vulcan rockets before the end of 2025.

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Plans are moving forward as the Defense Department seeks more robust tools to mitigate adversaries’ jamming tactics against GPS.

“All military services, including the Marine Corps, have been actively involved in Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT)/Global Positioning System (GPS) modernization efforts that will culminate in the fielding of critical Assured PNT capabilities to their warfighters. These new capabilities will enable warfighters to benefit from enhanced PNT capabilities offered using Military Code (M-Code) GPS satellite signals, other signals of opportunity, and a variety of non-GPS sensors,” officials wrote in a request for information published Tuesday, soliciting vendors to participate in the demos.

The Mounted Assured Resilient Navigation, or MARNAV, initiative is Marine Corps Systems Command’s main acquisition effort to field modernized positioning, navigation and timing tools to ground vehicle platforms, according to the service.

“This program will incorporate an M-Code GPS capability along with additional PNT enablers/alternatives to provide a robust Navigation Warfare … compliant capability to the warfighters,” per the RFI.

The program is currently organized into two blocks. For block one, the Corps is leaning on an Army-developed capability, known as Mounted Assured PNT System (MAPS) Gen II, to meet its requirements. In addition to M-code, the system possesses a capability that “leverages a commercial satellite system to provide platforms with PNT information if GPS is compromised or unavailable,” according to a Government Accountability Office report on GPS modernization released in September 2024.

The Marines bought 357 of those systems in fiscal 2023 and planned to buy an additional 345 in fiscal 2024, per the report.

However, for block two, the Corps intends to pursue its own receivers to meet the service’s needs, GAO noted.

“Although subject to change, the current Acquisition Strategy to fulfill the Block 2 requirements is to conduct a full and open competition resulting in the award of a single Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. The Government and the winning vendor may then enter the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) Phase of the program, and that contractual relationship may continue into system fielding and sustainment,” Marine Corps officials wrote in the RFI.

The tech demonstrations that the program manager for tactical communications and electromagnetic warfare systems is gearing up for are expected to help further define threshold and objective requirements for the program. The Corps is looking for companies to “demonstrate currently available, direct, drop-in, M-Code capable replacements” for the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, per the RFI.

The demos are slated to be conducted at Naval Information Warfare Center–Atlantic in Charleston, South Carolina, between February and May.

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Described by Shift5 as a first of its kind, the platform-agnostic solution — dubbed the GPS Integrity Module — applies to both commercial and military systems that span air, ground, rail, maritime and space.

While GPS jamming has been a mainstay for military operations for decades, spoofing is a relatively new endeavor. And as technology has become cheaper and easier to access, these capabilities are no longer reserved for sophisticated nation-states, but all the way down to civilian users.

Making matters worse, what makes spoofing much more insidious than jamming is that while jamming is apparent to operators, they likely don’t know they’re being spoofed.

“Your GPS is good until it’s not. And it’s very obvious when you’re being jammed, because you no longer have GPS as an option. If you’re flying an aircraft or something along those lines, you fall back to secondary navigation, so probably inertial,” Egon Rinderer, CTO of Shift5, told DefenseScoop in an interview. “GPS spoofing works very differently and it actually makes it more insidious, because it doesn’t erode the operator’s trust in what they’re getting from their GPS if it’s done right. It maintains their trust and what winds up happening is, it goes on long enough … your backup navigation capabilities that do very frequently calibrate off of GPS, like your inertial navigation, get poisoned by it. You’re being spoofed, you don’t realize it, your inertial backup systems calibrate off of a spoofed GPS signal, [and] now they’re affected by that same offset, whatever the offset is.”

Shift5’s module will be able to warn operators they’re being spoofed and develop that information into a library for future operations.

“We’ll give you that early warning, but what we’re also doing, and I think this is the more important matter, is we’re turning that into — just like we do with other detection capabilities — we’re turning that into effectively a library of detections. Over time, we’ll add to that library. We’ll add to it. We also allow our customer if they want to write their own,” he said, noting that government customers likely have access to classified data they can add to their library.

“What starts to come out of that is now we can start doing really interesting things like not only doing detection of different methods of GPS spoofing, but start doing attribution of those methods as well. To say, ‘Okay, this looks very much like Russian GPS spoofing,’” for example, he continued.

This effort was a direct outgrowth of talks with customers, Rinderer said.

The data already existed from the vehicle, but officials were asking for a way to warn and map when and where spoofing is occurring.

“It literally came from us having conversations with customers where our customers were saying, ‘This is a huge problem. We’re getting hit with this on a regular basis and is there anything that you can bring to the fight?’ This is a direct result of those conversations with both our DOD and our commercial customers,” he added.

Shift5’s system produces a map of where spoofing is occurring so operators can avoid those areas.

The company said the technology provides:

• Physics-based spoofing detection to tell if changes in position are physically possible for initial spoofing detection​​.
• Advanced detection capabilities to analyze enriched data from all sources to detect subtle and sophisticated spoofing attempts that is necessary to identifying more complex spoofing techniques.
• Operator alerting to provide real-time notifications to operators when GPS jamming or spoofing is detected.
• Seamless integration with existing platforms, as well as the ability to deploy directly to onboard hardware.

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Through the Department of Defense’s Quick Start authority approved in December as part of the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the Air Force has received approval to begin work on a “resilient national GPS position, navigation, and timing capability and [command, control and communications, or C3] battle management for moving target indication,” Kendall told lawmakers Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.

Specific details on the two Department of the Air Force’s two approved programs remain scarce, but they will likely be included in the department’s budget request for fiscal 2026 that will be submitted next year.

The Quick Start rapid acquisition authority allows the Air Force and other services to begin development on new programs without a congressionally approved budget. The authorities look to address the often long periods between when the services ask for funding for new programs in annual budget requests and when lawmakers pass appropriations — during which those new efforts are effectively in limbo.

“The DAF deeply appreciates the ‘Quick Start’ provision placed in the FY24 NDAA and will take full advantage of this opportunity to save precious time,” Kendal wrote alongside Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman in a joint statement ahead of Tuesday’s hearing in a joint statement.

Kendall proposed the initiative in April 2023 and advocated for it throughout the year, emphasizing that it would effectively move modernization programs through the early stages of development, such as requirement studies, risk reduction and design work, without having to pause for official funding approvals.

The 2024 NDAA legislation puts a $100 million cap across all of the Pentagon’s spending for Quick Start — less than the $300 million first proposed by the Air Force — and requires services to submit a detailed proposal to the secretary of defense about the capability, what gap it is filling, cost analysis and why it cannot wait until the subsequent budget cycle.

Services must also transition programs funded by Quick Start to an acquisition pathway or official program of record for continued development within one year, with the possibility for a one-year extension if approved by a service secretary, per the legislation.

GPS resiliency and enhanced PNT capabilities are some of the Space Force’s top priorities. To date, the service has launched six satellites manufactured by Lockheed Martin for GPS III into the larger GPS constellation, and the remaining four space vehicles will enter orbit in the coming years. 

At the same time, the service is looking into alternative options for PNT and supporting systems — including in collaboration with the other services and the commercial sector — that are not as vulnerable to adversary attacks, interference or degradation during military operations.

As for moving target indication, the Air and Space Forces have begun work to transition part of that mission from airborne platforms to space-based systems. Work done under the Quick Start proposal will likely cover the command, control and communications architecture needed to conduct tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from space.

The Air Force did not provide additional details about how much money was allocated towards the two programs through Quick Start, nor the scope of work that will be conducted.

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These programs seek to provide resilient navigation and positioning data to platforms and dismounted capabilities if GPS is denied or jammed by the enemy.

The award also signifies a critical milestone for the Army toward modernized M-code procurement, which has been directed by Congress. Prior to the award, the Army stated, the program office procured these so-called M-code cards through external contracts leading in some cases to significant passthrough costs and reduced buying power. This IDIQ contract provides the Army access to a direct supply source for the MAPS and DAPS systems.

“Because BAE Systems’ M-Code cards are currently the only tested and validated hardware compatible with MAPS and DAPS, it made sense to partner with them on this IDIQ contract,” said Michael Trzeciak, project manager for PNT within the Army’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors. “The contract facilitates procurement of multiple variants of the M-code card – meeting end system compatibility requirements for Mounted and Dismounted APNT solutions now and into the future.”

The contract was awarded through the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization and provides the program office a direct link to the vendor, which will enable more efficient technical support and integration, the Army said.

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According to a request for information posted to Sam.gov on Thursday, the NRL is looking for technical, engineering and scientific expertise and capabilities that can support the lab’s work in researching, testing and applying various kinds of space-based PNT technologies. The RFI aims to gauge initial industry interest and capability.

“The requirements will include development of appropriate hardware and systems; systems analysis, planning, management, engineering, data analysis and data collection, education, and documentation of space experiments and operational data; modeling and simulation; test and evaluation; and logistics support,” the document states.

Throughout the Defense Department, leaders have grown concerned about the vulnerability of the United States’ traditional PNT systems — namely GPS — to jamming attacks or interference. Adversaries like China have demonstrated capabilities that could degrade or disrupt GPS satellites and related systems. 

In response, organizations in the Pentagon have begun researching how to implement diverse and alternative PNT capabilities and enabling technologies, such as quantum sensors. In April, the department altered oversight of the various PNT efforts in a new directive signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

The Naval Research Lab’s advanced space PNT branch has also been supporting these efforts and has projects at various stages of development, including space- and ground-based systems, according to the RFI.

“An integral component of the branch’s PNT mission is supporting the development of a robust universal command and control system, advancing PNT performance analysis software, development and field testing for alternative methods of time transfer, and sensor-to-satellite RF systems engineering enabling more robust RF based PNT,” according to the document.

The NRL is especially interested in advanced PNT clocks — essential for accurate time measurement, positioning, navigation and synchronization — and the RFI lists several potential contractor tasks industry would conduct related to clock designs and theoretical topics.

One tasking would ask participants to “develop highly stable clock designs and identify factors influencing their operation for application to GPS and other PNT systems where improved clock stability will provide enhanced system results,” while another wants them to “utilize general relativity theory as it applies to clocks in satellites, on earth, and in space so that more accuracy can be obtained with GPS and other time dependent systems,” per the RFI.

Other tasks outlined are related to advanced sensing concepts, software engineering support for space systems, anti-jamming electronic equipment and more. 

The deadline for industry to respond to the request for information is July 11. 

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“The thing I talk about often is our potential adversaries also know how much we rely on GPS,” Sherman said at AFCEA NOVA’s Space Force IT Day. “The adversary is going to try to come at it on day one of any potential conflict, whether it’s kinetically, whether it’s in the [radio frequency] spectrum, whether it’s using other mechanisms … they’re going to try to use GPS to frustrate our ability to get long-range fires or other types of fires on the target and to get our forces to where they need to be.”

Because of this, Sherman said it’s imperative the U.S. has alternative PNT systems ready to go if GPS is disrupted.

He pointed to the work the Army has done with its PNT Assessment Exercise to integrate PNT technology onto Stryker vehicles. The Army is also using its Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool to test alternatives in GPS-denied environments.

The DOD has a handful of other programs in development, though some have faced challenges, according to the Government Accountability Office, in terms of building solid business cases.

Sherman said the events that have unfolded over the last year in Ukraine have shown the need to accelerate the fielding of new technologies, whether it’s PNT capabilities, other forms of satellite communications — which have been critical to Ukraine’s ability to fend off Russian attacks — electronic spectrum operations, or others.

“We need to do this during peacetime and get as good as we can at this because if something were to happen, we’re going to have to do this on the fly,” he said. “And yes, we’ve seen examples in Ukraine and elsewhere how [satellite communications] can be a game changer. And they innovated on the fly there. And we’re doing this during peacetime. But we better be taking learned examples from them about how they’re innovating.”

On that front, Sherman noted that while there’s been an explosion in commercial satellite communication services, there’s a major need for the DOD to shore up its own SATCOM capabilities to make them more streamlined in partnership with industry.

“On our side, there’s so much we have to do, where that’s one thing that I get concerned about,” he said. “People hear about what’s out in the commercial space and it’s like, ‘Let’s go, let’s make this work right now.’ [But] there’s so much behind the scenes that has to go into this in terms of things like hardware and receivers and transport and everything else that we have to make sure this is going to work seamlessly.”

Sherman explained: “How do we blend all this together with the explosion we see in the commercial SATCOM area? And certain companies have certain dominance in this but it’s a really big area across the board. And with our military capabilities, [how do we] make this seamless for the warfighter — when that warfighter … is in her F-35 and attacking a target taking out a [surface-to-air missile] site, that she’s got assured communications, whether it’s from a [proliferated-low earth orbit] constellation or military bird or whatever it happens to be, and how do we make this work together?”

Sherman added that we’re “living in a historic age right now” with the advancements in satellite communications and other space-based technologies.

“We have a digital environment that we’re going to look back on, I promise you, that we’re going to see the early 2020s were a special time, in the same way when we were living through other technologically innovative phases of our history,” he said. “So what are we gonna do about it? Are we going to look back and go, ‘Damn, we didn’t move fast enough, we let a potential adversary capitalize on this technology more quickly than we were able to?’ Or [will we be able to say], ‘We stayed ahead, we unified across the commercial and government base, we’ve leveraged our talent, and we did things that they could not catch up with?'”

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Described by officials as the glue holding all EW capabilities on the battlefield together, the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT) is a command-and-control planning capability that allows forces to visualize the potential effects of electronic warfare on the battlefield and chart courses of action to prevent jamming.

The Army is delivering the first increment of the program, which included several incremental capability drops over the course of many years using software to build on previous versions.

Officials have said now is the time to inject competition into the program and the next phase will hone in on navigation warfare.

“The next phase will be focused mostly on NAVWAR, which is our resilience to GPS denied environments,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, told FedScoop in an interview at this week’s TechNet Augusta conference. “How will our systems and capabilities perform? Model out what capabilities have assured PNT on them that would be resilient —which do not — so I understand what operations I can perform in that denied environment and then understand yourself in that NAVWAR perspective.”

Kitz said an aspirational goal for the program will be to determine what the adversary is trying to do to affect positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).  

“Are they trying to spoof and steer us in a different direction, are they just broadband jamming and trying to deny us GPS? Give that situational understanding of what the NAVWAR” environment looks like, he said.

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The U.S. military and civilians alike rely on GPS for navigation and other tasks, but the satellites, ground control stations and receivers that underpin it are vulnerable to enemy attack. The Department of Defense is pursuing backup options in case the system isn’t available for troops and their weapon systems.

“The military services are developing alternative PNT capabilities to complement GPS. Of the five PNT efforts that have started development, four efforts had incomplete business cases,” the Government Accountability Office noted in its recently released study.

Key elements of a business case, as outlined by GAO, include requirements documents, an acquisition strategy, assessments of technology risk and schedule risk, and an independent cost estimate.

“The information in a complete business case can help decision makers in DOD and Congress oversee acquisition efforts. With a complete business case, decision makers can better ensure that the necessary resources are available to match the program’s requirements, and that technologies used in a system will work as expected. Without a complete business case … DOD assumes more risk, which may result in reduced capabilities of the eventual system, delayed delivery of PNT capabilities to the warfighter, or unexpected cost increases,” the report warned.

Of the Pentagon’s five alternative PNT efforts cited by the watchdog that are using the major capability acquisition pathway or the middle tier of acquisition pathway, only the Air Force’s Resilient-embedded GPS/Inertial Navigation System program has a full business case completed.

Both the Navy’s Automated Celestial Navigation System (ACNS) program and the PNT upgrade to the Cooperative Engagement Capability lack assessments of schedule and technology risks, according to GAO.

Meanwhile, officials involved with the Navy’s AN/WSN-12 Inertial Navigation System effort had not finished drafting assessments of technology and schedule risks when the watchdog completed its report. Officials associated with the Navy’s upgrade to the GPS-based PNT service (GPNTS) initiative were still in the process of drafting requirements documentation.

GAO recommended that the secretary of the Navy ensure the service’s alternative PNT efforts have complete business case elements.

“A leading acquisition practice highlights the value of fully documenting business cases before beginning acquisition programs. Without complete business cases, decision makers such as the PNT Oversight Council are less informed to determine which alternative PNT capabilities will be available and when, and if those PNT capabilities remain capable of countering threats as the threat landscape evolves,” the study said.

“Completing the missing business case elements for these programs would provide DOD and Congress with key information to use for oversight and funding decision making aimed at delivering these critical capabilities,” it added.

In its official response to a draft of the GAO report, the Pentagon partially concurred with that recommendation.

“A thoroughly documented business case, complete with all elements, provides leaders with the best possible information to make acquisition decisions,” wrote Terence Emmert, who at the time of the response was serving as the acting director of defense research and engineering for advanced capabilities. Emmert is now the principal deputy chief technology officer for mission capabilities in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

Emmert said the Navy has already made significant progress in completing or partially completing most of the business case elements for the PNT efforts cited in the report.

However, the Pentagon doesn’t see the need to have a full business case for all its programs.

“The Department also recognizes not every program requires every element of a business case, and gives acquisition officials the flexibility to meet those needs through reasonable alternatives,” Emmert said. “These decisions concern real-world considerations such as acquisition reform to increase the DoD acquisition system’s speed and agility; promoting a culture of accepting reasonable levels of risk; optimizing individual programs across cost, schedule, and performance; and the cost/benefit of each business case element.”

For the Automated Celestial Navigation System program, the Navy said it does not plan to assess technical or schedule risk, according to GAO. For the Cooperative Engagement Capability upgrade, the Navy said it did not plan to assess schedule risk.

Instead of conducting a technology risk assessment for the AN/WSN-12 Inertial Navigation System effort, program officials decided to leverage the technology risk assessment of a similar system to the AN/WSN-12, according to the watchdog.

GAO also recommended that the secretary of defense ensure that the Pentagon’s PNT Oversight Council establishes strategic objectives and metrics to measure the progress of efforts within its portfolio.

“Defined objectives and metrics would help the Council better measure overall performance and mitigate any potential gaps in PNT capabilities as the military transitions to using M-code” for stronger encrypted signals, the watchdog said.

The Defense Department concurred with that recommendation.

The PNT Executive Management Board (EMB) has developed recommended goals and objectives for the department’s PNT enterprise as approved by the oversight council, Emmert said.

“These goals and objectives will be monitored through regular meetings at the DOD PNT Enterprise Working Groups, and their status will be reported at EMB and PNT Oversight Council meetings. Each year progress against the goals will be addressed in the PNT Oversight Council’s annual report to Congress,” he added.

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