These misleading narratives are keeping the U.S. from advancing PNT policy, putting everyone who depends on GNSS at risk.
Storytelling is the most powerful communication tool we have. Stories can inform and inspire. Stories can also mislead.
The biggest challenges to advancing PNT policy in the U.S. are false and misleading stories around the need for resilient PNT. These myths have frozen the nation in place for decades while our adversaries and allies have made tremendous advances. Here are some of the most pernicious and why they need to be eliminated from our discussions.
1. “GPS/GNSS is enough.”
Of all the PNT policy myths, at least this one seems to be on the way to being dispelled.
It was certainly solidly in place in 2009. That’s when the National Space-based PNT Executive Committee’s decision to transform Loran-C to eLoran to meet a presidential mandate for a backup was overturned.
Bureaucrats, lobbyists and budgeteers refused to accept that the tens of billions of dollars invested in GPS, admittedly the most important, empowering and beneficial technology in the previous 40 years, hadn’t solved America’s utility-level PNT needs forever.
Today, most officials across the federal government familiar with the problem, including those in Congress, seem to have admitted the problem. Now, the challenges seem to be a lack of clarity about who is responsible for ensuring America has the resilient PNT it needs and how to get there.
This has likely been exacerbated by the abundance of non-GNSS PNT technologies developed in the last two decades. For some, more options seem to have made decisions more difficult.
2. “We have to (or ‘they want to’) replace GPS.”
Only someone deliberately trying to confuse things or who is entirely unfamiliar with the issues would propose “replacing GPS.”
GPS is an amazing system that will be the centerpiece of America’s PNT architecture for decades. There are an estimated 10 to 15 billion user devices across the world, far more than one for every person on the planet. GPS signals are an essential component of innumerable systems and applications. Not maintaining GPS for the foreseeable future is almost unimaginable, and certainly not practical.
Our efforts must be to complement and backup GPS/GNSS with other PNT. One or more widely adopted alternative sources will make GPS and other GNSS safer and more reliable in two ways.
First, it will “get the bullseye off GPS” by making satellites and signals much less desirable targets. If users are not impacted by interference, or impacts are greatly lessened, bad actors will have little reason to interfere. Over time, jamming and spoofing equipment will become less popular, less available and more expensive. A virtuous cycle will begin to nearly eliminate deliberate interference.
Second, users and their applications will be protected in the event of any interference with GPS/GNSS, malicious or not.
Ongoing non-malicious threats to GPS/GNSS also pose significant risk for users.
Accidental interference, while often low level and benign, is commonplace. Europe’s STRIKE3 project detected more than 450,000 signals that could interfere with GNSS reception. Only about 10% were judged to be deliberate.
And while the probabilities of events like severe solar activity and Kessler syndrome debris damage are low, those probabilities are greater than zero.
Our efforts must be to complement and backup GPS/GNSS, not replace it.
3. “More study is needed.”
During World War II, America’s Office of Strategic Services published its “Simple Sabotage Manual” for agents embedded in adversary governments. It advised “Whenever possible refer all matters to committees for further study and consideration.”
While having more information is almost always good, looking for more when you already have enough is a classic way to avoid making decisions and taking action.
America’s growing over-dependence on GPS was formally recognized in a 1998 Presidential Decision Directive by President Bill Clinton. This resulted in the Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center producing a report in 2001 that validated a variety of concerns. It also predicted jamming and spoofing would be growing problems and recommended maintenance of terrestrial PNT capabilities.
Unfortunately, the report published only a few days before 9/11. So, it wasn’t until 2004 that President George W. Bush issued a mandate for a GPS backup. This, of course, generated another study.
But rather than be guided by the results of that study and others and fulfilling the mandate, subsequent administrations have continued to admire the problem.
There have been more than enough studies of GPS’s vulnerabilities and technologies that can provide complementary and backup services. Major efforts have included DOT’s 2001 Volpe report, a paper by the Institute for Defense Analysis in 2009, an extensive DOD/DHS/DOT analysis in 2014 (never made public), and another report by DOT in 2021.
And yet government PNT studies and analyses continue.
Again, continually increasing our store of knowledge is good, if that is what’s happening. But merely understanding the problem better will not solve it.
Two and a half decades of studies with similar findings are enough to inform action.
Leadership’s next steps must be establishing performance requirements for America’s resilient core PNT architecture and empowering an executive agent to ensure that architecture is put in place.
4. “It’s all about infrastructure protection.”
“Infrastructure protection” has been a buzz phrase for decades. Infrastructure is important and we must protect it with resilient PNT. That won’t do the whole job, however, because what we really want is a secure and prosperous nation.
National security means domestic resilient PNT to underpin non-
infrastructure applications like Golden Dome, UAS operations, Counter-UAS operations, the many applications used by the defense industrial base, first responders, and the list goes on.
Likewise, there are far more contributors to the nation’s economy and prosperity beyond just infrastructure. Everything from the corner coffee shop and Uber drivers to complex factory SCADA systems need PNT.
Every American contributes to the economy in some way, and everyone needs PNT. If their PNT is not resilient, the economy and our prosperity are on a knife’s edge.
Protecting infrastructure is necessary, but not sufficient.
5. “We just need to educate users.”
In 1964, the Surgeon General formally warned Americans about the dangers of smoking. At that time, 42% of Americans were smokers. In 1972, after eight years of warnings and education, 43% of Americans were smokers.
There is a big gap between knowing something and acting on that knowledge.
President Bush formally identified America’s lack of PNT resilience as a problem in December 2004 (and mandated a solution). President Trump issued Executive Order 13905 in February 2020 warning GPS users to get their own backup systems. Yet, in 2026 the nation’s PNT does not seem to be much more resilient.
Changing Americans’ PNT habits will require effort and expense, but most importantly leadership. Members of the National Space-based PNT Advisory Board, attendees of the September 2025 PNT Leadership Summit, and others have all concluded that leadership is the missing piece to addressing resilient PNT in the U.S.
6. “The government needs to build a GPS backup system.”
Nope. The government should not build anything. It should lead and, leveraging competition and America’s commercial sector to its best advantage, ensure something is built.
The government’s responsibility is to ensure Americans have easy access to a backup system and that it is widely adopted. There are several ways to do that including regulation, legislation, allowing public use of a system built to support government missions (ala GPS), and sponsoring a system in part or in whole.
If the latter method is selected, the process must include fair and open competition.
There are numerous mature and commercially available PNT systems that can be had as services. Once the government establishes performance requirements, it will be a relatively simple matter to let a multi-year service contract. Competition against clear requirements will eliminate the need for endless studies and provide the best value for the public dollar.
A long, expensive, and painful government major system acquisition must be avoided at all costs.
7. “The market will provide the GPS backup America needs. Government doesn’t need to do anything.”
This is probably the most insidious of all the myths because it speaks to traditional American values of limited government and market economics. Yet, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of GPS and PNT.
Some misunderstanding might be due to the existing and thriving market in specialized PNT services for high demand users. When there is a business case, commercial users do regularly pay for resilient PNT. Farmers subscribe for precision agriculture. Day traders pay for resilient nano and picoseconds. Shipping terminals contract for systems that place containers within millimeters.
But GPS, while it began as a military weapons system, quickly became a public utility. One that is integrated with and benefits every aspect of the economy. Government-provided utilities are not easily subject to market forces.
Where is the business case? Why would a potential PNT provider build a national system and try to get consumers to purchase what the government is already giving them for free?
And what would be the national benefit?
Even if such a company was to somehow survive, would enough Americans subscribe to really protect the economy from a long-term GPS outage? Would having a system that only a fraction of Americans accessed be enough to deter our adversaries from interfering or threatening to interfere with GPS and gain advantage over America?
The United States government has provided utility-level navigation since the formation of the Lighthouse Service in 1789. It has provided timing since the Naval Observatory began dropping a noon time-ball in 1845. Leaders understood that PNT is a fundamental economic driver. That’s why the Department of Commerce’s shield still features a lighthouse and why the department hosts the nation’s civil time scale at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
GPS is merely the most recent way the government has provided America with utility-level PNT, and it has been spectacularly successful at boosting the economy.
Claiming the government has no role or responsibility for providing a utility-level backup capability for GPS might be an honest misunderstanding.
It might also be a way some commercial interests are trying to advance their own fortunes.
It might be how some government officials are trying to shirk what they see as difficult responsibilities.
Regardless, such claims are false and misleading. They continue to harm the nation and increase the risk to America’s security and prosperity.
