Previously, controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs) were only in the military domain, and highly classified. The need to counter increasing GNSS signal jamming and spoofing in the civil realm has brought CRPAs into limited use there as well. How to test for their efficacy in product design and development?
A free webinar on Wednesday, March 25 from 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time addresses the topic “GNSS Vulnerability Testing and the Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA).” This technically rich, educational event is sponsored by Spirent Communications and Inside GNSS.
According to a statement by the head of U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command, pilots of the elite U-2 spy plane wear watches that receive foreign GNSS signals and provide backup navigation when GPS is jammed.
“My U-2 guys fly with a watch now that ties into GPS, but also BeiDou and the Russian [GLONASS] system and the European [Galileo] system so that if somebody jams GPS, they still get the others,” said Gen. James “Mike” Holmes on March 4 at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington.
The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed “Dragon Lady,” is a single-jet engine, ultra-high altitude (70,000 feet, 21,300 meters) reconnaissance aircraft. It gathers intelligence with a variety of sensors. The U-2 is one of very few aircraft that have served the Air Force for more than 50 years, a select group that also includes the B-52 long-range bomber. The latest model, the U-2S, had a technical upgrade in 2012. [Dragon Lady photo above, courtesy Lockheed.]
Gen. Holmes did not name the watch manufacturer.
In February 2018, Garmin announced that its D2 Charlie aviator watch had been selected by the Air Force for use by the pilots of the Lockheed U-2 aircraft. “The high-sensitivity WAAS GPS-enabled D2 Charlie aviator watch incorporates global navigation capability, rich and colorful moving maps and more, providing pilots in the USAF with an exclusive, back-up navigation timepiece in the cockpit. . . . The D2 Charlie aviator watch will be an integral and functional part of the U-2 pilot’s toolkit.”
According to the press release, Garmin expected the United States Air Force to take delivery of more than 100 D2 Charlies.
Among the sensors mentioned on Garmin’s spec sheet for the watch are GPS, GLONASS, a heart rate monitor, barometric altimeter, compass, accelerometer and thermometer. BeiDou is not listed.
However, in an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company stated: “Garmin utilizes a variety of other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) including, but not limited to . . . .The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), a Chinese satellite navigation system that is expected to have 35 operating satellites in orbit by 2020 and will provide global coverage.”
Garmin’s D2 Charlie watch, shown here with Weather radar overlay feature. Photo: Garmin
D2 Charlie has a sapphire scratch-resistant crystal lens and a diamond-like carbon (DLC) coated titanium bezel. A sunlight-readable, high-resolution color display with LED backlight on the watch face allows pilots to view data in most lighting conditions in the cockpit. It offers up to 20 hours of battery life in GPS mode and up to 12 days in smartwatch mode. It comes with a leather wristband and a sporty silicone band.
When the White House submits its budget request for the Department of Defense to Congress every year, that is not the final word. The different military services also send Congress their unfunded priority lists, which detail the projects the White House chose to forego but, the services hope, Congress will add back in. This year several of those priorities are GPS-related.
The White House wants to maintain the pattern of steady investment in the GPS program though it appears the administration has decided to go more slowly on deployment of the new GPS III Follow-on (GPS IIIF) satellites.
“I’ve been a revolutionist for 47 years,” Brad Parkinson began a recent invited lecture at Google, “with this stealthy revolution. GPS is indeed a stealthy revolution.” In his lecture “GPS and Humanity” he described how GPS has “stealthily” crept into the fabric of global society and created dependencies that did not exist before.
A new White House executive order gives the federal government a year to develop and test profiles for the responsible use of space-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT)— better practices that it must then incorporate into federal contracting requirements forcritical infrastructure suppliers.
Keeping a mapping drone at a safe distance from rugged vertical terrain during its mission requires intense planning and a GNSS-enabled technology called “terrain following.” A new online video series and free webinar document the real-life challenges and hazards that professional surveyors encounter in their work, this among them.
Americans by the millions are being tracked through their cell phones, using location data sold both legally and, apparently, illegally. The buyers-users range from marketers and bounty hunters to border enforcement groups within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Three different low-cost sensor integrations, covering vehicle navigation in a range of environments, will be covered in a February 12 webinar, “Automotive-Grade GNSS + Inertial for Robust Navigation.”
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told two U.S. Senators in January that his agency could not complete a decision on Ligado Network’s license modification by the end of 2019 because of a late-in-the-year response from a key federal agency.
A recent test demonstrated that the combination of the SecureSync time server manufactured by Orolia and the Satellite Time and Location (STL) service provided by Satelles can deliver extremely accurate timing as compared to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Sapcorda Services GmbH announced the release of its Safe And Precise Augmentation (SAPA) Premium GNSS positioning service, providing GNSS corrections via internet and satellite.
