A Ukrainian intelligence assessment obtained by CNN and CBS reported an Iranian UAV downed in Ukraine contained technology from companies in the United States and other western countries. The White House has since launched an investigation as to how the technology — including semiconductors, GPS modules and engines — were obtained by Iran.
Screenshot: CBS video
The components removed from an Iranian Shahed-136 UAV totaled 52, 40 of which were manufactured by 13 different U.S. companies. The remaining components were manufactured by other western companies and companies based in Japan, Taiwan and China.The United States monitors exports and imposed restrictions and sanctions to prevent Iran from obtaining components for UAVs. Officials are now looking to enhance enforcement of the sanctions and are encouraging companies to monitor their supply chain, as well as identify third-party distributors who may be re-selling the technology to Iran.
U.S. companies are not alone in having to closely monitor their supply chains. U-blox, a Swiss semiconductor company, made a statement reinforcing its company policy, which bans the use of its technology in weapons. This was after u-blox GNSS modules were reportedly found in Russian UAVs.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) seeks to extend Trump policies and repeal timing law counter to its own study and industry input
The Biden administration’s budget proposal delivered to Congress last week includes $17 million for the small Department of Transportation (DOT) office responsible for leading civil positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) efforts for the nation. This is a marked increase over the $2 million allocated in 2020 and estimated $5 million being spent this fiscal year.
At the same time, it seeks to repeal the National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 that mandated DOT establish a terrestrial timing backup for GPS. This, despite the findings of a recently published RAND study completed for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and other input from a telecommunications industry group.
Proposed Spending
The administration’s budget proposes $17 million for the DOT Office of Research and Technology to be split among three areas of effort.
Monitoring and detection. The first is a $3.5 million “(GNSS) performance monitoring and interference detection” project. This is a one-time request that is expected to be followed by a request for $1 million in yearly funding to maintain and operate the capability.
While these may not seem like sufficient funds to many, DOT is tasked with working with other departments and agencies, and to leverage existing capabilities. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is specifically named as an important partner with DOT in this effort. NGA already has responsibility for issuing worldwide navigation warnings for U.S. interests. It also has access to a wide variety of information that could be used for the project.
Signal authentication. Another $3.5 million is proposed for Executive Order (EO) 13905 Implementation and GPS Signal Authentication. The EO was issued in February 2020. It seeks to leverage market forces and education to create additional sources of PNT and encourage users to access them. This approach has been criticized by many as unworkable without extensive regulation and mandates for users, while still not addressing the majority of American companies and users.
$1.5 million of this $3.5 million will go to further implement the EO through development of a “PNT threat space model” and otherwise support inter-department PNT profile and research and development efforts.
$2 million would be allocated for a one-time investment in GPS signal authentication to “result in the development and validation of requirements for data and signal authentication capability for civil GPS,” reads the proposal. DOT has regularly requested much greater sums to establish civil signal monitoring, leading many to believe the requirements are already well known. One industry observer suggested this could be “a study in lieu of action.”
GPS Backup. $10 million would be spent for “GPS Backup/Complementary PNT Technologies Research,” essentially follow-on studies to the DOT GPS Backup Technologies Demonstration. “These efforts will further develop PNT modeling, simulation, and testing tools, as well as standards and performance monitoring tools needed to evaluate integration of diverse positioning, navigation, and/or timing technologies into end-user applications. This work will also support development of cyber-secure receivers,” reads the proposal.
One congressional staff member expressed shock at seeing that provision. “The act was the epitome of thoughtful, bipartisan congressional effort,” the staff member said. “It was co-sponsored in the Senate by Markey and Cruz, for crying out loud. You can’t get more bipartisan than that. To have this dumped on us without any notice or consultation is amazing. It is not something I would expect from this White House. I am not sure how serious a proposal it is.”
Some observers on the hill and elsewhere have opined that, rather than the repeal proposal being a well-vetted administration policy, it is an effort by OMB staff held over from the previous administration to carry forward and preserve President Turmp’s Executive Order 13905 and other PNT policies. Rather than focusing on establishing a GPS backup capability, they instead urged PNT users to find and pay for alternatives on their own.
Harsh Tone, False Assertions
Compounding the surprise is the exceptionally harsh tone in the proposal, and assertions that many claim are outright false.
Among the problems with the language seen by observers is its assertion that NTRSA seeks to establish a single backup for GPS services.
“It’s unclear to me where such an assertion is supported in the record,” said Greg Winfree, former Assistant Secretary at DOT in the Obama administration. “NTRSA requires the department to incorporate findings from the GPS back-up demonstration program. That project found a variety of systems are needed to protect America,” he said. “NTRSA does require establishment of at least one system, which is incredibly important. Without at least one alternative in place, GPS is one of highest priority targets for our enemies. We have to get the bullseye off of GPS. NTRSA does that.”
This point on national security was reinforced by Scott Pace, head of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University (GWU). Pace was executive director for the Space Council in the Trump administration. At a recent GWU webinar on the topic, he commented that having an alternative to GPS will contribute to national security and improve global stability. It will “lower the pressure on us to escalate and respond” should GPS satellites be damaged, or services disrupted, he said.
China, Russia, and other nations have terrestrial PNT alternatives to GNSS already in operation. This imbalance creates strategic and tactical problems for the United States, according to many analysts.
The proposed budget also describes NTRSA’s goal of providing at least one backup as “inefficient, anti-competitive and potentially harmful to the existing market for back-up/complementary PNT services.”
“Exactly the opposite is true,” according to Diana Furchtgott-Roth, GWU economics professor. Until January of this year, she led civil PNT issues within the Trump administration as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at DOT. “DOT’s Complementary PNT and GPS Backup Technologies Demonstration Report, published in January, specifically stated that a variety of technologies are needed to complement GPS. What is the most cost-efficient in an urban area is not necessarily the most cost-efficient in a rural or maritime area.”
“PNT is a utility used by every American. Having affordable complementary service available to people in rural and urban areas is the height of efficiency. It is unquestionably in the interests of national and economic security. In fact, access to at least one alternative should be free so to encourage adoption and best protect the nation,” she said.
“GPS is now a free service provided by the government, and the government is responsible for making sure that it is reliable. GPS outages would cause harm across a broad range of economic activities, including emergency services, general aviation, pipelines, and the electricity grid,” according to Furchtgott-Roth.
No-So-New and Contradictory Research
The proposal to repeal NTRSA cites “recent federal analyses” as part of its justification. One of these is likely a report done for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by the RAND Corporation. Touted in a press release last month as “new research” and labeled “Published 2021,” the work was actually completed in 2019. DHS representatives have said the delay in publication was needed for review and approval.
Yet the report was the basis for a DHS report to Congress submitted in April 2020. This has caused some to opine that its publication was timed to reinforce OMB’s effort to repeal NTRSA. “You don’t submit reports to Congress based on un-reviewed, un-approved material,” said a retired DHS official. “The timing of its release is clearly deliberate.”
At the same time, it found that government investment in a national timing network, such as the one mandated by the NTRSA, is likely warranted. Saying that a complete backup for all GPS services in all parts of the country is not cost-beneficial, the study says there are some “…federal initiatives that do appear to be cost effective or close to cost effective.” These include “Timing-only backup through fiber/FirstNet, eLoran, or STL [Satelles].”
According to the retired DHS official, this directly contradicts OMB’s assertion that NTRSA should be repealed. “Either they didn’t read the whole thing, or they counted on most people not reading farther than the top-level recommendations,” he said. “And those top recommendations were clearly selected to match OMB’s desired outcome.”
Telecommunications Industry Cites Need for NTRSA Provisions
The May 2021 “Report to the President on Communications Resiliency” also runs counter to claims made in the budget proposal. In it, the president’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (coordinated by DHS) cites the need for GPS alternatives in telecommunications and urges President Biden to fund them. It specifically mentions the need for a national timing architecture, and cites the provisions of NTRSA several times as a step in the right direction.
The industry group Alliance for Telecommunications Solutions also sent letters in May to congressional leaders urging funding for GPS alternatives.
Continuing the Discussion
Congress has become increasingly dissatisfied with executive branch actions on resilient PNT over the last decade.
The most recent evidence of this is an extensive and highly critical report of the Department of Defense’s approach to PNT resilience released May 10 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Among its recommendations was to not rely on GPS as a primary PNT source but look to more resilient technologies.
While President Trump’s 2020 Executive Order did not make precisely the same recommendation to civil users, it did focus on “responsible use” of PNT and transitioning to using additional, non-GPS dependent sources.
The question still under discussion is how far the government should go to support such a transition.
Seasoned observers regularly comment that Congress has the “power of the purse” and every president’s budget is “dead on arrival” regardless of which party controls the White House.
It seems clear that resilient PNT will be a topic of lively debate between the Congress and the White House, as well as internally on the hill, for the foreseeable future.
In letters sent today to the White House and U.S. Congress, more than 90 organizations representing a broad range of industries urged President Biden and members of Congress to set aside the Ligado Order approved during the previous administration.
The industries urged the president and lawmakers to work with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “stay and ultimately set aside the Ligado Order,” saying that it “poses significant threats to the reliability of GPS for millions of Americans.”
“The risk to American lives and to the American economy are simply too great,” the group wrote in the letters.
“A year ago today, the FCC made the dangerous and misguided decision to allow Ligado Networks to operate a terrestrial network on frequencies adjacent to GPS despite threats to GPS reliability and the concerns of Congress and virtually all federal agencies that rely on GPS to protect our national and economic security,” said Dale Leibach, spokesman for the Keep GPS Working Coalition.
“We are hopeful that under the new administration, something can be done to stop Ligado from proceeding with its plan and we are extremely thankful to the many members of Congress and government officials who have rightly pointed to the very harmful impact this decision will have on countless consumers, farmers, ranchers, pilots, boat owners, surveyors, engineers and construction companies if it is not reversed,” Leibach said.
The GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA) sent a letter on Feb. 16 to the White House National Economic Council, asking it solve the issues with Ligado interfering with GPS spectrum.
“Strong and unified leadership by the U.S. government is needed to preserve and advance GPS — leadership that recognizes the inherently unique functional and technical attributes of GPS,” wrote J. David Grossman, GPSIA executive director, in the letter.
Panel on risks to sat services
GPSIA’s J. David Grossman will be speaking Feb. 17 at 2 p.m. ET, in a panel discussion entitled “Satellite-Based Services at Risk?” Other speakers include former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell; Capt. Steve Jangelis, representing the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA); and Susan Avery, former president of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Register here.
The coalition, which counts Garmin, Apple and John Deere among its members, was ensnared in the dispute between Trump executive branch agencies and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over whether the commission’s Ligado approval decision in 2020 would affect GPS.
In the letter to NEC Director Brian Deese, the group argues that these squabbles “are not unique to GPS” and “reflect a continued pattern by which shared decision-making is replaced by the FCC acting with exclusive authority as the final arbiter.”
GPSIA recommends that the council
update a memorandum of understanding between the FCC and Commerce Department to help ease decision-making;
install a detailee from federal agencies managing GPS in the FCC’s engineering office; and
have each FCC commissioner add a technical adviser to its staff.
The letter concludes, “GPSIA and its members stand ready to be a resource to the NEC and others in the Administration seeking to more efficiently allocate spectrum, while protecting critical incumbent systems and services.”
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is asking for ideas on what technology to research to protect GPS. The research and development dollars are earmarked for projects that minimize or eliminate disruption to critical infrastructure from intentional and unintentional interference.
The office is seeking input “from all interested parties on the development of a National Research and Development Plan for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Resilience.
“The plan will focus on the research and development (R&D) and pilot testing needed to develop additional PNT systems and services that are resilient to interference and manipulation and that are not dependent upon global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).
“The plan will also include approaches to integrate and use multiple PNT services for enhancing resilience,” the RFI states.
The effort is specifically headed by the Subcommittee on Resilience Science and Technology (SRST.) “The input received on these topics will assist the subcommittee in developing recommendations for prioritization of R&D activities,” the RFI states.
Deadline for comments is 11:59 pm ET on Sept. 9.
Responses should be submitted via email to [email protected] — include “RFI Response: PNT Resilience” in the subject line of the message.
On Feb. 12, the White House released an “Executive Order on Strengthening National Resilience through Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Services.”
It is gratifying to see White House attention to this issue. The increase in public awareness it brings will benefit individual users and the nation as a whole.
The order also hints at market driven solutions that could quickly improve America’s PNT resilience.
Needless delays
Unfortunately, the order fails to direct immediate action on this critical national and economic security issue. Instead it needlessly pushes most action and responsibility off for a year or more to do “more study.”
This is hard to understand as most of the “more study” has already been completed. For example, the order tells the Department of Commerce to take up to a year to examine PNT use in various sectors, and identify vulnerabilities and user needs. The Department of Homeland Security has already completed a National Risk Assessment and, according to congressional staff, has recently completed a report on user requirements mandated in 2017’s National Defense Authorization Act.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy is given a year to develop a plan to test robust and resilient non-GNSS PNT services (but is not required to actually do any testing). Congress mandated such a test program in 2017 and funded it with $10 million in 2018. After much delay, the Department of Transportation will complete the testing in May of this year.
The order gives the Department of Commerce six months to make available a time source to support critical infrastructure. For more than 60 years, the nation’s master clock has been available to users at the department’s NIST Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.
Note the challenge has not been the clock, but that the nation has no way — other than vulnerable GPS signals — to distribute time at the needed level of accuracy to millions of critical infrastructure nodes. Government studies in 2007 and 2014 determined that the best way to do this was with a ground-based system. The Department of Transportation’s ongoing testing program is examining this issue again.
Market-driven solutions
Aside from increasing public awareness, the best thing the Executive Order does is to point a way forward for market-driven resilient PNT solutions.
The order calls for federal contracts to (in 21 months, if everyone does their jobs on time) require that vendors use existing and new resilient PNT sources.
If this eventually happens, the government could leverage its enormous influence in the market and stimulate creation of one or more commercial distribution systems for resilient, non-GNSS PNT. This is a great concept, and very much in keeping with America’s tradition of letting market forces solve some of its biggest problems.
But this solution will not spring into life on its own.
No commercial entity will invest tens of millions of dollars, or more, in a PNT system without assurance in advance of an income stream. Especially since federal contracting officers can and will waive the requirement if offerors cannot reasonably meet it.
If stimulating a market solution is the administration’s intent, it must stay actively involved and encourage the process for some time to come.
This includes complying with the 2018 law that requires establishment of at least one wireless, terrestrial, difficult-to-disrupt source to back up the timing signals provided by GPS.
Fortunately, this can be done by leveraging the free market at minimal cost and with little administrative effort.
By contracting to subscribe to a commercial service that will provide resilient PNT signals, the government need only invest a relatively small yearly sum using a fairly simple contract vehicle. Such a contracting technique has been used before with great success.
In 2007 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did this as a way to establish its ADS-B aviation tracking and safety network. Once the subscription contract was let, the commercial provider was able to get financing and quickly build out the system.
Today, the FAA gets the information it needs, doesn’t have the headache of owning and maintaining a large network, and even shares in the revenue the system owner earns from selling data to other companies.
Additional leadership needed
It is important to remember that, regardless of the issue, presidential pronouncements are not enough.
In 2004, President G.W. Bush directed a number of actions to protect the nation’s critical PNT, including establishment of a GPS backup capability. While 16 years later his directive is still official executive branch policy, that mandate and many others from his order are still unexecuted.
Real improvements to PNT resilience and our nation’s security depend not on one-time pronouncements, but continued leadership focus and engagement.
This is always a challenge for initiatives driven by the White House. It will be doubly so in this case as there is no clear department leader for civil PNT issues the administration can rely on while it attends to the next issue of the day.
GPS expert Scott Pace has been chosen by the White House to serve as executive secretary of the National Space Council. Pace is currently director of the Space Policy Institute and Professor of Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University (GWU).
He also serves as a special counselor to the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board.
Pace has a long career in space policy and is well known and highly respected in the community. Ever since the Trump Administration indicated that it would reestablish the Space Council, his is virtually the only name rumored to be in the running to serve as the head of its staff, according to the announcement on Space Policy Online.
The council was officially reestablished on June 30, and is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence. Pace was spotted at Kennedy Space Center last week where Pence addressed the KSC workforce, further fueling speculation that he would be appointed as head of the Space Council.
In its announcement, the White House said Pace has “honed his expertise in the areas of science, space, and technology” citing his career at GWU, NASA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the RAND Corporation’s Science and Technology Policy Institute.
Pace received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvey Mudd College, a master’s in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technology and Policy from MIT, and a Ph.D. in policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School.
During the George W. Bush Administration’s second term, Pace was NASA’s Associate Administrator for Program Analysis and Evaluation under then-NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. He was closely involved in formulating the Constellation program to return humans to the surface of the Moon and then going on to Mars.
His expertise is much broader, however. He was deputy director and acting director of the Office of Space Commerce at the Department of Commerce from 1990 to 1993, when that office reported to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce (instead of being part of NOAA as it is today).
He has been very active on GPS issues for many years, including protecting GPS spectrum at World Radiocommunications Conferences (WRCs) organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the WRCs in 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2007.
He also has served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (2009 and 2011-2015). Today he is vice-chair of NOAA’s Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing, of which he has been a member for several years.
John Logsdon, who founded GWU’s Space Policy Institute and is Professor Emeritus there, said via email that he could think of “no one more qualified” to take on the “essential task of crafting a strategic approach to using U.S. space capabilities to advance this country’s geopolitical interests and to forge productive collaboration among all government space actors and the private sector.”
Mary Lynne Dittmar, president and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration (CDSE), also praised the announcement.
“Dr. Pace’s unique combination of experience in government, the private sector, and academia, and his internationally-recognized expertise in space policy, make him an exemplary selection” for the position. She added that CDSE looks forward to working with “the Council, its staff, and the vice president’s office to support U.S. leadership and strategic interests in space.”
CDSE is an alliance of space industry businesses and advocacy groups that support deep space human exploration and science.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is seeking public input on development of the second U.S. National Plan for Civil Earth Observations, the 2017 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations.
Today, the Federal Register posted OSTP’s Request for Information (RFI) on the development of the plan, which will build upon the priorities and supporting actions identified in the 2014 National Plan for Civil Earth Observations. Through it, OSTP aims to advance the United State’s capabilities to ensure stable, continuous and coordinated Earth observations for the benefit of society.
The public input provided will inform OSTP as it works with federal agencies and other stakeholders to develop the plan.
OSTP welcomes input to develop the plan, and encourages anyone interested to respond via the RFI’s electronic template (to be posted here), which should be sent to [email protected].
Comments of up to approximately 2,000 characters per question are requested and must be received by 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Time), July 15, 2016, to be considered.
Secret Service detained a man Thursday afternoon who was trying to fly an unmanned aerial vehicle over the White House fence, reports CNN.
The park on the north side of the White House was locked down while the incident was investigated, but the lockdown was lifted by Thursday afternoon.
President Barack Obama is not in the White House, but at Camp David.
This is the second drone incident this year, following an incident where a hobbyist who had been drinking crashed a drone on the White House lawn. A no-fly zone covers most of the D.C. area.
The quadcopter that crashed on the White House lawn. Photo: U.S. Secret Service
A government employee who crashed his friend’s drone on the White House lawn was apparently drinking while droning.
The employee, who works for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), was questioned Jan. 26 by the Secret Service as the operator of the drone involved in Monday’s incident at the White House. On Monday at 3 a.m., the drone quadcopter crashed on the White House lawn.
The employee contacted authorities, according to the NGA. The employee was off duty and is not involved in work related to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles in any capacity at NGA, the agency said in a statement.
“Even though the employee was using a personal item while off duty, the agency takes the incident very seriously and remains committed to promoting public trust and transparency,” the statement reads.
The Secret Service is investigating the incident.
Firmware to Force No-Fly Zone Compliance
The drone is a Phantom made by Chinese company DJI. The company plans to roll out firmware within days to prevent any of its drones from flying over the D.C. area, in accordance with Federal Aviation Authority guidelines. This will help hobbyists who aren’t aware of or unable to comply with “no-fly zones,” such as the one that covers most of the D.C. area.
Once updated, the DJI drones will not be able to take off from or fly into the nation’s capital or a 15-mile radius around it. GPS technology in the drones will be able to identify the no-fly zone, warn the operator and then stop at the no-fly zone’s border. DJI’s flight software currently prevents flights within a radius of major airports.
“With the unmanned aerial systems community growing on a daily basis, we feel it is important to provide pilots additional tools to help them fly safely and responsibly,” said Michael Perry, DJI’s company spokesperson. “We will continue cooperating with regulators and lawmakers to ensure the skies stay safe and open for innovation.”
The mandatory firmware update is for the Phantom 2, Phantom 2 Vision, and Phantom 2 Vision+ models. It adds a No-Fly Zone centered on downtown Washington, D.C., extending for a 15.5-mile radius in all directions. Phantom pilots in this area will not be able to take off from or fly into this airspace.
“The restriction is part of a planned extension of DJI’s No Fly Zone system that prohibits flight near airports and other locations where flight is restricted by local authorities,” DJI said. “These extended no fly zones will include over 10,000 airports registered with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and will expand no fly zones to ensure they cover the runways at major international airports.
“DJI is also continuing to update its no-fly zone list in compliance with local regulations to include additional sensitive locations and to prevent flight across national borders. These new safety features will be released across DJI’s flying platforms in the near future.”
