Just five months ago, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research (DOT/OST-R), Volpe Center issued a 15-day quick-turn Request for Information (RFI), which was subsequently extended for an additional 15 days, to industry seeking feedback on the availability of operationally ready (Technical Readiness Level or TRL ≥ 8) complementary positioning navigation and timing (CPNT) technologies to meet critical infrastructure needs when GPS service is not available, degraded or disrupted.
Now, Volpe has put out another relatively short-fuse formal Request for Quote (RFQ) to award multiple contracts to presumably some of the RFI-responsive companies.
In this exclusive interview with OST-R’s Director for the Office of Positioning, Navigation and Timing & Spectrum Management Karen Van Dyke, Inside GNSS gleans some insights into the why and how of the latest CPNT developments.
Why Now?
Jamming and spoofing has been a pervasive issue for the PNT community for years, but recent world events have ramped up these and other challenges to PNT (e.g., Russian cyberattacks on satellites and alleged plans to put nukes in space). If anything, the increasing and real nature of these threats have underscored the need to move toward having viable CPNT capabilities sooner rather than later.
Perhaps in response, during each of the past two fiscal years, Congress has appropriated about $15 million in additional funds on top of DOT OST-R’s budget request. Not surprisingly, Congress has been applying “significant pressure…on moving out and marching forward in expediting CPNT implementation,” Van Dyke said.
Yet implementation is not easy. Van Dyke foot stomped that, “DOT cannot recommend deploying additional technologies until they have been thoroughly tested, are well understood with regard to their own limitations and vulnerabilities and have been run through their paces just like GPS.”
Hence, we have this latest RFQ. It seeks proposals from CPNT vendors interested in allowing Volpe to test, evaluate and monitor their services’ performance against scenarios involving disruptions or manipulations of GPS/GNSS services and CPNT-specific threat vectors. The RFQ furthers the Rapid Phase of DOT’s CPNT Action Plan, with the aim of advancing CPNT adoption across federal interagency initiatives, in alignment with critical infrastructure PNT user requirements.
Responses to the RFQ must specify that the bidder’s CPNT services will be up and running, and in compliance with all government specs, within six months after award at one of these types of test ranges: Federal Government-hosted; government-aligned critical infrastructure or vendor-facilitated (caveat on this one: when the other two models are not appropriate and/or beneficial to the government). Once ready to roll, the expected period of performance for the selected vendors will be one year.
From Crawl to Run
This is not Volpe’s first rodeo on testing CPNT. In 2020, the Center conducted CPNT demonstrations that resulted in a report to Congress. As noted, Congress has since (FY22 and FY23 appropriations) provided a significant budget in support of those important recommendations. Between 2020 and now, DOT has continued to be deliberate in its approach toward both toughening and complementing PNT with other technologies.
On the bolstering side of the house, in the latter part of 2020, DOT OST-R started a pilot program with the agency’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) to evaluate CPNT technologies, as well as test anti GPS-jamming and spoofing capabilities using Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas (CRPA) on vessels. While CRPA proved effective, International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrictions on their civil use have created legal roadblocks to their deployment.
Also in 2020, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DOT collaborated on the 2020 GPS Testing for Critical Infrastructure (GET-CI)…
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