Resilient Positioning, Navigation, and Timing

Defense forces must be ready to operate anywhere, anytime, and often under very challenging conditions—including in contested environments. That means major weapons systems and platforms like aircraft, space systems, and autonomous vehicles must resist complex threats that could compromise their mission.

One common attack vector is to target critical enablers such as positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities. This type of attack is also relevant for the nation's critical infrastructure, including electric utilities, telecommunications networks, transportation systems, and financial institutions.

Just as defense forces must achieve success in the battlespace, federal and privately owned and operated critical infrastructure must perform national functions to keep society running—without fail. Mission and business outcomes depend more and more on resilience at the intersection of cyber and physical systems within operational technologies.

However, most warfighters, program managers, and C-suite executives aren’t fully aware how much their system security depends on protecting their access to trusted and assured PNT, and their organizations aren’t positioned to proactively and gracefully manage the risk of a PNT failure.

In fact, ubiquitous PNT capabilities like the Global Positioning System (GPS) are increasingly in danger of being disrupted by jamming and spoofing. These capabilities could also be compromised by system-level disruptions caused by cyber attacks and supply chain threats, as well as human error. 
                                                   
All in all, the resiliency of PNT is vital to U.S. national and economic security. That is why we help our clients implement federal guidance such as Space Policy Directive 7 (SPD-7), which builds on PNT executive order 13905, and use resources like the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s PNT profile, which is tied to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. And the importance of PNT will only grow as fifth-generation (5G) mobile technology expands connectivity of sensors and systems worldwide.