Courtney Albon
The Pentagon should establish a dedicated budget to support its Golden Dome missile defense shield’s positioning, navigation, and timing needs and assign a PNT lead to coordinate needed improvements to ground and space-based navigation systems, according to a new report from the National Security Space Association.
The organization’s space-focused think tank, the Moorman Center, argues in a Nov. 4 report that PNT capabilities are critical to Golden Dome’s ability to track targets, guide interceptors, and command and control a complex network of missile defense systems. The Department of the Defense, the report states, should recognize this dependency and invest accordingly.
“Urgent investments in a national, resilient PNT architecture with at least two or three sources that have markedly different failure modes are needed to address and mitigate known vulnerabilities of GPS and other systems, while bolstering the effectiveness of Golden Dome,” James Frelk, vice chair of the Moorman Center for Space Studies, writes.
The Pentagon has yet to publicly release a detailed plan for Golden Dome, an advanced missile defense shield that the White House has projected will cost $175 billion to field over the next three years. That price tag is likely to grow as the Defense Department validates and fields more advanced elements of that architecture like space-based interceptors. Whatever shape the program ultimately takes, a robust position, navigation, and timing capability is needed, NSSA argues.
The report identifies potential vulnerabilities across the Defense Department’s PNT enterprise as well as opportunities to upgrade existing systems or leverage commercial alternatives. The GPS constellation, a mix of 31 legacy and modern satellites in medium-Earth orbit, is vulnerable to all kinds of enemy attack from anti-satellite weapons to signal jamming and other electronic warfare effects.
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Russia has repeatedly interfered with GPS, and there are numerous other examples of Iran and China disrupting the capability in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.
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