UK’s PNT foresight could presage world leadership and profits

In October 2023, the United Kingdom’s government announced a 10-point “policy framework” to greatly increase the nation’s resilience to disruption of vital positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services.

Two months later, Vladimir Putin began regularly jamming and spoofing GPS for aircraft and ships across a broad swath of the Baltic and northern Europe. It was the world’s first instance of such extensive activity in the absence of armed combat.

Properly executed, Britain’s policy framework will position it as a global leader in sovereign and resilient PNT. It will also provide ample new business opportunities for British businesses to fill this growing need.

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Awareness and Planning

The product of years of effort under both Coalition and Conservative governments, the PNT policy framework addresses challenges that have been extensively documented and studied.

The nation’s over-reliance on space- based PNT has long been recognized. Its National Risk Register listed solar activity as a threat to PNT in 2012. When, despite extensive lobbying by the UK, the rest of Europe shut down its Loran transmitters in 2015 to prevent competition with Galileo, Britain kept its single transmitter on air as a national precise time reference. In 2018 a “Blackett Report” documented the nation’s over-dependence, estimated the consequences of service outages and made a series of recommendations. A 2021 economic report further estimated the scale of the problem.

All this well before Russia’s demonstrations of the fragility of GNSS with its attacks on Ukraine and recent aggression in the Baltic.

Yet action on Britain’s way forward was repeatedly deferred.

The sticking point seems to have been deciding upon the mechanics of how the government would deal with the invisible PNT utility, which is a capability essential to every government department and every sector of the economy and society. Should it be in the Department for Transport? Perhaps in Business and Trade or Defence? Some suggested the Cabinet Office should lead addressing the PNT challenge.

The final decision was a cross- government office hosted by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The office includes members from the Ministry of Defence and is tasked with leading and coordinating a whole-of-government approach.

Moving Forward

It is easy to be skeptical about the success of this new enterprise. Regardless of the nation, government policy frameworks, strategies and the like often can be a way for politicians and bureaucrats to create the impression of action without having to ever really do anything. Documents are often published and then go on a shelf, never to be seen again.

That does not seem to be the case here, though.

The very first action item in the PNT policy framework is to “[e]stablish a National PNT Office …to improve resilience and drive growth with responsibility for PNT policy, coordination, and delivery.”

While several of the 10 items begin with “develop a proposal for…,” the projects are both considered and specific, such as a timing system “of last resort” for the Ministry of Defence and the expansion of eLoran.

Britain’s integrated governance and system-of-systems approach to PNT can make the nation virtually immune to the kinds of disruptions and infrastructure challenges being seen in the Baltic and conflict zones around the world.

Achieving that goal will involve the development of new user equipment, systems to prioritize and integrate different PNT sources, new interfaces for various infrastructures, improvements to existing technologies (e.g., an encrypted component for eLoran to make it even more secure and reliable), and new policies for responsible PNT use in critical applications.

When complete, the UK will have the sovereign and resilient PNT it needs to support national, homeland and economic security.

Global Leadership and Profit

Yet Great Britain is not the only nation over-dependent on fragile PNT signals from space provided by others. Most of the world is in the same situation.

By actively promoting and sharing its developing expertise and tech stack, the UK will become a global thought leader and technology provider for sovereign and resilient PNT. A capability that will be in greater and greater demand as malicious actors, both large and small, continue to exploit the weaknesses of satellite-based navigation and timing.

Yet, to realize these benefits, the UK must act swiftly and seize the moment.
At present there is a leadership vacuum in this field. While China has its own extremely robust and integrated PNT system based on a combination of clocks, fiber, terrestrial broadcast eLoran, and space, it does not seem eager to export that to others. China may prefer to woo nations into dependence on its BeiDou satellite PNT system, rather than enabling others’ sovereignty.

Additionally, while entrepreneurial South Korea has implemented its own space-based, eLoran and fiber PNT, it is unclear how integrated the various sources are. We have also seen no evidence that they have plans to share, or sell, their success to others.

As disruptions to GPS and other GNSS continue to increase around the globe, so, too, do calls for and moves toward solutions that include alternatives.

Last year the European Union issued a tender for an integrated GNSS/eLoran receiver. Türkiye has implemented its own local terrestrial PNT systems in several port and urban areas. India envisions expanding its regional navigation satellite system to cover the globe.

Britain has the plans, capability, and resources to become the world leader in this essential and growing technology sector — and the government is working with the Royal Institute of Navigation and other learned bodies to make it a reality.
Yet its window of opportunity may already be closing.

Rather than regarding its PNT policy framework as a routine item of work, we hope the UK government seizes this opportunity for international leadership and reaps all the inherent diplomatic, security and economic benefits.