Dr. Reginald Brothers, the former Undersecretary of Science and Technology for the Department of Homeland Security, published an op-ed entitled “Fixing a critical vulnerability in our critical infrastructure.” In this piece, Dr. Brothers elaborates on many of the principal findings of the Report on Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Backup and Complementary Capabilities to the Global Positioning System (GPS) that DHS issued to Congress in April and shared with the public in May.
Dr. Brothers endorses commercial sources of PNT to back up GPS rather than having the U.S. Government develop its own monolithic system, and he concurs with the DHS report’s position that open competition is needed to drive innovation. He goes on to state that federal incentives might be necessary to urge critical infrastructure operators to adopt alternative forms of PNT as a backup to GPS, a move that would help protect our national resilience. Dr. Brothers also agrees with the DHS report’s recommendation that alternative forms of PNT should be provided via services that take advantage of existing GPS chipsets and hardware, further suggesting that government standards and industry collaboration are needed to make this happen.
Check out our own position statement about the DHS report to learn more about how STL from Satelles aligns with the report’s findings and recommendations.
