WASHINGTON-A senior US Army official said on October 14 that the US Army has become less and less dependent on GPS-enabled equipment due to the use of increasingly advanced electronic jammer equipment by its opponents. General John Murray, commander of the Army’s Future Command, told reporters at the annual meeting of the US Army Association: “We are trying to develop methods other than GPS to obtain PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing).”
Murray said: “Because of the risk of being disturbed, there must be several ways to get PNT into the future battlefield.” The Army Future Command, based in Austin, Texas, is a new organization designed to support the Army for the long term Modernize and prepare for future wars. Murray warned that the Army will not leave GPS and will continue to support the US Air Force’s efforts to develop a new generation of GPS satellites that emit stronger signals. But he said the army intends to invest in technology to reduce its dependence on GPS and will train troops to master electronic warfare tactics.
Murray said the top priority is to deploy anti-portable jammer systems to the armed forces in Europe and the Korean Peninsula. Murray announced that this month the Army will deploy a new type of anti-jamming GPS device for the lightly armored Stryker vehicles of the German Second Cavalry Regiment. Over the next few years, hundreds of other vehicles in the US European Command area will be equipped with these devices.
Like most military combat platforms, Stryker infantry carriers also use multiple GPS receivers. A device called MAPS (Fixed Precision Navigation and Timing System) is installed on Strykers. The MAPS kit replaces multiple GPS receivers with a device that uses a GPS receiver. It also uses chip-level atomic clocks for timing, selective availability, and anti-spoofing modules (SAASM) for navigation. There is an anti-jamming antenna to distribute PNT information. Tests have shown that even if the GPS signal is weakened or weakened, MAPS can still continue to work. The Army plans to install MAPS in heavy armored vehicles (such as Bradley tanks, M1 Abrams tanks and M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers). A similar device was developed for the soldiers who were removed.
The Army’s Future Command has established a group called “Ensuring Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Cross-functional Team” to study this issue. Future Command stated that the team will “provide accurate and trustworthy PNT for soldiers even if GPS signals are destroyed or rejected”. GPS alternatives that will be explored in the next few years include the use of low-Earth orbit communication satellites to provide time signals. The future command will also recommend that soldiers receive navigation warfare training so that they can better prepare for the environment that refuses GPS. This summer, the US Army held a PNT assessment exercise (PNTAX) at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to test how troops would fight if PNT signals were disturbed.