U.S. RadioNav Plan Waffles on Back-Up
February 23, 2009The U.S. National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) posted on its website — on January 23, 2009 — the 2008 edition of the Federal Radionavigation Plan, official source of radionavigation policy and planning for the federal government, prepared jointly by the departments of Defense (DoD), Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation (DOT). The previous edition of this biennial document appeared in 2005.
The plan covers federally provided radionavigation systems:
- Global Positioning System (GPS)
- Augmentations to GPS
- Long-Range Navigation (Loran)
- Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN)
- Instrument Landing System (ILS)
- Microwave Landing System (MLS)
- Aeronautical Nondirectional Beacons (NDB)
- Very High-Frequency (VHF) Omnidirectional Range
- Vistance Measuring Equipment (DME)
The plan betrays an unwillingness — reportedly on the part of DHS — to provide backup to GPS in the form of enhanced Loran, or eLoran. In 2007, an Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) Independent Assessment Team (IAT) study recommended designation of eLoran as a national PNT backup, a recommendation accepted by key DOT and DHS PNT committees.
But neither DHS nor the Coast Guard (eLoran has supposedly been “migrated” from the latter to the former) have a budget line for eLoran, and the system continues to be funded “operationally,” that is, at the agency’s discretion, without commitment to any future, to specific build-up, or even to basic maintenance.
2025 Architecture. A new section of the FRP lays out a National Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Architecture effort, which has been underway since early 2006. The project takes a long view, as far as the year 2025. It seeks to understand current or impending gaps in the nation’s PNT capability and to chart a course to fill those gaps with efficient, effective solutions.
Government officials familiar with the Architecture indicate that it envisions and provides a framework for rigorous assessment of technologies such as eLoran and others as elements of the future PNT system-of-systems, and that, as it is fully implemented, it will eventually subsume and replace planning documents such as the FRP. An initial version was approved for public release in mid-2008, jointly by the DoD and DOT co-sponsors.
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