Out in Front: It's the PNT, Mr. President
March 1, 2009 GPS World
Mr. President, Sir:
The American electorate placed you in the highest office in the land based on a clearly delineated platform of Yes We Can and Change Is Now. The American GPS industry — and, I dare say, the worldwide GNSS community — stand squarely upon on those same principles.
The U.S. Global Positioning System itself was conceived and implemented, back before you began your political career, by a small cadre of military and government officials who embraced these two empowering axioms and entered unflinchingly into action.
Further, the U.S. GPS industry from infancy to its current young maturity could serve as a poster child for the economic stimulus that this country, and the world, so desperately need. Invest a little, reap a lot. The power of PNT is so strong. Economic benefits, jobs, development, and new capability all roll out to the international horizon.
We now come to the rub.
The recently released Federal Radionavigation Plan, while ably steering a course through myriad government constituencies and mapping the basis of a vision for the future, demonstrates that all necessary parties are not onboard and cleared for action. The Department of Homeland Security perseverates in its bureaucratic befuddlement, blindly adhering to single-thread PNT, ignoring the crucial concern of GPS back-up and truly robust PNT.
The plan, a consensus document representing the optimum agreement obtainable from agency minds, steps well back from expert wisdom and informed thought on enhanced Loran as back-up. Government-commissioned timing criticality studies and e-Loran Independent Assessment Team recommendations go unreleased and apparently unheeded.
Your administration brings the chance to turn to a new page in PNT as in other matters. The Department of Defense is beholden to your orders, and most likely happy to carry out your commands — just send money.
Recognize in deed as well as in word the pivotal role of positioning, navigation, and timing in the nation’s critical infrastructure. Back it up with the conviction and commitment that your inaugural address displayed towards other pressing national matters.
Congress has approved your deputy secretary of defense nominee, who has at least an arm’s length acquaintance with GPS. Now appoint as his co-chair of the PNT ExCom a deputy secretary of transportation who knows the issues, values PNT, embraces robustness, and recognizes the economic benefits that strong PNT can bring. Should you phone, I have a name in mind.
We both know that such a call falls somewhere short of unlikely. Others in and on the fringes of your large advisory body can help.
PNT is an economic driver — that should be clear to all. Turn for a moment to infrastructure and national security. The largest class of users, the timing users (a.k.a. cell-phone owners, encrypters in the financial sphere, and power companies), may not even recognize they’re using PNT. But when the next solar cycle — not to mention any unforeseen attack — rolls around in 2012, they will wake up, rudely. Unless you act now.
It is so vitally important. Give PNT the visionary leadership in Washington that your audacity of hope for America, and for the world, requires. Back it forcefully.
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