America needs a GPS backup, and California leads the way

For more than a half-century, GPS has given Americans their place. It’s become so deeply embedded in modern life that we rarely notice how much we depend on it. 

With GPS, Uber drivers and DoorDashers pick up passengers and deliver food; pilots and cargo ship captains navigate air and water; and cellular users rely on GPS to provide an accurate location when they call 911.

GPS keeps people, businesses and critical systems safe and humming with certainty — until it doesn’t. Though it’s one of the most widely used technologies, it’s also one of the most vulnerable. 

We already live in a world in which a GPS disruption is a question of when, not if. And yet, we still lack a backup system for such a critical technology. America urgently needs a backup to GPS to keep the world moving forward in the event of a catastrophe. There's one option being tested and validated in California right now, and the state has a front-row seat for this technological innovation.

To understand where GPS needs to go, it’s important to understand what holds it back. Though GPS is familiar to anyone who’s ever seen their blue dot on their navigation app of choice, it can be easily disrupted through spoofing and jamming. Spoofing alters the signals or data associated with GPS to produce different positioning, navigation, or timing information. Put simply, it can trick a GPS receiver into thinking that you’re somewhere else.

Jamming, on the other hand, occurs when a malicious actor sends a powerful radio signal to interfere with the GPS signal, causing it to be lost or distorted. This can occur on both small and large scales. Individuals can cause jamming with a handheld jamming device to hide their personal location, but jamming can also affect massive areas and critical infrastructure like airports and hospitals. 

A few years ago, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport needed to reroute planes due to GPS jamming affecting a 40-mile expanse of airspace. More recently, United Airlines flights experienced GPS jamming near Los Angeles International Airport, leading to crews experiencing navigation problems. Whether accidental or intentional, it is too easy to interfere with a faint GPS signal beamed from space for America not to have a backup.

GPS signals can also struggle to reach indoors. Physical obstacles, like parking garage walls or even urban canyons, can disrupt GPS signals. And more recently, we’ve seen threats associated with solar storms that can wipe out GPS signals or throw them off by as much as 33 feet, affecting operations like precision farming, power grids and emergency communications and response. 

In the most tragic scenarios, GPS jamming can result in the loss of life. In May, an air ambulance fatally crashed into mountains in New Mexico, killing everyone on board. The National Transportation Safety Board reported that GPS jamming was occurring in the area, due to military testing operations. 

Internationally, we’ve seen countless examples recently with the geopolitical conflict across the globe: jamming across the Middle East has become ubiquitous, and Russian satellites have been jamming GPS signals across Europe.

Moreover, Russia and China already have ground-based complements and backups to GPS. They recognize the severity of what would happen to telecommunications, public safety and defense if GPS was significantly compromised. A one-day GPS outage could cost the American economy $1.6 billion, according to an economic analysis by The Brattle Group.

Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon. 

For decades, California has been a geolocation leader and has long been pushing the United States toward innovation prowess through the public and private sectors. For instance, 30 years ago, Rep. Anna Eshoo was one of the first members of Congress, among others, to call for legislative support of wireless 911 call accuracy with the Congressional E9-1-1 Caucus. 

Today, California’s support for these groundbreaking technical advancements is why the state now has a front-row seat in building solutions that can help us prepare for a GPS disruption, while expanding GPS-like accuracy indoors. Right now, the world’s first ground-based, 5G-powered 3D PNT complement and backup to GPS is being tested in Santa Clara County.

A recent side-by-side demonstration shows the significance of this technology. When GPS signals are weakened, degraded, or unavailable, including in indoor environments where satellite signals often struggle to reach, next-gen 5G PNT networks can deliver GPS-like positioning accuracy both outdoors and indoors. The testing is proving the technology’s potential and paving the way to future adoption in commercial 5G networks.

Silicon Valley is an ideal place to show how a new layer of PNT resilience can work in the real world. Santa Clara County is also a microcosm of the types of environments where we need this technology to excel. It’s a complex environment with a dense downtown, an airport and millions of commercial wireless connections. If the system can work there, it can work anywhere. The ongoing testing validates the value of this technology, which can be delivered by cellular networks more broadly across the U.S.

For state and local leaders, the lesson is straightforward. GPS resilience is not just a national security issue. It is a continuity-of-government issue that impacts public safety, critical infrastructure and economic resilience. Every civilian leader needs to consider how they would address a scenario where GPS disappeared and was no longer enabling essential functions.

The state helped pioneer the GPS-enabled economy, from early federal GPS program work in Southern California to the Silicon Valley companies that commercialized location technology. Now, with 5G-powered 3D PNT testing underway, the state can help lead the next chapter of PNT innovation.

Deepak Joseph is vice president of product management at NextNav.