PNT architecture from the top

GPS World,  Sept, 2007  by Don Jewell

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Major General James B. Armor, Jr. (MGA), director of the National Security Space Office and former GPS Joint Program Office (now GPS Wing) director, spoke with GPS World's contributing editor for military and government, Don Jewell (DJ), himself a former commander at Schriever Air Force Base and deputy chief scientist at Air Force Space Command.

DJ: I'd like to treat this as just a conversation between two old friends. So, what can you tell us about the GPS Architecture Study you've been leading?

MGA: As you know, we were tasked by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and his counterpart, the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, to come up with a Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Architecture for the nation that was designed to keep U.S. leadership in global Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). My immediate supervisors, the official co-sponsors, are the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Network and Information Intelligence (ASD/NII), Mr. John Grimes, and the Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy, Mr. Jeff Shane.

DJ: I've talked to both.

MGA: We were tasked to do this and, as is typical for the National Security Space Office (NSSO), we conducted a very open, transparent, comprehensive and inclusive process. We involved all the PNT architecture stakeholders. I've got a two-page-long list of all of the players that we had in building this architecture from the ground up; and it included not only DoD and DoT, but lots of different agencies like the FAA, the FHWA [Federal Highway Administration], the FRA [Federal Railroad Administration], the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey], and NASA. We also had the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerce, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, all of the Services--Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard,--U.S. Strategic Command, Joint Staff, DDR & E [Director of Defense Research and Engineering] from DoD, the U.S. Naval Observatory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and many others. My point is that this was very inclusive and comprehensive. We made some remarkable progress. I'm really pleased with the results. Just having the meetings and getting the exchange between all these players was a huge payoff. We were able to work on a common terminology, share interests and priorities, and more. We really accomplished some good consensus-building.

We took the results to the General Officer/Senior Executive Service level--the Decision Coordinating Group (DCG)--on the 14th of August. We took their comments to Mr. Grimes that afternoon and Mr. Shane the next day and got their approval to forward the results to all the Stakeholders for formal comment. They were both very pleased with the results. They will sign that out in a memo within the next two weeks. Mr. Mike Shaw of the NCO [National Coordination Office] will then help bring it back to a PNT EXCOM [Executive Committee] with the DepSecDef and DepSecTrans, hopefully before the end of the year.

The point is the results that I'm going to talk about have not received final approval, so I can't get too far outside the process, and I can only give you the highlights of where the architecture is as of today.

At the top level the group was looking to address some basic architectural questions that were listed in our terms of reference and from discussions at the EXCOM and the senior level; questions like: How can the U.S. government most efficiently enable a robust PNT capability? How much capability should the U.S. government provide versus commercial? And how can the U.S. government ensure a continued economic and strategic advantage? The responses at the top level were: The government should first of all focus on providing services in the interest of public safety and national security. Everybody agreed on that. And furthermore the government should protect some of these capabilities and technologies to ensure U.S. strategic advantage. But whatever the government provides for the public good should set the world standard for quality and performance. We are not interested in providing something that somebody else can provide better. If that's the case, then the government should back out of it. The government should also enable architectural robustness by providing common sources using multiple phenomenologies, and by encouraging combinations of technologies in user equipment with a clear definition of how much the user burden is going to be. Finally, the government should promote, in any and every way possible, commercial innovation. In other words, it shouldn't do everything. They [the government] should make a dividing line and say here's a place where commercial innovation ought to fill the gap.

That's sort of the top level, general consensus that we came to. The group further agreed to a vision, and the vision statement is "U.S. leadership in global PNT;" and they decided what the key strategy should be: "Strive for the greatest common denominator on capability." I'll explain that more in a second, but to meet that strategy, there are two primary vectors. Vector one is to use multiple phenomenologies, and the second is to use interchangeable or interoperable solutions. Finally, there are two supporting vectors. Supporting vector one is fusion of PNT with communications. That's a real interesting one, actually. The second supporting vector for this strategy of greater common denominator is--surprise, surprise--more interagency cooperation.