Allan Rutter: 00:16
Howdy everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation, conversations about how we get ourselves to the stuff we need from one place to another. I’m Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Allan Rutter: 00:29
My younger brother and I learned how to read maps before we read books, owing to our mother’s dormant sense of direction. Today, I check the map on my phone before I commute in D/FW or travel between Texas cities. Those maps depend on our nation’s GPS network. The network is socially and economically critical, but it is also distressingly brittle. How the system works and might be improved is the subject of our conversation today. We have the chance to visit with a national expert in satellite-based navigation systems. Mr. Dana Goward is retired from the federal senior executive service, having served as the director of marine transportation systems for the U.S. Coast Guard, leading 12 different navigation-related business lines, budgeted at over $1.3 billion a year. He’s also a licensed helicopter and fixed-wing pilot. He has served as a navigator at sea and as a retired Coast Guard captain. With a history of that many aircraft and vessels, Dana is the Tom Cruise of the GPS expanded universe. Dana, welcome to Thinking Transportation.

Dana Goward: 01:39
Well, thank you very much. And it’s a privilege to be talking with you, especially since it’s the very first time I’ve ever been referred to as Tom Cruise. Now, Forrest Gump, that might be a more accurate comparison–showing up in all kinds of different places unexpectedly and not necessarily being sure of where you are. But thank you very much. It’s good to be here with you. Appreciate it.

Allan Rutter: 01:60
Well, that’s a good segue into my introductory question we try to ask people. Tell our listeners a bit about how you got into transportation, particularly about your multimodal journey that included the air and sea. How’d that happen?

Dana Goward: 02:15
Well, you know, it’s a very interesting question. I have been involved as a professional navigator for 55 years, as I think back on it. And even before that, if you were a Boy Scout, you were familiar with orienteering. But back when I first began as a professional navigator, having graduated from the Coast Guard Academy and trying to guide our Coast Guard patrol ship offshore without the benefit of GPS, it was a very different world 55 years ago when I first began as a professional navigator. We had received training in celestial navigation, sextant, and chronometers. And having been to the Coast Guard Academy, I was privileged to sail a tall ship across the sea, but we certainly didn’t have the benefit of GPS. And reflecting back on the last many decades of navigation, it really has transformed from something that was very much a difficult art to now something that people take for granted every day.

Dana Goward: 03:10
And it’s an amazing transition. I remember when we first got GPS in the helicopter–all of a sudden I didn’t have to worry about where my next fuel cache was, where my landing point was, and where I was in the search pattern. I could actually look for people in the water most of the time that we were flying. And I know that there are hundreds of people today–just from my own personal experience who are alive–that probably wouldn’t have been, but for the advent of GPS. So it’s been an interesting journey, as you say, being involved both in maritime and aviation and seeing the difference that the global positioning system (GPS) has made to transportation of all sorts.

Allan Rutter: 03:51
Yeah, you mentioned how GPS has changed. We moved to the Dallas /Fort Worth area coming back from my stint in DC about 2004. And when we were looking for a house, it was with a big spiral-bound MapScope book where we went from one quadrant to another. And when I tell people about what a MapScope book is now, they look at me like when I’m talking about what a phone book was.

Dana Goward: 04:19
Well, don’t lose that backup because navigation is very important. So we should always have multiple ways of navigating, not overly depend upon technology and GPS, because when you got to get there, you got to get there whether things are working or not or whether signals are being interfered with or not.

Allan Rutter: 04:34
Which we will talk about in just a little bit. We learned how to read maps before we could read books. My mother had a famously horrible sense of direction. So sense of direction is something that has always been important to us. Now, today you are the president and director of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation. Tell us a little more about what the foundation does, who’s involved, and why it matters.

Dana Goward: 05:02
Sure. Well, the Resilient Navigation Timing Foundation is actually a public benefit and scientific and educational charity. And we chose the charity method of organization because it allowed us to have commercial and individual members; but we are prohibited from supporting their financial interests. So they support our mission. And that way we are able to give the most unbiased and objective advice to the public and to national leaders as we can. Our soundbite, if you will, our elevator pitch, is that we advocate for policies and systems that protect GPS satellites, signals, and users. And that covers, as it turns out, quite a broad spectrum. And one might say, well, why is it necessary to have an organization to advocate for those things? Well, your federal government, unfortunately, has said that it would and should do a number of things to protect GPS satellite signals and users, and it hasn’t followed through on all of them. And so we’re there gently urging on, sometimes perhaps not so gently, to make sure that everyone has the kind of services that they need in terms of navigation and timing.

Allan Rutter: 06:13
So who are some of the people that make up the foundation, either your board or the kind of people who contribute

Allan Rutter: 06:20
to the charity writ large?

Dana Goward: 06:22
Sure. Well, as far as TTI goes, probably the most important guy is our chairman of the board of directors, the Honorable Greg Winfree. Great guy, former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Transportation. My other board members are General William Shelton, who is the former commander of Air Force Space Command; Rear Admiral Jeff Hathaway, retired, a very experienced mariner; and Captain Pauline Cook, also U.S. Coast Guard retired, who has extensive experience in navigation systems and port control systems, vessel traffic, and that sort of thing. So that’s who we are in terms of the organization, governing board. We are composed of 60 commercial members and about 70 individual members who have joined us without being associated with a corporation. So a number of space-based terrestrial and timing organizations have become members and are the ones who enable us to do the work that we do.

Allan Rutter: 07:21
Which leads me into another clarifying question. Help our listeners understand the differences between GPS (global positioning system) and PNT–position, navigation, and timing. Thinking about those three functions in that acronym, how do our devices, our transportation system, our military, use and depend on those three different things position, navigation, and timing?

Dana Goward: 07:47
Sure. Well, GPS is a system, but the service that it provides is positioning, navigation, and timing. And you’re right, they are fairly distinct things. Now, most people realize that GPS is a system of satellites, but what they don’t realize is that all the satellites really do. Although, quite frankly, it’s very technically difficult and complicated–all they do is transmit a very precise timing signal all at the same instant. You do need Einstein’s general and special theory of relativity to make all this work, both with the time and with the motion of the satellites. But in essence, they’re just systems of clocks transmitting time signals. Now, when those time signals arrive to your device through a miracle of calculation and modern electronics, your device, your receiver, is able to take the differences in the moments of arrival, the differences in time arrival of those signals, and calculate where it is within with three dimensions on the face of the earth.

Dana Goward: 08:47
So on the one hand, it’s relatively straightforward. On the other hand, there’s just a lot of math engineering and science that goes with it. So the three services or the three pieces, I guess, of it really start with timing, because that’s what the basic signal is. It’s a time signal. And not only does the time signal allow your receiver to calculate where it is, which is positioning because your receiver has information about where other things are and gives you navigation. The timing signal also provides a wealth of services to pretty much every IT system and technology that we have today. So, for example, cell towers can talk to each other because they know exactly what time it is from GPS, and they are completely synchronized. SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] systems, the complex machinery operations, are synchronized using GPS timing signals. Electrical grids are able to come together seamlessly because they have frequency and timing from GPS; which is not to say that everyone uses GPS exclusively, but it is by far the most available, the least expensive, and the most accessed timing service on the face of the planet. So it’s incredibly important: the timing that we get and then the positioning and the navigation that we get from it. Land mobile radio, for those of your listeners who are first responders or are familiar with land mobile radio, is synchronized using the GPS timing signal that allows the radios to divide up the spectrum and have multiplex, so you have multiple communications on the same frequency. So it’s really important. If it was Lord of the Rings, we would say of the three rings, the timing ring rules them all.

Allan Rutter: 10:36
One of the things that sort of leads to is just how many different systems are based on that or flow from that. Certainly transportation systems. One of the things that we do is taking advantage of how people’s smartphone devices interact with that GPS system and build

Allan Rutter: 10:58
networks of breadcrumbs about where people are and where they have been, which sort of replace the business of laying tubes across a road to count how many people go across.

Dana Goward: 11:11
Yeah, and I think it would be interesting, since we’re talking about GPS, for your listeners to think for a moment. What kind of businesses would not exist but for GPS right now? So for ones that come to my mind immediately are Uber and left right. And there are others, without a doubt. Drone operations would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, without that GPS. Precision farming, precision agriculture, although it also uses terrestrial signals that farmers purchase to augment GPS. That wouldn’t be possible. We wouldn’t have those kinds of efficiencies, those kinds of systems without GPS. And then secondarily, I would ask your listeners to imagine what transportation systems would be severely degraded or would be much more expensive if we didn’t have GPS. So, for example, how many more trucks would FedEx need? How many more drivers would they need if we didn’t have GPS so that they could manage their fleet efficiently, so they could plan out routes more efficiently, so they could instantaneously make changes and be flexible to adapt to changing needs. The list just goes on. GPS is probably the most economically productive, innovative system that came into being over the last 70 or 80 years.

Allan Rutter: 12:34
So I think one thing that might be helpful for our listeners is to speaking of geographic positioning systems, what’s the different geographies? Is GPS a worldwide thing or is it a North American thing?

Dana Goward: 12:49
Well, GPS is the global positioning system, so it is global. It’s a series of 32 satellites that orbit the Earth in medium earth orbit, which is about 20,000 kilometers above the surface. And it is one of four global navigation satellite systems. You know they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, after the US launched GPS, the Russians said, “we’ve got to have one of those.” And so they put up GLONASS [Global Navigation Satellite System]. The Europeans decided that they wanted their own system, and they have established Galileo. And most recently, the newest and most technically advanced global navigation satellite systems called BeiDou, which is the Chinese system. In addition to that, there are some regional systems operated by India and Japan, and other folks are having some regional systems to augment global navigation satellite systems and provide more resilient and even more accurate service within their particular regions. So it’s a real compliment to the United States and to the founders and inventors of GPS that other folks decide it’s so great they need to have their own.

Allan Rutter: 13:55
So thanks for reminding me about the G in GPS means global. If, in fact, that’s a worldwide system, how does our federal government plan for or is involved in the provision and or coordination of those PNT systems?

Dana Goward: 14:12
Right. Well,

Dana Goward: 14:13
so GPS and PNT is something that’s needed by everybody. So the federal government has taken an interesting approach. They have established a national space-based PNT executive committee that’s co-chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Transportation. Members of that committee include folks from across the interdepartment. Department of Transportation is responsible for guiding a policy for civil users. And, in fact, the Department of Transportation holds a forum at least once a year to get input from civil users about the civil part of the system and how it could be used better or improved.

Allan Rutter: 14:54
So let’s talk a little bit more about the foundation and the kinds of things that your members and your board and your advisory group exist to help that interdepartmental body think about how things work, how to make them work better. Your foundation has some recommendations about how to make that system better, focused on three elements protect, toughen, and augment. I think we’ll talk about each of these three: what the challenges are, who’s messing with our systems and how, what the consequences of inaction could be, and what recommendations or suggestions y’all have for making things better. So of those three elements, the first is protect, by which you mean protect the frequencies by preventing interference. Your recommendations mentioned spoofing and jamming. What is that and how is it dangerous?

Dana Goward: 15:52
Well, an excellent series of questions, thanks. So the most important thing to realize fundamentally is that while GPS

Dana Goward: 15:59
and other GNSS signals are ubiquitous–they’re really great, very precise–they’re also very, very weak, very low signal strength of necessity. And also because we wanted folks to use these signals as much as possible for as many reasons as possible, we made the signal specification public. So that means two things. One, because the signals are very weak, they’re very easy to interfere with or deny. The European Union, for example, did a several year sampling, mostly around Europe, and found 500,000 instances of signals that had the potential to interfere with the reception of GPS, Galileo, and other satellite navigation signals. So only about 10 percent of those were intentional. But it goes to show you that just about any radio noise near a receiver on the right frequency will serve to disrupt reception, interfere with the reception to some degree. So we certainly advocate for governments and others to monitor the frequencies and eliminate accidental and intentional interference wherever and whenever they can. Now, spoofing is intentional manipulation, or I should say, transmission of false GPS signals.

Dana Goward: 17:19
I mentioned that the signal specification has been published. And back when that first happened, that wasn’t such a big deal. But the advent of microchips and software-defined radios and new technology means that a reasonably competent hobbyist can, for a couple hundred dollars, obtain a device that will allow him or her to imitate GPS or other GNSS transmissions and cause a receiver to think that it’s someplace that it’s not. And we’ve seen this used to hijack cargo, to facilitate smuggling, all kinds of nefarious activities are involved with spoofing. In fact, we see a lot of spoofing in Ukraine, the Middle East, and in conjunction with armed conflicts there; and in northern Europe, disappointingly, because apparently Russia is displeased with the fact that some of its neighbors have grown closer or joined the NATO alliance, and it wants to undermine transportation and stability in that particular region. So signals are very fragile.

Dana Goward: 18:24
And so, yes, we advocate for protecting the signals wherever and whenever that can be done. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of resources to both detect the signals, interfering signals, and then terminate them. In the United States, the FCC, for example, is really the only one that has the authority to act against interference. And of course, their resources are very limited. As an example, we have talked with folks at the FCC and recommended they empower local authorities to be able to enforce the laws against interfering with signals for a number of reasons. One, it’s a federal offense. And two, if someone’s deliberately interfering with GPS, there’s probably something else nefarious going on. So, yes, we strongly urge the government to not only detect, but mitigate and terminate and try to prevent interference, both intentional and accidental, whenever and wherever possible.

Allan Rutter: 19:20
Yeah, it strikes me that both inadvertent and purposeful interference with those signals is something to be concerned about as more and more vehicles are being looked at as autonomous, both in terms of road taxis and particularly autonomous trucks. So to the extent that more and more of that development happens, it’s that much more important to make sure that the GPS network that’s one of the backbones of that has to be protected.

Dana Goward: 19:49
Right. Yeah. And of course, we have get into the next part of our recommendations. We recommend a system of systems approach. And I don’t think anyone is relying entirely on GPS for autonomous systems. But the question then runs, well, how expensive and how resilient are other systems that might be or might not be available?

Allan Rutter: 20:10
Which is an excellent segue into your second recommendation, which is to toughen receivers with readily available technology. Now, this seems to be the place where the word resilience in your

Allan Rutter: 20:22
foundation’s name comes in. What’s to be gained by expanding the sources of PNT and how can those systems be designed to withstand outages regardless of the cause?

Dana Goward: 20:35
Right. Well, so that really addresses both “toughen” and “augment.” In terms of toughening, we usually refer to the fact that most people have traditionally bought their GPS receivers based on price. And quite frankly, you get what you pay for. It is possible to purchase software and hardware, such as directional antennas, that will insulate you to some degree against jamming and spoofing. But it’s more expensive. And of course, unless folks see a real reason to do that, they usually don’t. The government has been reluctant to require this kind of equipment for a number of reasons. One of which is probably that we haven’t had significant and major disruptions here within the United States.

Dana Goward: 21:22
Another way to toughen is also, as you say, to augment GPS. So GPS and its signals will be the centerpiece of our PNT architecture here in the United States for the next several decades, without question. But the question is, is there anything else in the architecture for when GPS is interfered with, either by solar activity, accident, intentional interference? And that’s an important question. So we recommend that GPS be augmented with complementary and backup systems. Now we try to be relatively technology agnostic and just urge government to take action. But we have observed, and the Department of Transportation has verified this as well, that a good beginning would be to be establish a core resilient PNT architecture in the United States with signals from space, signals from terrestrial broadcast, and timing signals over fiber. So three methods of delivery that–completely different phenomenology–and anything that would interfere with one of them would be very, very unlikely to interfere with another one. So yeah, PNT is essential, and we need to make sure everybody has access to it whenever and wherever they need it.

Allan Rutter: 22:34
Yeah, when you talk about augmenting, you go back to something you discussed earlier that GPS is both a mix of satellite timing signals and terrestrial, whether it’s cell towers or other things, that help you understand where you are. And it strikes me that in a system, particularly thinking about transportation, where vessels are being watched, controlled, avoiding each other through AIS signals.

Dana Goward: 23:01
Automatic. Right.

Allan Rutter: 23:03
And if in fact a new air traffic control system were to come into being that’s more position-based, all of those things tend to argue for the kind of resilient, expanded capacity of a PNT network that you’re describing.

Dana Goward: 23:21
Yep. So positioning navigation timing is fundamental to so many things, certainly transportation, that if we don’t have a good foundation, anything we build on top of that is going to be shaky and not as reliable as it needs to be. So I guess this may be a pitch to be back to fundamentals, and let’s get the building blocks right first, or at least in parallel with moving forward.

Allan Rutter: 23:44
Well, and it also seems, you mentioned that part of that federal government executive committee that’s looking at that is both military and civilian use of these systems. As more and more of that military activity becomes disaggregated, smaller and smaller elements, if we are to be looking at

Allan Rutter: 24:03
development of more autonomous, smaller–either drones or automated vehicles on the ground–all of that would tend to argue for the kind of expanded, resilient network that you guys are talking about.

Dana Goward: 24:19
Yes, it certainly would. As another example, you mentioned UAS operations. So both unmanned aerial systems and counter-unmanned aerial systems depend upon PNT. And making any sense of what our next generation environment is going to be for unmanned aerial systems is going to require a common operational picture, it’s going to require communications, it’s going to require really not needing to question whether or not the PNT is correct or whether it’s being manipulated. We need to be able to rely on that without even thinking about it before we can go forward for a safe, effective, and economical unmanned aerial system. Probably the most leaning forward example, but it applies for every other mode of transportation as well.

Allan Rutter: 25:10
Yeah, one of the elements of The Texas A&M University System, A&M Corpus Christi, is involved in thinking about that UAS (unmanned aerial system) air control. How to make sure that within that “less than 500 feet of activity” that the FAA is not as concerned about as above 500 feet, that an environment exists where those different vehicles, those unmanned elements, know where each other are and are able to keep track of everybody else that’s up in the sky at the same time that they are.

Dana Goward: 25:47
Right. And as someone who lives below 500 feet, I am very much in support of that.

Allan Rutter: 25:53
Yeah, wanting to make sure that whatever happens above the roof of my house is stable.

Dana Goward: 25:58
I’ve seen pictures of big drones that have fallen from the sky because they’ve lost GPS. And I would not want me or my house to be underneath one of those when that happens.

Allan Rutter: 26:08
Yeah, we have enough trouble with hail as opposed to other things. Now, speaking about what your organization is looking at or trying to do, what kinds of partnerships does your foundation belong to, or what are other kinds of groups that are concerned with PNT resilience and expansion?

Dana Goward: 26:30
Well, so some of our partners are the Institute of Navigation, the Royal Institute of Navigation, the Italian Institute of Navigation; and we have a number of academic partners too, as well as The University of Texas System, as well as a number of commercial entities that support us and who have a professional interest in advancing positioning, navigation, and timing.

Allan Rutter: 26:53
Well, one of the things I can tell from our conversation today is that you have plenty of passion for making these systems better for travelers and providers. What are some of the reasons that motivate you to do what you do every day?

Dana Goward: 27:07
Well, this is an area that very few people generally are familiar with. There are a lot of people who are familiar with positioning navigation and timing and navigation systems and technology. But PNT policy is a very narrow area, and there aren’t a lot of folks that focus on it; although, it’s incredibly important because without the appropriate policy and leadership, you can have all the technology in the world and it would be for naught. We live in a free and open society, a democracy, and citizens have a responsibility to utilize their specialized knowledge for the benefit of the nation. And so we at the RNT Foundation believe we have unique and important insights into this very narrow area that underpins all of our technology. And that if we have a major failure, it will be absolutely disastrous for the nation. So we do this as a passion project. We have no employees, we are all volunteers, although we do contract out some support. And it is something we have an we believe we have an obligation to do for our nation and our fellow citizens.

Allan Rutter: 28:19
Well, particularly talking about what you just said about the importance of avoiding catastrophe is certainly something that compels or impels us to do all that we can to make sure that that happens. And while the provision or at least attention to policy may be narrow, it’s tall. It goes to a lot of different places and a lot of different people depend on it.

Dana Goward: 28:43
It did. And so one thing that we haven’t talked about is that PNT generally is a tool of great power competition.

Dana Goward: 28:51
I did mention briefly of how Russia is interfering with GPS in order to express its displeasure with its neighbors, and it’s actually a form of low-level electronic warfare. More expansively, though, both Russia and China have alternative PNT systems, terrestrial PNT systems, that greatly reduce their reliance on satellite navigation, such that even if the signals from the sky went away because of a coronal mass ejection or some other phenomenon, or heaven forbid hostile activity, many of their systems and industries would be able to continue on uninterrupted.

Dana Goward: 29:28
We in the United States have not done that. Other nations, in addition to Russia and China, have developed or are developing resilient PNT architectures. Among them are South Korea, Saudi Arabia (the UAE) is doing that, and both the UK and France are cooperating on a terrestrial broadcast system, low frequency, high power, called eLoran, that will give them sovereign PNT service, regardless of whether or not they can see or access signals from space. GPS is great, but as the foundation’s board chair, the Honorable Greg Winfree says, we need to get the bullseye off of GPS, develop alternative systems for complementary and backup service such that it’s not such an attractive target for our adversaries.

Dana Goward: 30:17
One thing that is particularly disturbing is that we’ve already seen at least one attempt at GPS blackmail in November of 2021. When Russia was massing its troops along the border with Ukraine, it shot down one of its defunct satellites. The debris actually threatened the astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station, you may recall. A lot of folks recall when Russia did that because it would certainly seem to be outside of international norms. But what most folks don’t recall is that a day or so after Russian state media said, “and if NATO gets in the way of our intentions in Ukraine, we will shoot down all 32 GPS satellites and blind NATO.” Now, whether or not they could do that is a matter of speculation–probably not–but they could certainly use their electronic warfare capability, which is impressive, to block signals over very broad areas to blind NATO and conceivably blind the homeland of the United States.

Dana Goward: 31:20
So shortly thereafter that, the administration decided not to send certain types of aid to Ukraine to avoid provoking Russia into an invasion. That doesn’t seem to have worked out. And there’s no way of knowing whether the two were related. But because we are much more vulnerable than our primary adversaries, there is a strategic imbalance. And another one of our partners, the National Security Space Association, has developed a paper, published a paper talking about this strategic imbalance and how our failure to support GPS with complementary and backup systems has really put us behind both Russia and China and opened us up to all kinds of strategic and tactical vulnerabilities.

Allan Rutter: 32:06
Well, that’s a much more serious way of talking about the dependence that

Allan Rutter: 32:10
we have on these systems. And the corollary is how vulnerable those systems are, in fact. Certainly it puts a different spin on the recommendations that the foundation has made about expanding the resilience and balancing of our GPS. You know, when you mentioned the activity, or at least the targeting, of those 32 global satellites, it struck me that when you’re saying you’re going to take those 32 satellites to blind NATO, it’s like, well, I think you’re going to blind a whole lot more people than them. So that’s another way of reminding ourselves that as much as we depend on these systems, the more important it is to make sure that they’re robust and resilient.

Dana Goward: 32:52
Yes, sir. I couldn’t agree more.

Allan Rutter: 32:55
Well, Dana, thank you very much for your being willing to spend some time with us and for you to explain some of the very important work that the foundation is doing and its connection through our agency director, Greg Winfree, into your important work. Thanks a bunch.

Dana Goward: 33:12
It’s my pleasure. It’s been very good talking with you. Thanks for having me on.

Allan Rutter: 33:17
I am pleased that Greg Winfree, our agency director, has TTI at the forefront of efforts to advance the capacity and resilience of the GPS systems that sustain so much of our multimodal transportation network. A more robust GPS system will be needed for a modernized air traffic control system, for positive train control on freight and passenger railroads, and for automated freight and passenger vehicles being deployed on our roadways. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard or learned something, please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe, and share this episode. I invite you to join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B. Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of The Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau. I’m your host, Allan Rutter. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time.