We all rely on GPS and GNSS capabilities in our everyday lives, but the existing GPS/GNSS satellite systems are highly vulnerable to spoofing and jamming. Ian Canning joined Constellations Podcast to break down how LEO constellations can add a layer of resilience to GPS. Listen to the full episode, our read our takeaways from the discussion below.
Takeaway 1: Reliable GPS/GNSS is a cornerstone of modern military operations.
“Many of us don’t realize just how dependent we all are in our day-to-day lives on GNSS,” said Canning. “Our phones rely on it, we rely on it for mapping, we rely on it for knowing accurate time, et cetera.” And it’s not just private citizens that rely on GPS; government users rely on GPS to monitor and manage timing of banking systems, accurately locate and coordinate airplanes in flight, or obtain an accurate layout of the ground during a conflict.
Because accurate GPS/GNSS can be crucial during a conflict, demand for faster and more resilient connectivity to the warfighter will continue to rise. “The demand for connectivity is just increasing, increasing, increasing, and that’s driven by the [need for] speed of decision,” said Canning. Demand for capabilities like edge computing in the field are also rising, in an effort to make global situational awareness data received from GPS/GNSS systems more useful to the warfighter.
But GPS/GNSS systems are particularly vulnerable to jamming and spoofing attacks, which could interrupt the system at a crucial moment during a conflict. Incorporating LEO networks could be the key to greater resiliency.
Takeaway 2: OneWeb built a 4G network that can counter jamming and spoofing attacks.
Jamming is a method of attack that puts out a strong signal that overrides the GPS signal. “The technology to be able to do that is readily available, and it’s really cheap,” said Canning, which has made jamming a pervasive threat. Spoofing, on the other hand, “tricks the receiving system to still see a signal, to still look like the traditional GPS signal, but just slightly offset by about 10 meters or 50 meters,” explained Canning. With this method, “timing may be slipped by half a second.”
In an effort to build a layer of resiliency into their own 4G network—which is highly reliant on accurate positioning and timing—OneWeb needed to find an alternative to GPS. But with nothing on the market, they developed their own alternative system.
This system gathers all GNSS and GPS signals and maps them against each other. “This allows us… to identify if there’s spoofing happening, because it’s very rare to see spoofing [that is] accurate across all of the signals,” said Canning. To detect jamming, the system enters ‘holdover mode,’ which “sustains that signal for up to a four-hour window at 200 nanoseconds accuracy for timing.”
OneWeb developed this system because “that’s what we needed as a network to be able to operate,” said Canning. “But we’ve actually learned that there are many other people that need that level of capability as well, the U.S. government being one of them.”
Takeaway 3: Anti-jamming and anti-spoofing tech is attractive to the DoD.
In the past, “the DoD has been very reliant on their own constellation of highly secure capability,” said Canning. “But the demand for bandwidth and the demand for connectivity is just outstripping the pace at which they can actually deliver it.” This has created an opportunity for the commercial satcom industry to support and expand these services, such as OneWeb’s anti-spoofing and jamming tech.
COMSATCOM is becoming a major part of the communication systems of U.S. and other governments. As this continues to happen, seamless integration will be key. Luckily, in the modern tech environment, it’s becoming easier to blend IP capabilities in order to get all of the options directly into the hands of the warfighter.
Takeaway 4: LEO is a more elusive target than GEO, and incorporating both could mitigate threats.
Those who want to jam a LEO constellation have to work much harder than they would to successfully attack a satellite in GEO. “It’s very easy to point at a known point in the sky and potentially eliminate that satellite connectivity at the time,” said Canning. “It’s much harder when you’ve got satellites flying at 1,700 kilometers an hour, actually swapping satellites every two and a half minutes, changing frequencies every 11 seconds.”
This creates a dynamic environment that is much harder for adversaries to target. And when it comes down to actively dealing with an adversary, if they attack a GPS/GNSS system, it could work against them. “We’re not the only ones reliant on position, navigation and timing for our systems. They are too,” said Canning. “That’s where our four-hour holdover window really came from. It’s rare in the field that you see periods of full denial of service that run longer than that.”
While incorporating LEO constellations will not stop adversarial attacks, it can mitigate the damage. “These days, you cannot stop all of the threats that are actually out there,” said Canning. “You have to mitigate the threats where possible and eliminate them where you can.”
For more on AI/ML, edge computing and the future of MILSATCOM, listen to the full podcast episode.
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