Military Embedded Systems

Comms - GPS

Story
Beyond GPS: HORDE PNT for contested environments

December 04, 2025

Military technology development is at an inflection point, where the surging deployment of uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) technology collides with the total denial of the GPS signal commonly used for position, navigation, and timing (PNT) in such platforms. These trends necessitate a transformation in the underlying PNT network architecture in military platforms. Harmonized Order of Registered and Distributed Elements (HORDE) PNT (a software tool for distributed computing) rejects the commonly deployed hierarchical PNT network architecture, opting for a decentralized approach under which PNT assets can be dispersed across a network, yet leveraged by any platform. Unlike current architectures, HORDE PNT is fundamentally designed for operation in contested environments, enabling challenging missions like coordinating a decentralized UAV swarm for coherent sensing.