GUEST BLOG: Enhancing GPS resilience, protecting national security and public safety
BlogJune 27, 2025
Lauren Bresette
Security Industry Association
This year, 2025, marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. military’s announcement that the Global Positioning System (GPS) met all requirements for full operational capacity, a milestone that was formally announced by the U.S. Air Force Space Command on July 17, 1995. Three decades later, despite U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) challenges in modernizing the technology, GPS remains the principal source of position, navigation and timing (PNT) data for the U.S. military and its partners, continuously generating integral information for command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, and reconnaissance (C4ISR); targeting; and weapons delivery. Importantly, GPS is also continually relied upon in the commercial sector, especially in the public safety and security industry. Home-security companies routinely use GPS to route employees for service appointments, direct technicians and first responders to incidents, and provide mobile safety services to ride-sharing companies and their passengers. Maintaining these security and life-safety services is a critical aspect of U.S. national security.
In March of 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a proceeding seeking information regarding commercial technologies that would complement GPS. As the commission noted, “relying on GPS alone as the primary source of PNT data leaves America exposed to a single point of failure and leaves our PNT system open to disruption or manipulation by adversaries.” The proceeding moves forward the federal government’s bipartisan mission to develop complementary systems to better achieve PNT resilience nationwide. In comments filed to the FCC, the Security Industry Association, representing devices in the commercial sector that provide crucial public safety functions, supports the identification and cultivation of terrestrial and other technologies that can provide a backstop against these threats.
The FCC is seeking ways to enhance American economic security and national security by ensuring that critical operations can continue even when GPS signals are disrupted or degraded. Therefore, solutions must be additive to the PNT ecosystem as a whole, augmenting existing functionalities rather than detracting from them. The docket for this proceeding is full of proposals that have significant merit and should be further examined by the commission to encourage their use and deployment. Just to name a few, the Broadcast Positioning System, eLoran, and local beacon-based proposals use a variety of technologies that can provide a viable GPS alternative without negatively impacting existing communications services and equipment.
Unfortunately, among the many practical solutions being considered, one company – the for-profit entity NextNav – has put forward a petition that would have far-reaching and devastating consequences to national security and public safety, working against the broader goal of enhanced national security that the FCC is looking to support.
NextNav seeks to reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band (the Lower 900 MHz frequency) so that it can hold a nationwide license for 15 MHz of spectrum to establish a 5G terrestrial-based PNT network. It additionally seeks the removal of the current requirement that it not cause unacceptable levels of interference to Part 15 devices; these devices include low-power radio-frequency technologies for everything from encrypted communications, fire and smoke detection, and alarm systems to security cameras, panic buttons, and electronic access-control devices that are essential for protecting homes, small businesses, and critical infrastructure along with federal, military, and intelligence facilities across the country. Given the vital life-safety functions of these devices, it is crucial that their communications work reliably as engineered, as even temporary interference can result in gaping security vulnerabilities. The security industry is committed to ensuring that security devices and technologies continue to provide reliable, critical life-safety services for users. In this case, we support the exploration of actions that the FCC can take to develop alternatives to GPS but urge that this be done reasonably and responsibly, while maintaining their protections for shared use of the Lower 900 MHz Band.
As the FCC docket shows, there are a number of solutions available to establish a terrestrial PNT without any reallocation of spectrum. While everyone in the public-safety and national-security space agrees that a complementary GPS system is ultimately necessary, the tradeoffs required by implementing the NextNav proposal are simply not worth the risk to the nation’s security and safety. National security should be enhanced as a whole. The industry should be able to address one vulnerability without creating a host of others.
Security Industry Association · https://www.securityindustry.org/
