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Navigation Warfare Moves Forward

Rapid acquisition process and testing later this year will accelerate progress.

Dan Sweet, trainer, Project Manager Positioning Navigation and Timing, instructs a soldier on the mounted assured positioning, navigation and timing system generation 1. As adversaries across the spectrum field new capabilities to disrupt and degrade GPS, soldiers will need more fortifications and assurances in those systems. U.S. Army Photo by John Higgins

The U.S. Army’s Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space Cross-Functional Team has given the nod to the Navigation Warfare Situational Awareness Abbreviated Capability Development Document. The document validates the operational need and enables experimentation and rapid prototyping of capabilities for the warfighter.

Navigation warfare (NAVWAR) is deliberate offensive and defensive actions to assure friendly use and prevent an adversary’s use of positioning, navigation and timing information. It supports multi-domain operations by enabling precision fires, movement and maneuver, force tracking and other data networks, which unites personnel and weapon systems into a joint or coalition force.

Army forces will be able to “sense” the positioning, navigation and timing environment in real-time, allowing commanders and units to maneuver with confidence and with precision when the global positioning system is degraded or denied. This is a critical element of NAVWAR operations.

Situational awareness (SA) of these actions facilitates detection, identification and location of interference sources that deny or degrade reception of positioning, navigation and timing information. The goal is to validate signal integrity and to indicate and warn users of the presence and intensity of interference. Through the integration of multiple sensors, NAVWAR-SA will characterize the operating environment to detect, identify and geolocate sources of intentional and unintentional interference.

“This [Abbreviated–Capability Development Document] A-CDD will enable us to accelerate critical NAVWAR technology development and streamline the process of expediting an operationally relevant system to our warfighters,” explains Willie Nelson, director, Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space Cross-Functional Team.

“This capability will enhance our ability to provide real-time situational awareness of positioning, navigation and timing reliability to soldiers and commanders on the battlefield, which will enable long-range precision fires and support freedom of maneuver of large-scale ground combat operations,” he adds.

To get the document approved, the team coordinated with organizations across the Army’s modernization enterprise. The A-CDD details methods to leverage new and existing solutions for rapid prototyping, testing and soldier assessment. The “buy, try and decide” acquisition process will accelerate the development of critical enabling technologies and streamline the process of transitioning a scalable, interoperable and agile capability to the field. This process will inform NAVWAR-SA requirements for current and future Army systems.

Joint and coalition forces conducting military operations will employ NAVWAR-SA to coordinate and implement mitigating actions to overcome positioning, navigation and timing-challenged environments. NAVWAR-SA prototypes will be assessed and tested later this year during Project Convergence 21 and the team’s annual positioning, navigation and timing assessment exercise at the White Sands Missile Range.