A new report outlines the urgent need for Australian governments to take the lead on the nation’s positioning, navigation and timing needs.
According to FrontierSI’s ALIGN: Aligning Leadership, Integration and Governance of PNT in Australia report, the explosion in the use of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services across all sectors of the community has outstripped the nation’s PNT governance arrangements.
In particular, there is no single authority responsible for managing PNT risks across the critical infrastructure and defence sectors, and society and the economy as a whole.
This contrasts with, for instance, the UK, which in 2023 got serious about PNT and established a National PNT Office and a National Timing Centre.
At the same time, the UK also set out a 10-point plan for boosting PNT resilience and, last year, announced £155 million in funding for various PNT projects.
What’s at stake with Australia’s PNT risks
PNT services operate at the heart of essentially all technologies and sectors that we rely upon every day, from navigation to transport, from farming to telecommunications, from surveying to defence, and many more.
All of those PNT use cases are vulnerable to failures or intentional disruptions or even attacks. Examples include radio interference, disruption by space weather, cyber security vulnerabilities, supply chain risks, physical threats and geopolitical considerations.
“PNT disruption is often perceived as a GPS only problem, but that framing misses the scale of what is at stake,” said Graeme Kernich, CEO of FrontierSI.
“Disruption to these systems can affect everything from Defence operations to the infrastructure Australians depend on daily.
“The time to act is now, while the government is actively shaping its national security and industrial agenda.”
Why Australia needs a National PNT Office
The report outlines three priorities that Australian authorities should urgently address:
- Take a leadership position by creating a National PNT Office that is responsible for co-ordinating policy, risk oversight and cross-government alignment.
- Embed PNT risk reduction efforts within Australia’s national risk architecture by developing a National PNT Risk Framework to identify threat scenarios, cross-sector dependencies and priority resilience outcomes.
- Set a long-term national direction for PNT capability through the development of a National PNT Strategy that is aligned with national security, industrial and innovation priorities.
According to FrontierSI, the proposed National PNT Office should be housed within the Department of Home Affairs, given that it already has responsibilities for national security coordination, critical infrastructure protection and all-hazards risk management.
The report also says that a dedicated, Defence-led National PNT Coordinator should be embedded within the Office, to ensure that Defence’s critical requirements are integrated within the broader national framework.
“Other countries, including the UK, US, Japan and Canada, have already elevated PNT to their national agendas,” said Jia-Urnn Lee, Strategic Growth Lead at FrontierSI.
“Australia has the expertise and foundations in place, but needs a governance model that matches the criticality of PNT as a resilience challenge.”
Further reading:
Australian PNT: Lots of potential, lots of danger
PNT assurance in the age of NAVWAR
