FrontierSI has begun a new research project titled ‘Armouring the Clock: Providing Direction to Resilient Positioning, Navigation and Timing,’ which aims to strengthen the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities.
This main focus of the research will be to deliver policy recommendations, especially with regard to the Indo-Pacific maritime domain. It will build on the work begun with FrontierSI’s recent white paper, A Time and A Place for Resilience.
The project is being undertaken under the federal government’s 2024 Strategic Policy Grants Program (SPGP), and will:
- Help identify gaps in Australia’s PNT policy;
- Gain insights from the policies and approaches of allied nations; and
- Assess the critical capabilities and technological needs essential for ensuring the ADF’s resilience.
Improving the resilience of PNT systems and developing alternates to the current space-based PNT architecture are topics of great concern to many people. PNT is the backbone of many, if not most, sectors of industry, and it is facing ever-growing vulnerabilities.
Although numerous reports have been written on the subject, and funding provided for projects of one kind or another both domestically and overseas, many would say that there is a lack of coordinated effort to tackle the problems in the PNT ecosystem. Some countries, such as the UK, seem to be taking the issue more seriously than others.
The Australian Government was supposed to have published a national PNT roadmap more than 18 months ago, but, although a report has apparently been completed, it has not yet been released.
