Resilient PNT: Manifesto of Next-Generation Navigation
How a world dependent on GNSS can become resilient to jamming, spoofing, and the chaos of fragmented solutions.
Introduction: Dependency that Became Vulnerability
GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems: GPS, Galileo, BeiDou, GLONASS) have become the invisible backbone of the modern world. Try to find a car today without some kind of navigator… not to mention ships or airplanes.
PNT (Position, Navigation, Timing) is integrated into everything: from aircraft and ships to smartphones and banking systems.
We no longer think of it as a technology, it is like air. But that is exactly why this dependency is dangerous. GNSS signals are weak by nature: they come from satellites in medium or high Earth orbits. These signals are easy to jam or spoof.
This is not a threat of the future, but a reality of today. The war in Ukraine, and even recent incidents across Europe, prove it. We are now in a situation where interference affects not only military logistics but also civilian economies.
Modern Vulnerabilities of Outdated Platforms
GNSS was built over decades. It is a layered architecture — old technologies on which newer solutions were stacked.
As a result, we have a system that is poorly protected against modern threats, especially those exploiting today’s computational power and advanced radio signal generation.
Some of the most effective attacks target time. From the loss of synchronization signals to fake timestamps — all this undermines cryptography, breaks synchronization of networks and equipment, disrupts financial systems, and renders most modern digital communications inoperable.
The worst part is that GNSS interference is extremely hard to document and prove. Even harder to prosecute or sanction. Interference is often brief, mobile, and leaves minimal traces. Legally it is nearly impossible to prosecute. This creates a paradox: we depend on a technology that can fail at any moment, and yet we cannot even prove malice behind the disruption.
Legacy Systems Cannot Scale
VOR, DME, ILS, NDB — ground-based systems that supported aviation for decades. They still work, and that’s good. But let’s be honest: they were built for a world with far fewer aircraft in the sky, no smartphones, and no drones.
VOR provides direction, DME gives distance, ILS helps with landing in fog, and NDB points to a beacon.
This entire infrastructure is expensive, localized, and not scalable. It is useful as aviation backup, but it will not save the modern world from a GNSS crisis. Economically, it is more of a burden than a benefit. The same goes for legacy systems of the last century such as Loran, Omega, and others.
Why Legacy Systems Won’t Save Us
We like to think of old navigation technologies as a safety net. But they cannot perform the role that GNSS plays today. They are too costly, too limited, and too outdated. They cannot integrate into smartphones, cars, or drones. It’s like keeping a payphone in a world of smartphones: symbolic, but ineffective. If GNSS were not vulnerable, we likely would have abandoned them long ago.
The Technology Gap: From GNSS to Alternatives
Of course, alternatives to GNSS exist: inertial systems (IMU), visual navigation (VIO/SLAM), network-based methods (Wi-Fi, GSM, LTE/5G), LoRa, magnetic maps, star trackers, eLoran, even quantum sensors.
But each of them covers only specific scenarios. INS drifts without correction. Visual navigation needs texture and light. Wi-Fi works in cities but not in the ocean. eLoran covers only certain regions. Some accumulate error, some are limited by environmental conditions, and some are vulnerable to hostile electronic warfare.
We have a set of technological ‘islands’, but no bridges connecting them into a global solution. Even their integration with each other remains rare in practice.
The Solution: Software-Defined PNT Integration Platform
We do not need yet another ‘silver bullet’ or a ‘new GPS’. What we need is an integration platform. Software-defined — to adapt to all possible PNT data sources and retain algorithmic flexibility across scenarios.
With autonomous hardware-based timekeeping, to maintain synchronization even in the absence of external signals.
With support for all data sources: GNSS, INS, VIO, Wi-Fi, GSM, LTE/5G, LoRa, eLoran, magnetics, star systems, and more.
With open interfaces: UART, Ethernet, API.
With transparent event logs and telemetry, so that problems can be documented.
This must become the ‘operating system for PNT’, working regardless of GNSS availability. It must run on compact, modern hardware platforms, capable of stable timekeeping and strong signal processing.
Why Timing Comes First
Position and Navigation are the visible parts of PNT. But Timing is its heart.
Without precise time, cryptography breaks, mobile networks collapse, financial markets halt, and transportation fails.
Spoofing time is even more insidious than spoofing coordinates — it makes a system confidently wrong by assigning false timestamps. Wartime experience has shown: even the most advanced satellite terminals are not always ready for such attacks.
That is why any integration platform must have an internal reference clock and be able to validate time from multiple independent sources.
Integration with Alternative Positioning Sources Is Not New
We already integrate GNSS with other systems. Smartphones do this daily: GPS + GSM + Wi-Fi. Drones combine satellites with cameras and IMUs. Aviation integrates INS with GNSS.
So integration is not new. The question is making it universal and scalable. We can even preserve compatibility with legacy systems to leverage every available integration option.
Existing Integration Solutions
There are countless examples:
• GNSS + GSM/Wi-Fi — positioning in cities and indoors.
• GNSS + LTE/5G — high accuracy and time synchronization.
• GNSS + INS — a classic for aircraft and ships.
• GNSS + vision — in drones and robots.
• GNSS + eLoran or beacons — backup over long distances.
Integration is already happening. We just need to scale and unify it. Importantly, such a platform will itself likely become a key component of autonomous systems — a resilient PNT source for final decision-making.
The Threat of a ‘Zoo’ of Solutions
Today every manufacturer builds its own unique PNT solution. Their own standards. Their own ‘cutting-edge ideas’. Their own ecosystems. All with the sincere goal of providing the best solution to the customer. But technology lifecycles are only getting shorter, and the strategy of locking into proprietary solutions leads to another crisis — just like today with GNSS.
The result is chaos, incompatibility, duplicated effort. In a crisis, that is not a luxury but a problem. We need integration, not a zoo. And not only for Ukraine and its defenders, but for the whole planet — because GNSS dependency has reached a critical scale.
Integration Standards Already Exist
We are not starting from zero. Integration approaches, technologies, and standards already exist.
In mobile networks — standards for time synchronization (PTP/NTP, OTDOA).
In Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — AoA/AoD, RTT.
In GNSS — SBAS/GBAS, message authentication.
In robotics — ROS, formats for sensor data.
Not to mention standard industrial solutions for UART, RS-232, and other interfaces. And this list is not exhaustive.
This is the foundation we can leverage now to build a software-defined PNT integration platform.
The Simple Answer: Demand Compatibility
The future platform must be compatible with what already works. So the recipe for everyone — from consumers to developers — is not to reinvent the wheel but to integrate what exists. That is faster, cheaper, and more effective.
Customers and regulators must demand compatibility. Manufacturers must support open interfaces. Developers must create adaptive algorithms. This is the way forward.
Strategic Call to Action
We must not wait and ‘do what we can’.
Manufacturers — boldly build compatible products and declare that compatibility.
Developers — create open algorithms and APIs.
Academics — move from theory to practice.
Regulators — embed multi-channel and compatibility requirements into standards.
Consumers and operators — demand transparency and resilience.
The goal is to build a globally resilient PNT system, able to withstand jamming, spoofing, or geomagnetic disturbances, not to mention the full spectrum of electronic warfare.
Comprehensive systems with a software-defined PNT integration platform are the only viable solution. Such systems can stop an adversary with a GNSS jammer or spoofer of any scale, while providing the flexibility to keep your drone operational, your phased-array satellite terminal resilient, and your car, ship, or airplane safe and reliable.
This is not a prophecy — it is a work plan.
I will return with reviews of integration-ready PNT solutions, from LEO/MEO to modern visual navigation systems and others. But that will be more technical content aimed at industry specialists.