{"id":62232,"date":"2019-06-17T18:55:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T10:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/army-prioritizing-position-navigation-and-timing-technologies-across-service-portfolio\/"},"modified":"2019-06-17T18:55:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T10:55:25","slug":"army-prioritizing-position-navigation-and-timing-technologies-across-service-portfolio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/army-prioritizing-position-navigation-and-timing-technologies-across-service-portfolio\/","title":{"rendered":"Army Prioritizing Position, Navigation, and Timing Technologies Across Service Portfolio"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

The U.S. Army<\/strong> is working to update its standards for developing new Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) capabilities that will incorporate more science-and-technology efforts and help the service weed out implausible technologies before they make it to a program status.<\/p>\n

The service\u2019s acquisition executive recently signed the first reference architecture that would require service capability offices to develop a PNT strategy, and build technologies to the architecture\u2019s specifications to allow for easy integration, said Col. Nickolas Kioutas, PEO for Position, Navigation and Timing, speaking here at the SMI Group<\/strong>\u2019s first-annual Military Space USA conference on June 11.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though you\u2019re doing things iteratively, you\u2019ve got to keep the end in mind,\u201d he said. He noted that many Army PNT programs have struggled to come to fruition because GPS has been counted on for so long, and program officers \u201cdon\u2019t understand what it would be like not to have GPS in their system, especially timing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The goal is to work toward a modular, open architecture, where the Army is not replacing an entire system, but rather components or technologies within the system, he added.<\/p>\n

The service is interested in non-radio frequency technologies, such as clock technologies, inertial navigation systems and, down the line, machine vision technologies such as imaging-based automatic inspection and analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to just be reliant on GPS if it\u2019s being jammed and spoofed,\u201d Kioutas said. \u201cWe\u2019re taking on all those sources of PNT and we\u2019re layering them together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The service is also focused on retaining its current capabilities for as long as possible. The Army retains over 550,000 Defense Advanced GPS Receivers (DAGRs), Ground Based GPS Receiver Applications Modules (GB-GRAMs) and micro GRAMs, Kioutas said. The service plans to upgrade the software on those systems to keep them running for another 20 years, he added.<\/p>\n

The Army wants to take advantage of Other Transaction Authorities and rapidly prototype new technologies to avoid developing \u201ccost-wasting\u201d technologies, Kioutas said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to kill programs before they get to a Milestone B or to a further decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Army has \u201cnot done a real good job\u201d of utilizing the many science and technology investments the service has made in fielding real capabilities, Kioutas admitted. The new goal is to ensure an S&T effort has a transition agreement to ultimately become a program, \u201cotherwise it\u2019s not going to get funded,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has to absolutely support a program that\u2019s going to get moving to the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

The service is also using modeling and simulation to better understand how the new capability could translate to a multi-domain operations scenario, he added. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at, how do you decide whether the technology that you\u2019re developing is really going to have an impact in the field, and how many systems you should put out there?\u201d<\/p>\n

New efforts to improve and speed up technology sustainment are also on the horizon. Kioutas said the Army is looking at reduced lifecycle timelines for smaller capabilities, including PNT devices. For example, a \u201cfive-three-one strategy\u201d would provide for a five-year warranty on a product, and include a three-year assessment period to evaluate whether the product is worth retaining after five years, followed by a yearlong final planning period, he said.<\/p>\n

Industry is being asked to \u201cbehave a little bit differently than in the past,\u201d in that the Army wants contractors to bring their best technology to the service, even if it\u2019s not tied to a specific program, Kioutas said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, industry would get what we want and they\u2019d try to build to that spec,\u201d he said. \u201cToday, we\u2019re saying, \u2018Industry, tell us what technologies are out there that can help us fight a different way.\u2019 And we\u2019ll test that and see if that\u2019s what we want to go forward with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

To read more of Vivienne Machi\u2019s coverage of MilSpace, visit Defense Daily. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Army is working to update its standards for developing new Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) capabilities that will incorporate more science-and-technology efforts and help the service weed out implausible technologies before they make it to a program status. The service\u2019s acquisition executive recently signed the first reference architecture that would require service capability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}