{"id":91554,"date":"2026-10-31T23:54:44","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/xona-is-in-orbit-its-ceo-says-u-s-gps-backup-leans-on-china\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T23:54:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:54:44","slug":"xona-is-in-orbit-its-ceo-says-u-s-gps-backup-leans-on-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/xona-is-in-orbit-its-ceo-says-u-s-gps-backup-leans-on-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Xona Is in Orbit. Its CEO Says U.S. GPS Backup Leans on China."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Xona
Xona CEO Brian Manning (left) on the \u201cGPS Under Attack\u201d panel at the MilSat Symposium. (Photo: SatNews)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Xona Space Systems put its first six commercial navigation satellites in orbit last week. On Thursday, its CEO laid out why the U.S. needs them: the backup most commercial users rely on today comes from China.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually just launched our first six satellites last week that are going to start providing commercial service early next year,\u201d Xona co-founder and CEO Brian Manning said on the MilSat Symposium panel \u201cGPS Under Attack: Jamming, Spoofing, and the PNT Fight\u201d at Silicon Valley Space Week, moderated by Ahsun Murad of Optimal Satcom. The Pulsar satellites flew Oct. 20 on SpaceX\u2019s Bandwagon-5 rideshare, and Xona has said beta service begins in early 2027. The company closed a $250 million Series D two days after launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorse to have bad location than no location\u201d<\/h2>\n

Manning said the problem is already showing up in drones built by the hundreds of thousands. Drone companies on the military side \u201care cutting the cable on the GPS chip because they don\u2019t trust it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s actually worse to have bad location than no location.\u201d Jamming can be worked around with inertial sensors, but bad location \u201cmeans you\u2019re going to hit your own troops.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those builders don\u2019t have access to M-code or other secure signals, Manning said, while faking GPS signals takes about as much skill as \u201ctyping the Google.\u201d<\/p>\n

The China problem<\/h2>\n

Commercial users trying to make positioning more resilient mostly move to multi-constellation receivers, Manning said, and the newest constellation beyond GPS is China\u2019s. U.S. industries from critical infrastructure timing to agriculture to logistics now integrate Chinese signals alongside GPS, \u201ca vulnerability that has been ingrained into pretty much every single aspect of U.S. critical infrastructure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Receiver makers can\u2019t simply drop those signals and stay competitive globally, he acknowledged. \u201cBut right now relying on Chinese, Russian, et cetera, signals to get resilience does not put the U.S., I don\u2019t think, in a very strong position.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s coming for GPS<\/h2>\n

Col. Jon Strizzi, director of Space Systems Command\u2019s Space Systems Integration Office, gave the Space Force\u2019s GPS update. He said 14 GPS IIIF satellites, the next block, are on contract, with five moving through assembly, integration and test and first deliveries expected in mid-2027.<\/p>\n

The panel also included Jeff Janicik, founder and chairman of Innoflight; Monali Jain, founder and CEO of AutonomousLabs.Space; and Sumant Sharma, co-founder and CEO of EraDrive.<\/p>\n

Xona\u2019s pitch is that commercial signals from low Earth orbit, roughly 20 times closer to Earth than GPS, can add the precision, power and protection that today\u2019s receivers lack while plugging into the billions of GPS devices already in use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews Xona CEO Brian Manning (left) on the \u201cGPS Under Attack\u201d panel at the MilSat Symposium. (Photo: SatNews) Xona Space Systems put its first six commercial navigation satellites in orbit last week. On Thursday, its CEO laid out why the U.S. needs them: the backup most commercial users rely on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-91554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91554"}],"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=91554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}