Is AI Coming for Our Satellites?

Necessity is the mother of invention, and nothing motivates invention quite like stopping long-range bombers. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine has needed to be more innovative or perish. They cannot match Russia soldier for soldier or ruble for ruble. History will look upon this war as a mix of old and new. Tanks and large force-on-force battles, once considered antiquated by experts, took place right alongside complex and innovative drone operations. Recent headlines carried news of one such attack, Operation Spiders Web . The attack was motivated by finding ways to stop or slow incoming long-range bombers, but without having long-range bombers or fighter jets to stop them directly. There are plenty of military lessons to be learned from this attack and news outlets are already questioning whether the US could be ready for a similar attack. These studies will be ongoing, but there’s another major lesson to be learned from Operation Spiders Web: the future of GPS, the Global Positioning System. Discussions about the potential for losses of jobs due to artificial intelligence (AI) are ongoing, but the daring raid deep inside Russia showed another way that AI might change our lives. Could AI be a cheaper and more accurate form of position, navigation, and timing (PNT)? A terrestrial PNT system that can serve as an alternative to space-based PNT has been a complex policy problem for years. It’s possible that the Ukrainian necessity to stop long-range bombers may have provided the world with a blueprint for a new form of PNT. Could AI be coming for the jobs of our GPS satellites? Let’s look at the history of the quest for alternatives to GPS. Subscribe now …Paved with Good Intentions Depending on your age, it may be difficult to conceive of a time when PNT was not immediately available to you. Most simply know it as GPS, but it is more accurately described as PNT because PNT describes the service itself while GPS is the product that produces the service. There are other space-based PNT systems such as GLONASS (Russia’s version), Beidou (China’s version), and Galileo (EU’s version). Together with GPS from the good ol’U.S. of A, the planet is covered a few times over by signals from space that help us determine where we are within a few meters and keep precise time. This was not always the case, and the development of GPS presents an interesting history. Image Credit The roots of GPS begin with Sputnik . Yes, that Sputnik. Scientists on the ground tracked the Doppler Effect from Sputnik’s radio signals and realized they could use this shift to track the satellite’s location. The further extrapolated that that they could use signals from space to locate the receiver on the ground and the concept of space-based PNT was born. The first global navigation system was called Transit , and the first satellite was launched in 1960 and by 1968 there were 36 operational satellites in orbit, closely mirroring the model of today’s GPS. The program was overseen by the US navy until 1996 when the Department of Defense transitioned to GPS. In 1983, President Reagan made the GPS signal available to commercial airliners. In 2000, the US government removed the selective availability feature from GPS and authorized three new GPS signals specifically for civilian use. The removal of the selective availability feature made civilian GPS 10 times more accurate. This corresponded to the drop in price of GPS receiver chips from about $3,000 to $1.50. Accuracy plus hardware price drops opened the door for GPS use as most of us know it today. This service was a significant form of soft power as the US provided a global service for free. But there were some unintended consequences: The US military effectively became a service provider to millions of global users, which it was not intended nor designed to be. The world grew accustomed to getting this service for free, which would prove nearly impossible to unwind in coming years. Share Alternatives If the full text of the 2018 Coast Guard Authorization Act snuck by you, don’t feel bad. But in the world of PNT, this is a significant piece of legislation. The 175-page bill ordered the Secretary of Transportation to create a terrestrial alternative to space-based GPS, specifically due to the critical dependencies on the timing component (or the “T” in PNT). The law specifics the system that the Secretary of Transportation is to develop will: (A) be wireless; (B) be terrestrial; (C) provide wide-area coverage; (D) be synchronized with coordinated universal time; (E) be resilient and extremely difficult to disrupt or degrade; (F) be able to penetrate underground and inside buildings; (G) be capable of deployment to remote locations; (H) be developed, constructed, and operated incorporating applicable private sector expertise; (I) work in concert with and complement any other similar positioning, navigation, and timing systems, including enhanced long-range navigation systems and Nationwide Differential GPS systems; (J) be available for use by Federal and non-Federal government agencies for public purposes at no net cost to the Federal Government within 10 years of initiation of operation; (K) be capable of adaptation and expansion to provide position and navigation capabilities; (L) incorporate the recommendations from any GPS back-up demonstration program initiated and completed by the Secretary, in coordination with other Federal agencies, before the date specified in subsection (c)(1); and (M) incorporate such other elements as the Secretary considers appropriate. That list kicked off significant thought inside the federal government of how not only an alternative to timing could be achieved, but how alternatives to the “P” and “N” elements could also be created. But there’s a HUGE problem: People don’t like to pay for something that they are used to getting for free. If the US government would continue to provide GPS, why would a commercial company go to the trouble of creating a terrestrial alternative? Who would pay for it? Even if the US government stopped providing PNT for free, what about the EU, or Russia, or China? The math never quite worked out. Everyone that studied the issue saw the need. No one could figure out how to make it happen. Wartime Innovation Unmanned aircraft have been used as instruments of war since World War I . The Global War on Terrorism accelerated their use and led to innovations such as remote piloting, advanced optics, and weapons launch capabilities. Next on the timeline of significant drone innovations is indisputably the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is facing an existential threat, and it does not have the resources of its enemy. Cheap and effective are the order of the day and no matter your personal position on the conflict, it would be difficult to deny the resourcefulness of the Ukrainian war effort. The war will likely be remembered for many innovations as all wars are. But while the media unpacks Operation Spiders Web, there is an interesting potential application of their drone technology that may end up giving the GPS community the terrestrial alternative it has been seeking since 2018. Leave a comment GPS Drawbacks If you live in a city, it may feel like GPS is everywhere, but it isn’t. There are areas of the world where the GPS signal is not available or is degraded. For example, GPS does not work as well at high northern latitudes. Accuracy is also an issue for GPS. It’s good enough for your walking directions to the coffee shop or your driving directions to your dinner party, but for many applications, it is not accurate enough. The GPS signal is very, VERY weak by design and is not difficult to jam or spoof. These vulnerabilities are known and normally not an issue in peacetime but are a huge issue in war time. Jamming GPS is not technically difficult and would be high on the list of to-dos for an invading army. This all adds up to risk that an invaded country like Ukraine cannot afford. If it is going to launch a major drone attack inside Russia, it cannot assume that PNT will be there. It had to come up with something else…and it did. Ukraine did not rely on space-based PNT for its attack but developed an AI solution that allowed the drones to navigate to, and identify, their targets. This may feel like a niche application, but the emerging technology community should take notice. The entire concept for a space-based, global PNT system came from some scientists tracking a harmless radio signal from Sputnik. Why? Because at the time, many people were afraid of Sputnik. It was scarcely more than a really well shielded radio, but Americans panicked and tracking it was top priority. In retrospect, Sputnik was harmless. But a growth of that work was the GPS system we know and use today. In the same way, Ukraine began with a simple problem: stop or slow long-range bombers. They didn’t have the resources, so they innovated. Part of that innovation was flying drones with precision without using PNT. That resulted in an AI system that achieved the feat to great effect. How that technology will now be used and grown is the next question. A question that emerging technology professionals and leaders should pay attention to. What’s Next The need for GPS alternatives is well understood and is codified in statute. Previously, the US policy and technology communities had trouble figuring out the right incentive structure and technical solution to provide a real terrestrial based PNT system that could serve as an alternative to timing as required by the 2018 Coast Guard Authorization Act, but also for position and navigation recognizing that critical dependencies also occur there. The crucible of war is producing innovations as it always has in history. Right now, the literal vehicle for those innovations is drones. Drones may be the laboratory and proving ground for technology to operate in GPS environments, but it won’t stay there. Sharp leaders, technologists, and strategists will look at what’s happening with drone technology regarding the lack of GPS use and see that this may provide what has long been a pursuit of these communities, a true GPS alternative. The details of Operation Spiders Web will continue to come out of the coming months and years. Many analysts will look at the operation and correctly point out that it should serve as a warning for future military conflicts. In the meantime, the innovations in drone technology provide a real opportunity for national resilience. The AI that allows drones to navigate terrain and accurately deliver weapons to targets could prove to be a major step toward a terrestrial alternative to GPS. It may not solve the entire equation or exactly replace every function, but today our dependence on GPS for all aspects of PNT is nearly absolute. We continue to rely on a constellation of 31 satellites flying at 12,550 miles, which is, let’s be honest, a concept from the 1950s. Using AI and scaling the initial work done by the brave souls fighting in Ukraine, a new concept for PNT could be within reach for the first time in earnest. We should not simply focus on the military applications of this technology and phrases like “Russia’s Pearl Harbor ” because they distract us from global opportunity. Ukraine will continue to fight and innovate. Those innovations will continue to be looked at through a military lens. But the emerging technology community would be well advised to see through some of the initial reporting and see how AI might become a true alternative to GPS. We might not be ready to send those satellites to the unemployment line just yet, but a new concept for PNT may just be upon us.