Current plans, if not modified, could lead to an overreliance on GPS-based systems for critical transportation functions.”1 These words ring as true today as they did in 1997, when they were written in the report of the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection. That plan—to discontinue the Coast Guard’s LORAN-C radionavigation system, an alternative to GPS—was enacted in 2010.2
Since then, great power competition has exacerbated the vulnerability of the U.S. GPS infrastructure, and there has been a lack of urgency among government agencies charged with developing a new, enhanced LORAN (eLORAN) system. The Coast Guard, however, is uniquely positioned to ensure the U.S. military will be equipped to deal with the consequences a great power conflict may inflict on its GPS infrastructure. It is time for the Coast Guard to take the lead on eLORAN.
Premium Member-Only Content
Don't miss out. Become a member of the Naval Institute today.
1. Robert T. Marsh, Critical Foundations: Protecting America’s Infrastructures (Washington, DC: President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, 1997).
2. U.S. Coast Guard, “LORAN-C General Information,” U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center, 6 August 2012.
3. Niall Firth, “How to Fight a War in Space (and Get Away with It),” MIT Technology Review 122, no.4 (July/August 2019).
4. Nick Higgins, “GPS Is Easy to Hack, and the U.S. Has No Backup,” Scientific American, 1 December 2019; BBC, “Study Maps ‘Extensive Russian GPS Spoofing,” BBC, 2 April 2019; Gerard Offermans, Erik Johannessen, Charles Schue, Jonathan Hirschauer, and Ed Powers, “UTC Synchronization and Stratum-1 Frequency Recovery Using eLoran: The Alternate Basket for Your Eggs,” Proceedings of the 45th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting (Bellevue, WA, December 2013): 163–72.
5. Dana Goward, “Patterns of GPS Spoofing at Chinese Ports,” The Maritime Executive, 19 December 2019; Mark Harris, “Ghost Ships, Crop Circles, and Soft Gold: A GPS Mystery in Shanghai,” MIT Technology Review, 15 November 2019.
6. Higgins, “GPS Is Easy to Hack, and the U.S. Has No Backup.”
7. “The U.S. Military Is Preparing for War without GPS,” Agence France-Presse, 20 December 2017.
8. Higgins, “GPS Is Easy to Hack, and the U.S. Has No Backup.”
9. Dan Glass, “What Happens If GPS Fails?” The Atlantic, 13 June 2016.
10. U.S. Coast Guard, “How AIS Works,” U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center.
11. “Above Us Only Stars: Exposing GPS Spoofing in Russia and Syria,” C4ADS, 26 March 2019.
12. Offermans et al., “UTC Synchronization and Stratum-1 Frequency Recovery Using eLoran”; Stephen Bartlett, Gerard Offermans, and Charles Schue, “Innovation: Enhanced LORAN,” GPS World, 23 November 2015.
13. Offermans et al., “UTC Synchronization and Stratum-1 Frequency Recovery Using eLoran.”
14. Glass, “What Happens If GPS Fails?”
15. 14 U.S. Code § 102: Primary Duties.
16. “Above Us Only Stars: Exposing GPS Spoofing in Russia and Syria,” C4ADS.
17. ADM Karl Schultz, USCG, “2020 State of the United States Coast Guard: ‘Why I Serve,’” 20 February 2020.
18. 14 U.S. Code § 102: Primary Duties.
19. Scott Price, “The Legacy of Loran,” Coast Guard Compass, 4 February 2010.
20. George Beebe, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2019).
21. Glass, “What Happens If GPS Fails?”; ADM Karl L. Schultz, USCG, “Posture Statement: 2021 Budget Overview” (Washington, DC: U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, 18 February 2020).
22. John Sheridan, “LORAN Could Be Used for Alaska GPS Corrections,” AIN Online, 8 May 2008.
23. Secretary James Mattis, “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy” (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2018).
The Dangerous Radio- Navigation Capability Gap
1. Kate Murphy, “The U.S. Has a GPS Problem,” The New York Times, 23 January 2021.
2. Connie Lee, “Spoofing Risks Prompt Military to Update GPS Device,” National Defense, 4 January 2018.
3. “Plan for the Development of Radio Navigation for 2019–2024,” Commonwealth of Independent States, 24 October 2019.
4. Dana Goward, “China Expanding LORAN as GNSS Backup,” GPS World, 12 October 2020.
5. Lee, “Spoofing Risks Prompt Military to Update GPS Device.”
6. Dana Goward, “$15M for GPS Backup Demo Part of Congress’ March to Terrestrial PNT,” GPS World, 16 January 2019.
