Public-private partnership to launch eLORAN technology to back-up and accompany GPS

MIDDLEBURG, Va., - Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) like the Global Positioning System (GPS) and its comparable GNSS systems have revolutionized the way both the military and civilians get from "point a" to "point b."

While the space-based navigation systems put into orbit by the United States, Russia, China, the EU, India, and Japan were once thought to be relatively safe from harm by opposing nations, militaries have since shown the ability to shoot down satellites in addition to jamming signals terrestrially. In fact, India joined the U.S., China, and Russia just last year in shooting down one of its own satellites.

“It’s as significant as India’s first nuclear blast,” Saurav Jha, the editor in chief of the Delhi Defense Review, told the New York Times in March 2019. “The militarization of space is underway, whether anybody likes it or not."

Should GPS be taken offline or somehow interfered by a nefarious actor, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) would have to look to its past to ensure navigation, location, and timing functions stay online.

Thanks to a public-private partnership, a much-improved version of a technology that was birthed during World War II can complement GPS and act as a back-up if needed.

LORAN - or, LOng RAnge Navigation - got its start during WWII and utilized low-frequency hyperbolic radio navigation to keep convoys on the move across the Atlantic and to aid pilots and ships in the Pacific Theater. This was done by figuring out how long it took to transmit between the "master" radio transmitter and the signal at the second station.

In the intervening years, the United States Coast Guard took over an improved system, dubbed LORAN-C, starting in 1958. In 2009, amidst the Great Recession, President Barack Obama declared the LORAN program obsolete and announced plans to terminate it. In 2010, the USCG began shutting down the system.

Just five years later, the U.S. House of Representatives reopened discussions of an enhanced version of LORAN -eLORAN. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law the National Timing Resilience and Security Act, as part of the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act, which mandates the Secretary of Transportation to establish and sustain a land-based timing system to provide a back-up to GPS, namely "to ensure the availability of uncorrupted and non-degraded timing signals for military and civilian users in the event that GPS timing signals are corrupted, degraded, unreliable, or otherwise unavailable." This law was co-sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate and Cong. John Garamendi (D-CA) and Cong. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) in the House.

Bridge Littleton and Daniel Olmes, co-founders and co-presidents of Hellen Systems, based in Middleburg, Va., spoke about the efforts their company and public/private partners have made to launch eLORAN.

"Our focus was really building a world-class team to then be able to go and deploy this system through a future partnership with the U.S. government and put the system back on air," said Hellen's Littleton. "What we are really focused on is helping the government reconstitute and deploy eLORAN as a resilient co-primary, independent backup for GPS."

Beyond GPS