The United Kingdom will invest about $202 million to reinforce the nation’s positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT, services.
Unveiled at the Royal Institute of Navigation’s annual PNT Leadership Seminar, the package will support the development of capabilities that operate independently of satellite signals and strengthen the nation’s ability to monitor threats, the U.K. government said Wednesday.
What Will the Funding Support?
The investment includes about $92 million to begin work on the U.K. National Enhanced Long-Range Navigation, or eLoran, program. The initiative aims to provide jamming- and spoofing-resilient PNT data across land, air and sea.
In a notice published in May, the U.K. government said it plans to build a nationally-owned eLoran PNT system with initial operating capability by 2028 and full operating capability by 2030.
The government is also allocating about $88 million to advancing the National Timing Centre program and building the country’s first distributed time infrastructure, which will enable new uses of technologies like satellite communications, 5G and self-driving vehicles.
Around $17 million of the funding will go toward satellite interference monitoring and $4 million will support space-based time transfer research.
“Having resilient and enduring access to position, navigation and timing services is a critical part of life in today’s world, and a major plank in the U.K.’s national security. So many of the things we take for granted every day, from using our phones to planning a journey, simply couldn’t happen without it,” stated Lord Vallance, the U.K. minister for science, innovation, research and nuclear. “The U.K. is a leader in this field, but in an uncertain world we cannot be complacent. The funding we are announcing today will ultimately help protect Britain from the risks posed to PNT, from both accidental outages and hostile acts, safeguarding everyone’s wealth and wellbeing.”