U.S. Not Seen Trying to Counter Ascendency of China's BeiDou GNSS

Despite warnings that China's BeiDou global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is eclipsing GPS capabilities, a U.S. response isn't expected. The BeiDou ascendency comes as China is also seen making big strides in commercial positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) satellites.

The U.S. generally “doesn't pay much attention to PNT services," and policymakers believe GPS is working fine and doesn't need scrutiny, said Dana Goward, Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation president and member of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing National Advisory Board. "They don't see a need to be in competition” other than to keep GPS as modern as possible for DOD and Space Force uses, he said. "It's kind of sad that ... we have led the world and it has really enhanced America's prestige and influence and China is eroding that and we are not paying attention to it.”

GPS capabilities "are now substantially inferior" to China's BeiDou, the PNT National Advisory Board told DOT Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg and DOD Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks in a January memo. The board recommended a White House summit "to launch an initiative to regain U.S. PNT leadership and ensure resilient, reliable PNT for critical infrastructure and the larger economy." Asked about the advisory board warning, DOD and DOT didn't comment this week.

Meanwhile, China is encouraging other nations to rely on BeiDou for civil use, and in some parts of the world it provides "the most accessible and accurate PNT data of any operating GNSS constellation," according to a paper published earlier this year by Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. It said few policymakers are thinking about issues regarding changes in the GNSS universe, particularly how China's use of BeiDou, 5G communications and 5G infrastructure "might affect non-military dimensions of great power competition."

BeiDou's capabilities could make it the default GNSS service for consumer applications such as smartphone navigation, Goward said. Currently, Apple's iPhone technical specifications, starting with the iPhone 12, listed BeiDou as among the navigation services it supports, along with GPS, the EU's Galileo GNSS system, Russia's GLONASS and Japan's QZSS. Various Samsung Galaxy models, including the S8 and S10, also support BeiDou, according to technical specs.

GPS was developed as a military application first and foremost, and the U.S. has long ensured the American military and close allies' militaries had access to more precise signals than anyone else, including American consumers, to try to avoid foreign forces using GPS full capabilities against U.S. interests, John Strand, CEO, Strand Consult, told us. He said China almost surely has similar concerns about BeiDou capabilities being used against China.

A proactive U.S. approach would combine satellite, terrestrial and fiber PNT sources, creating redundancy and backup in case satellite signals become unavailable, Goward said. While DOT is crafting a strategy for systems that will complement GPS satellites, nothing is funded, he said. The U.K. is taking a similar route, he said, pointing to its 10-point PNT strategy announced last month. That strategy includes developing proposals for "a resilient, terrestrial, and sovereign Enhanced Long-Range Navigation system to provide backup Position and Navigation" and for a satellite-based augmentation system to replace the U.K.'s use of the EU's European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service -- that being a regional satellite-based augmentation system used to improve such GNSS services as GPS and Galileo. The strategy also will "investigat[e] possible options for a UK sovereign regional satellite system." China also is nearing completion of a ground-based timing system that integrates fiber and enhanced long-range advanced navigation, Goward said.

China's prioritized investments in BeiDou are consistent with its Five-Year Plan, and the U.S. "can, and should, do the same," Lisa Dyer, GPS Innovation Alliance executive director, wrote in an email. "We can and must invest in accelerating GPS Modernization," she added, pointing to six of the on-orbit satellites dating back to the 1980s, seven to the 1990s and 12 being built in the aughts. "This system has brought and continues to bring tremendous benefits to our national security, public safety, critical infrastructure" and the economy, she said. "Investments that accelerate GPS Modernization are investments in U.S. global leadership and innovation in nearly every sector of our society," Dyer added.

Chinese companies are outpacing U.S. firms in high-performance low earth orbit PNT, Xona Space Systems representatives warned during a meeting with an aide to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr earlier this month (see 2311200049). Three different Chinese firms have put up constellations totaling more than 900 satellites, with all three expected to start offering navigation services in 2025, Xona said.