Originally published A-PNT – The Key to Success for USV Maritime Missions on by https://modernbattlespace.com/2025/08/12/a-pnt-the-key-to-success-for-usv-maritime-missions/ at Modern Battlespace
For any warfighting mission to be successful, having access to trusted GPS and assured positioning, navigation and timing (A-PNT) information is critical – for both manned and unmanned operations. This is especially true for military maritime missions that employ unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), where adversaries persistently threaten and attempt to jam, spoof, and deny GPS capabilities to warfighters and unmanned crafts at sea. When adversaries are successful in their attempts, military assets, the mission itself, and – most importantly – lives are put in jeopardy.
USV Operations
The military use cases for USVs are wide-ranging and expected to grow in the future. These unmanned crafts are already being deployed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, as a means to monitor both contested and benign environments without the need for putting warfighter lives at risk. Eliminating the human factor is actually key for several USV military use cases, such as when unmanned crafts are deployed to maritime regions that are known to be life-threatening due to adversarial presence or the existence of active minefields.
In remote, maritime environments where connectivity is unavailable, USVs are also used to extend the reach of a military command’s existing network. Other military use cases for USVs also include transport, anti-submarine warfare, and hydrographic surveying missions. But no matter the nature of an operation that employs USVs, a successful mission will require access to trusted GPS and PNT capabilities despite enemy interference.
DoD Seeks A-PNT Solutions for USVs
In response to the growing threats adversaries pose to the GPS capabilities of USVs, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is currently seeking out industry innovation in A-PNT capabilities as a complement to traditional GPS.
In maritime warfighting environments, A-PNT serves as a bridge that ensures continuous, resilient, and reliable positioning and navigation information if GPS services are successfully degraded or denied during a mission.
Stiletto, MAPS, and GHOST
This past March, the DoD sponsored an Assured-PNT Capabilities Demonstration Event, hosted by the Navy’s M80 Stiletto Maritime Demonstration Vessel, where representatives from industry, academia, and the government convened to demonstrate and test A-PNT capabilities in the most severe NAVWAR environments.
The Capabilities Demonstration Event was specifically catered to showcasing solutions that could enhance GPS systems or provide A-PNT capabilities to combatant manned and unmanned surface vessels throughout maritime operations in a GPS denied environment. Collins Aerospace participated in the Stiletto Capabilities Demonstration (CD) event, showcasing how its MAPS and GHOST solutions can support the DoD’s overall A-PNT goals.
During the CD event, Collins Aerospace successfully demonstrated the MAPS and GHOST systems. Both systems maintained uninterrupted access to PNT for USVs when GPS capabilities were denied. Today’s military vessels are designed to carry C5ISR systems that require accurate PNT information to operate. When connections to this PNT information are degraded or destroyed – especially for USVs at sea – the operation is put at risk and the craft could be lost.
The MAPS demonstration proved that the solution not only provides trusted PNT capabilities when GPS is denied or absent, but it enhances PNT accuracy and integrity through anti-jam and anti-spoof technologies when a USV’s Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are attacked. The MAPS has a Nav Fusion engine that enables it to take inputs from existing navigation tools on the vessel such as a high end Inertial Navigation System. Not even a metal shroud put over the MSAS-100 antenna could stop the MAPS!
Collins demonstrated how GHOST, the small SWaP version of the GPS-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Service (GPNTS), is able to overcome all live-sky jamming and spoofing scenarios and continue to distribute precise and assured PNT throughout the CD event.
The GHOST demo proved that the solution is able to validate, assure, and distribute accurate PNT to new and legacy vessels, providing navigation data, precise time and frequency reference to USV user systems. GHOST outperformed the M80 Stiletto Demonstration vessel’s PNT Truth sources, forcing the demonstration to pause jamming and spoofing while the vessel’s truth system was allowed to re-acquire a valid PNT solution.
Maritime warfighting environments are only expected to become more contested in the future, requiring unmanned crafts to play an increasingly critical role in a wide variety of combat missions. Maintaining GPS and A-PNT capabilities for USVs in the face of adversarial threats will be essential in maintaining situational awareness of the domain, ensuring operational success, and keeping warfighters’ lives safe.
Collins Aerospace’s Business Development Manager for Ground & Maritime APNT, Beth Otting, A-PNT Systems Architect and Senior Principal Systems Engineer, Steve Ouellette (U.S. Air Force, Ret.), Senior Business Development Manager of Airborne & Weapons APNT Programs, Jesse Constante (U.S. Marine Corps, Ret.), and Raytheon Senior Program Manager, Brett Balazs (U.S. Navy, Ret.), also contributed to this article.
Originally published A-PNT – The Key to Success for USV Maritime Missions on by https://modernbattlespace.com/2025/08/12/a-pnt-the-key-to-success-for-usv-maritime-missions/ at Modern Battlespace
Originally published Modern Battlespace
