The secretary of the United States Army has designated the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command (SMDC) as the Army’s representative to identify and advocate for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information, as well as establish and formalize joint navigation warfare (NAVWAR) requirements. SMDC is developing a TRADOC-sponsored Army NAVWAR concept that will be used to establish a baseline for how the Army will execute the NAVWAR engagements.
“Navigation warfare is really about taking a look at different position, navigation, and timing signals and figuring out how the signals flow; the potential for adversaries to disrupt our ability to use them in the future; and how can we not only protect ourselves from the enemy denying us with those abilities, but also how can we do the same to our enemies and affect them and disrupt them in a multi-domain operational environment,” said Col. Timothy G. Dalton, TRADOC capabilities manager for space and high altitude.
NAVWAR allows the Army to take deliberate defensive and offensive actions to assure U.S. forces PNT information through coordinated employment of space, cyberspace, and electronic warfare operations. PNT data enables the Army to precisely move, shoot and communicate; extend its operational reach; control the tempo of operations; and perform mission command, all without enemy interruption. A typical brigade combat team depends on more than 28 different systems and 600 total systems that leverage PNT. The Army has more than 250,000 GPS-dependent systems.
“It is definitely an exciting time for NAVWAR,” Dalton said. “The Army, services and Department of Defense, as a whole, have started to embrace the importance of this mission area and understand the competitive advantage the U.S. and our partners can gain while denying the adversary the ability to conduct operations with respect to navigational warfare.”