navigation warfare

    From Joint Publication 3-14, Space Operations, 10 April 2018:

    d. Navigation Warfare (NAVWAR)

        (1) NAVWAR is deliberate offensive and defensive actions to assure friendly use and prevent adversary use of PNT information through coordinated employment of space, cyberspace, and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. NAVWAR is further enabled by supporting activities such as ISR and EMS management.

        (2) At the operational level, a JFC may gain a desired advantage by integrating diverse capabilities to create NAVWAR effects. Integrated offensive and defensive NAVWAR activities ensure friendly PNT information use is unimpeded while simultaneously denying the threat’s use of PNT information. When formulating NAVWAR courses of action (COAs), JFCs must understand the tradeoffs between NAVWAR effects and potential degradation to friendly forces and civil, commercial, and scientific users (as stipulated by US national space-based PNT policy).

For additional information about NAVWAR, see JP 3-13.1, Electronic Warfare, and JP 3-12, Cyberspace Operations.

4. Positioning, Navigation, and Timing

    a. Military users depend on assured PNT systems for precise and accurate geo-location, navigation, and time reference services. PNT information, whether from space-based global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs), such as GPS, or non-GNSS sources, is mission-essential for virtually every modern weapons system. For decades, GPS provided the global community largely uncontested access to space-based PNT services. Because of its constant availability, free access, high accuracy, and modest cost of user equipment (i.e., GPS receivers), other nations’ military forces integrated GPS into their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). The international community is acutely aware of their dependence on, and consequent vulnerability from, GPS. For this reason, other GNSSs are in various stages of development. The increasing availability of non-US-based GNSSs means adversaries may leverage GPS while it provides an operational advantage, then attempt to deny US and allies GPS through jamming, while preserving their own PNT capabilities via other systems. The US must protect assured PNT through the synergy of cyberspace, space, and EW operations.

    b. GPS provides two levels of positioning services. The standard positioning service is available to all users through the broadcast of an unencrypted signal. The precise positioning service, used by DOD, authorized government agencies, and some US allies, leverages an encrypted code broadcast over two frequencies. Precise positioning service users retain a significant advantage over standard positioning service users due to the relative robustness of the encrypted signal and the ability to correct for environmental conditions by accessing two frequencies. Newer military GPS receivers incorporate an architecture (both hardware and software) that safeguards classified GPS cryptographic keys and algorithms and protects signals from exploitation.

For additional information on PNT, see Department of Defense Instruction (DODI) 4650.08, Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and Navigation Warfare (NAVWAR).

—Joint Publication 3-14, Space Operations, 10 April 2018

table of contents

0. fans of space
1. Space Force
2. response to criticism of Space Force
3. space situational awareness
4. space control
5. protecting satellites
6. space debris
7. navigation warfare
8. surveillance
9. satellite communications
10. environmental monitoring
11. missile warning
12. nuclear detonation detection
13. drones
14. spacelift
15. space academy
16. spaceborne military base
17. asteroid mining
18. disaster relief
19. first contact
20. space warfare
21. spaceborne energy
22. spaceborne food
23. orbital ring
24. moon base
25. colonizing the solar system
26. megastructures
27. T O & E
28. Pence speech
29. history
30. space news