America’s GPS System Is Vulnerable. We Need A Backup

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2025/08/04/americas-gps-system-...

The entire U.S. economy rests on a single point of failure — 12,500 miles above us. It’s called GPS, and its loss would be catastrophic. Fortunately, the Trump administration is uniquely positioned to prevent this looming threat.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) isn’t just about finding your way with Google Maps. It powers the backbone of American life — banking, the electric grid, logistics, health care, emergency services, agriculture and transportation hubs. Lose GPS, and we lose our economy. The cost? An estimated $1 billion per day. Ports would halt. ATMs and digital payments would stop. Planes, ambulances and even tractors would be paralyzed.

There is no Plan B.

The Russians have a terrestrial backup. The Chinese do as well. Where’s ours?

The U.S. used to have one — but we shut it down. The system, called LORAN, was a World War II-era ground-based navigation network. Though not as precise as GPS, it offered reliable location and timing data. President George W. Bush proposed modernizing it in 2004. But funding stalled, and under the Obama administration, the system was dismantled — deemed obsolete in a satellite-first era.

Bad call.

Fast forward to today: In conflict zones like Ukraine and the Middle East, GPS jammers and spoofers are already being used on the battlefield. Just a year ago, Congressman Mike Turner, former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon capable of wiping out satellites in orbit — including GPS.

Congress saw the danger during President Donald Trump’s first term and passed legislation directing the Department of Transportation to build a GPS backup. But the funds never came through. President Trump issued an executive order urging action, but without funding and urgency, the effort stalled.

Here’s the good news: We don’t need to start from scratch. The infrastructure already exists today. America’s 1,800 commercial and public television stations can deliver precise timing and location signals using a technology called NextGen Broadcasting (also known as ATSC 3.0). This advanced standard, approved by the Trump FCC, transforms traditional over-the-air TV into a robust data delivery network.

Many stations have already adopted NextGen. The rest are waiting for the FCC to sunset the outdated current standard and greenlight the nationwide switch. Once that happens, broadcasters can provide the critical services needed to back up GPS. It’s fast, cheap and already built.

President Trump and his team understand the urgency. His administration is uniquely aligned with broadcasters and technologists who have worked for years to make this solution viable. Now, we just need the political will to finish the job.

The threat is real, the solution is here, and time is running out.

The Trump administration is poised to do this. It can’t come fast enough. Just ask yourself — what’s more in the public’s interest than protecting our way of life?

Broadcasters are ready to step up.

Jerald Fritz is the former chief of staff to Federal Communications Commission Chair Mark Fowler and a former board member of the National Association of Broadcasters. He served as general counsel and strategic planner for television broadcasters, including Allbritton Communications and ONE Media, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose executive chairman is The Baltimore Sun’s principal owner David Smith.