Army informing second generation of anti-jam capability

By Jaspreet Gill / April 2, 2020 at 3:46 PM

The Army is moving ahead with the second generation of its Mounted Assured Positioning Navigation and Timing System following a successful first-generation fielding.

MAPS, a priority under the Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing Cross-Functional Team, is an anti-jamming capability for soldiers in GPS-contested environments.

The first generation, which was fielded last fall to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Europe, included anti-jamming capabilities integrated into Army vehicles. It consisted of A kits (the cable and mount to use on a vehicle) and B kits (a military GPS paired with non-radio frequency technologies).

"The plan is [to get] direct soldier feedback on performance and then roll that into the next generation we call Gen 2," Willie Nelson, director of the APNT CFT, told Inside Defense last week.

The second generation of MAPS includes improved software, antennas and additional non-radio frequency technologies.

Nelson said the CFT developed MAPS prototypes and equipped an operational unit in 18 months, a timeline the team has "never been able to accomplish" before.

"The Army tried for years to write a requirement to put assured positioning, navigation and timing capabilities into the force and we were unsuccessful in getting that through the requirements process -- it was too big, too bulky," Nelson said. "One of [the CFT's] first jobs was to tackle that problem. We broke it down into what we call a mounted requirement for mounted platforms [and] a dismounted requirement for dismounted soldiers that are not connected to a platform."

Meanwhile, the APNT CFT is working on getting through the requirements phase for the dismounted version of MAPS, called DAPS, which will be integrated into handheld devices and the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, the service's augmented reality battlefield heads-up display.

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