Technologies that could serve as backups for the military's GPS system are to be developed by Rockwell Collins.

The development award was issued by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of its Spatial, Temporal and Orientation Information in Contested Environments, or STOIC, program, which seeks to reduce warfighter dependence on GPS for military operations.

"STOIC technology could augment GPS, or it may act as a substitute for GPS in contested environments where GPS is degraded or denied," said John Borghese, vice president of the Rockwell Collins Advanced Technology Center. "The time-transfer and ranging capabilities we are developing seek to enable distributed platforms to cooperatively locate targets, employ jamming in a surgical fashion, and serve as a backup to GPS for relative navigation."

Rockwell Collins said that under the award it will develop architectures and methods to support time transfer and positioning between moving platforms independent of GPS. Key elements, when integrated, will have the potential to provide global PNT (positioning, navigation and timing) information), including long-range reference signals, ultra-stable tactical clocks, and multi-functional systems that will provide PNT information between users in contested environments.

"Future applications of STOIC technology could include a variety of precision relative navigation operations, such as autonomous aerial refueling and cooperative navigation and collision avoidance within unmanned aerial vehicle swarms," said Borghese.

Award details, such as value of the contract, were not disclosed.