A New Kind of GPS Ushers in a New Age for Defense Tech

It’s hard to believe, but for almost 40 years now, the Global Positioning System, now universally known as GPS, has been helping people find where they are and where they’re going. 

Utilizing a formation, or “constellation,” of 32 satellites, GPS allows for location with precision of plus or minus 16 feet through the process of triangulation. 

A transponder, now factory-installed on all modern smartphones, triangulates its position using three of the closest satellites by measuring the exact time it takes a signal to travel from each of the three satellites. 

It’s a technically sophisticated trick using relatively basic math and is now being employed in several non-U.S. built networks, including Russia’s fully operational GLONASS, as well as the planned, European-developed Galileo positioning system, China’s BeiDou, Japan’s Quasi-Zenith, and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System.

With almost four decades of history behind it, it’s no surprise that this technology has now proliferated even to rival nations like Russia and China. 

It’s also not a surprise that there is now an offshoot in the works, designed to do the same exact task, only in a brand new environment. 

That environment is the deep sea. 

The Final Frontier… Closer Than You Think

Covering two-thirds of the planet’s surface and still largely uncharted (less than 1/20th of total volume of the world’s oceans have been explored), the deep sea has proven to be a technical challenge for navigation and positioning.

The biggest problem when using modern techniques is that water dissipates radio signals very rapidly, making anything like GPS largely useless at depths exceeding a few-dozen feet. 

Traditionally, submariners have navigated using everything from maps, to constellations, to communications with satellites using towed surface buoys coupled with onboard monitoring of speed and direction… But today, the need to simplify and standardize the process has led to a truly revolutionary development. 

Defense giant BAE Systems, working closely with the American Navy, is currently developing a technology called POSYDON (Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation). 

Nifty acronym aside, the system employs the same triangulation process as GPS, but a different signal medium: sound. 

Unlike electromagnetic waves, which cannot penetrate the ocean’s depths, sound propagates quite efficiently through water. 

Further distinguishing it from GPS, POSYDON, which cannot rely on a handful of satellites circling the earth at an altitude of more than 20,000 miles, will involve thousands of passive beacons to cover the complex topography of the undersea world. 

Analyzing the sound triangulation data from these passive beacons will give quick readings on where a craft is located, without having to rely on more cumbersome techniques like those currently in use. 

Not Your Daddy’s GPS Signal Processor

That analysis, however, will be far more complicated that what GPS devices have to tackle. 

One of the biggest problems, according to Joshua Niedzwiecki, the director of sensor processing at BAE Systems, is that factors like water temperature and salinity can change the speed at which sound moves through water. 

Unlike electromagnetic signals, which move at a constant rate, putting together the elapsed arrival times of sound waves from a variety of mediums will present a significant challenge…

A challenge that will take years and sizeable investment to perfect. 

Big enough that the question has to be asked: why bother with this now?

The answer may be bigger than POSYDON itself. 

The true reason the U.S. Navy, by far the biggest and most advanced of any in the world, might need a quick, completely automated location system right now is that its future plans include fielding thousands of new-generation submersibles. 

Unmanned submersibles, designed to be deployed by larger submarines for the task of surveying, detecting, and, if the situation demands it, attacking enemy vessels under water. 

A fleet of undersea drones like that could not ever exist and function without automatic positioning precision like the kind currently offered by GPS, which made a development like POSYDON more of a necessity than just another high-tech toy. 

Those drones, just like their high-flying counterparts already hard at work for the U.S. Air Force, are destined to first supplement and then even replace parts of the U.S.’s substantial submersible fleet. 

Just One Side of a Newly Born Industry

Right now, industry experts expect the future market for underwater drones to rise from $500 million per year, where it stands today, to over $5 billion by the year 2020. 

Already a major climb from today’s nascent levels, drones for the water, both in military and commercial applications, are likely to exceed these projections given the investment in supporting technologies, like POSYDON, indicate. 

Several notable companies are working on the underwater robotics required to make seagoing drones a reality, including BAE Systems itself, as well as another usual suspect, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). 

However, there are other, lesser-known companies, which specialize in this emerging technology, already entering the field with innovations that rival and, in some cases, outperform the big-brand industry leaders. 

One such company, based in Canada, has already been tapped by both the U.S. and Israeli navies as a supplier of this still-experimental technology. 

You haven’t heard its name yet, but this company has partnered with major scientific institutions, including the famed Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Institute, in developing its product. 

I had the privilege of speaking with its CEO personally and put together the following presentation for prospective investors. 

While still very early in its life cycle, this company is likely to become a major military contractor as this technology goes from novelty to mainstream. 

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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