2026 promises to be interesting with government decisions, LEO constellations and, of course, AI everywhere…
According to industry leaders from Spirent and the GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA), the coming year will represent a collision between unprecedented connectivity and an intensifying global arms race over Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) security.
The Convergence: Smartphones and LEO Constellations
“Satellite-terrestrial convergence will extend service options and enhance flexibility,” said Steve Douglas, head of market strategy at Spirent, now part of Keysight KEYS -1.39%↓. “By 2026, direct-to-device satellite will become a premium and differentiating feature of smartphones as regulatory alignment and industry standards come online,” he said.
Douglas highlighted the rise of LEO constellations as game-changers for accuracy. Unlike traditional Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) systems like standard GPS, LEO systems orbit closer to Earth, offering sub-centimeter precision and lower latency. “As the satellite-based broadband market grows, LEO systems will be a ‘coopetitive’ force in the navigation services space,” Douglas said.
The Looming Threat of Hybrid Warfare
However, these technological leaps are being shadowed by a deteriorating security landscape. Lisa Dyer, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance, identified hybrid warfare as the single most important issue facing location technology in 2026.
“It endangers PNT and nearly all other commercial communications technologies, and threatens to undermine U.S. national and economic security,” Dyer warned. She noted that harmful interference from jamming and spoofing is no longer confined to conflict zones, but is increasingly “impacting public safety and impeding commerce” globally.
The Call for a “Whole-of-Government” Defense
To counter these threats, Dyer argues that technical innovation must be met with aggressive policy and enforcement. She highlighted the friction between emerging technologies as a primary concern.
“We urgently need a whole-of-government approach to combat jamming and spoofing,” Dyer said. “To give one real-world example of why this strategy is long overdue, we need to understand how the government will determine if and how Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drones and counter-UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) technologies can safely co-exist.”
Dyer’s proposed strategy for 2026 includes:
- Aggressive Enforcement: Cracking down on the marketing, sales, and import of illegal jammers and spoofers.
- Infrastructure Modernization: Accelerating the launch of jam-resistant GPS satellites and resolving ongoing issues with the Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX).
- Signal Integration: Rapidly integrating signals from complementary PNT systems that operate on different frequencies and orbits to ensure redundancy.
AI and Encryption: The Technical Counter-Offensive
Douglas echoed the need for resilience, predicting an “intensified arms race” against interference by the end of 2026. He expects wide-scale industry initiatives to deploy AI-powered interference detection and adaptive mitigation systems.
“The affordability of GNSS jamming and spoofing hardware has expanded the threat from military to civilian critical infrastructure,” Douglas said. The industry’s response will likely involve an increased reliance on dual-frequency encrypted signals to secure high-risk sectors like maritime and commercial aviation.
As 2026 approaches, the success of satellite navigation will depend not just on the number of satellites in the sky, but on the ability of governments and private industry to shield those signals from the growing reach of digital interference.
 constellations enhancing accuracy, and a shift toward “whole-of-government” defenses to counter hybrid warfare threats.){kind=link}