NIWC Atlantic opens M-PNT laboratory

The US Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic officially opened a new Maritime Positioning, Navigation and Timing (M-PNT) facility at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, Virginia.

The lab will support the US Navy by providing research, development, test, evaluation, integration and certification works for both surface and submarine PNT systems. This includes supporting new technologies being developed and introduced into the fleet for operating in a global positioning system (GPS) or sensor in denied environment. These technologies include enhancements to inertial navigation systems and alternative positioning system technologies to GPS.

The laboratory will also facilitate research, development, test and evaluation efforts for other navy and Department of Defense customers, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in support of maritime geospatial intelligence technical standards, and exploitation by the fleet.

Construction on the approximately $3 million laboratory began in May 2018 and is still in progress. Although the structure is complete, some minor work remains before the lab attains a fully functional status.

The facility will also support the navigation suite certification process being developed for the fleet, which tests the design, integration and interoperability of the entire PNT system of systems architecture in both surface ships and submarines. Initially, the lab will support guided missile destroyer-class and Virginia-class architectures, then grow to be reconfigurable to support all fleet PNT system of systems architectures.