Speaking Wednesday at a Washington, D.C., conference, Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force Chief of Staff, said that the US military and its allies must be able to operate in a GPS-denied environment. The efforts by adversaries to jam or otherwise prohibit use of the position-navigation-timing data provided by the USAF-operated Global Positioning System satellites will only increase. However, having said that, Schwartz maintained that there is no intent to move USAF out of the GPS business. He called such a move “unlikely.”
Defense experts say the drone threat represents only part of a larger, looming problem: U.S. air bases in the Pacific are increasingly vulnerable to air attacks.