Pilot and Aircrew Locator Beacon for Mission Operations in GPS-Contested Airspace with Adversary Obfuscation Capabilities

PNI SensorÆs FORT (Field Ops Remote Tracker) is a tiny locating device that tracks dismounted personnel in fully EW-contested GPS environments.Ā It derives its unparalleled performance from PNIÆs COTS RM3100 Magnetic Sensor and proprietary motion tracking algorithms.Ā It tracks to better than 1% of distance traveled without GPS.Ā In combination with a COTS (or M-code) GPS and a LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) radio, PNI proposes to create an enhanced PLB (Pilot Locator Beacon) proprietary to the DAF that can provide a downed pilotÆs exact location, in encrypted form, to a search and rescue receiver that locates at distances of 3 miles in dense urban areas, 10 miles in rural areas, and 800 miles over open water.Ā PNI recognizes that evading enemy capture while successfully achieving friendly extraction is a potentially preferable outcome in peer state conflict.Ā While Cospas-Sarsat is the international Search and Rescue PLB standard, it provides no option for adversary evasion.Ā PNI will build a digital Cospas-Sarsat compliant GPS PLB that is EW-proof with DAF proprietary controls that simultaneously enable friendly recovery and enemy evasion.Ā At deployment the 406Mhz signal will activate to provide event notification and satellite-determined coarse location, while the LoRaWAN will commence broadcasting the end-to-end encrypted Lat/Lon of the pilotÆs location.Ā The 121.5MHz locating signal will default off, but can be manually turned on by the pilot, or remotely by the LoRaWAN receiver to assist in rescue if no adversary is present.Ā While both friendlies and adversaries will know the rough location of the pilot via Cospas-SarsatÆs satellite protocol, only friendlies will have the coordinates for the quickest route to rescue in the rescue are, especially if the 121.5MHz is disabled.Ā It is also possible to add intentional location offsets in the satellite transmissions to further misdirect adversarial search and capture efforts, if so desired.Ā The locator beacon would also have built-in intelligence to automatically activate at point of pilot separation from the aircraft, to not only extend battery life, but also record critical black box information that can potentially assist in aircraft recovery as well.