US Armored Vehicle Receives New Capability

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The US  Army’s vision for 2028 focuses on how to best prepare soldiers for possible warfare with near-peer competitors, who have used electronic warfare to disrupt communications vital to Western forces in recent years.

Sixty-two of the first iteration of mounted anti-jam GPS devices were equipped into light armored vehicles in Germany over the past month, with thousands more scheduled to be installed into U.S. European Command vehicles by 2028, said Army leaders in charge of location data on future battlefields.

In the past, armored vehicles have used multiple Defense Advanced GPS receivers, known as DAGR devices. 

The new MAPS – Mounted Assured Precision Navigation & Timing System — replaces multiple DAGR devices with one system that uses a chip-scale atomic clock for timing, Selective Availability and Anti Spoof Module, or SAASM, for GPS, and anti-jamming antenna to distribute PNT information.

In addition, future iterations of MAPS will include non-GPS sensors by fusing GPS with alternate navigation and timing technologies to ensure accurate PNT that Soldiers can trust while operating in various threat or denied environments, according to a statement.

A single-point GPS also creates multiple practical benefits for Soldiers, such as less maintenance, according to frontiersman.com.

Col. Nickolas Kioutas, PNT project manager, said the MAPS  was developed to provide trusted PNT to a platform, such as Stryker vehicles, by pairing a GPS receiver with an anti-jam antenna. 

Upgraded first-generation and second-generation technology is also expected to be unveiled in the future.

The Army also plans to equip armored brigades with the technology, and put MAPS in vehicles such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, M1 Abrams tank, and the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer. After those “priority vehicles” the Army will evaluate the mounted device in second-tier priority vehicles.