UK, France partner to protect GNSS for critical infrastructure

United Kingdom and French experts will work more closely to increase the resilience of both countries’ critical infrastructure to the signal jamming experienced in the war in Ukraine. The agreements are part of a suite of joint science and tech work.  

The conflict in Ukraine has shown how new technologies — in some cases, small handheld devices — can be used to disrupt positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services, potentially causing major disruption.

As part of a raft of UK-France joint science and tech efforts announced July 10, researchers from both countries will work together on technologies that complement GPS, which are highly resistant to this sort of jamming.  

For instance, the e-LORAN program, driven by the UK government, is working closely with the National Physical Laboratory and private sector companies. The system uses ground-based radio towers, which are much more challenging to block, for a reliable “backup” to GPS, so that UK infrastructure can keep running even when GPS fails.  

The UK’s Science and Tech Secretary Peter Kyle used a joint visit to Imperial College London, with French President Emmanuel Macron, to set out how such a collaboration makes both the UK and France stronger and safer. While speaking at Imperial, Kyle pointed out the tens of millions of pounds in investment being brought into the British tech sector through UK-French trade, as well as the new jobs and growth that this partnership creates.

These efforts will bolster the economic and national security of both countries, according to Kyle, which are foundational pillars of the Plan for Change.

The UK and France also are launching a partnership on supercomputing. The partnership will be led by the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing, the home of Isambard-AI, and the French computing centre GENCI, who lead France’s AI Factory.  

Closer ties between both nations’ compute power and sharing AI best practice will turbocharge the breakthroughs in AI, transforming public services and improving lives, Kyle said. These efforts build on the AI Opportunities Action Plan, the UK government’s blueprint to fuel the use of AI across the economy. It builds on the strong existing UK-France cooperation on AI. The UK’s AI Security Institute and France’s INESIA have committed to further technical workshops to deepen their collaboration on frontier AI research to support national security.