Published Aug 25, 2026, 10:56 AM EDT
TrustPoint tested C-band navigation on a modified NovAtel receiver, advancing a GPS-independent option for jammed environments.
TrustPoint and Hexagon’s NovAtel have demonstrated that an enhanced commercial receiver can acquire and process TrustPoint’s C-band navigation signals when conventional satellite navigation faces interference. The Navy-backed test advances the company’s effort to provide an independent source of positioning, navigation and timing—commonly called PNT—for military and civilian users when GPS becomes unreliable. Patrick Shannon, TrustPoint’s founder and CEO, told Military.com in an interview that the demonstration addressed a critical issue every new PNT system eventually faces: how to get new navigation signals into hardware that can actually use them.
Building a Commercial Alternative to GPS
Shannon began his career building satellites for defense and intelligence missions after studying aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. He later worked in business development and program execution for commercial satellite companies, including Astro Digital. He said those experiences showed him that companies were rapidly changing satellite communications, Earth observation and launch services while comparatively little innovation occurred aboard navigation satellites. TrustPoint, founded in 2020, is developing what Shannon described as a commercially owned and operated alternative to GPS. Instead of replacing GPS outright, TrustPoint wants its service to operate as a separate “co-primary” system that users can employ alongside GPS or fall back on when GPS is jammed, spoofed or otherwise unavailable. “We like to think of ourselves as a complementary system,” Shannon said. “GPS is not going anywhere. But TrustPoint is coming in with a very different breed, a different flavor of GPS. It’s fully independent.”
