Ground Control has entered volume production with RockBLOCK APNT, a compact, receive-only module designed to give uncrewed platforms an independent source of positioning, navigation and timing through the Iridium PNT service.
Introduced by the Ground Control team in this on-demand technical webinar, the hardware addresses the growing risk of GNSS jamming and spoofing for autonomous and uncrewed platforms. Because drones, USVs and UGVs operate without anyone on board to notice a false position, interference can cause a vehicle to drift off course or lose its way without detection. Common countermeasures, including anti-jam antennas, multi-constellation GNSS, inertial and visual navigation, and terrestrial backups, often fall short in protecting these systems.
Rather than replacing existing sensors, RockBLOCK APNT is engineered to serve as an additional layer alongside GNSS and inertial systems. It receives an encrypted, authenticated signal from Low Earth Orbit via Iridium PNT that is around 1,000 times stronger than GNSS. Users can access this capability across three Iridium PNT service tiers: Time, Locate and Navigate.
On the hardware side, the module is half the size of a credit card, draws about 1 W of power and provides NMEA-style output, with an antenna included in the developer kit. During the webinar, the Ground Control team also covers how accuracy varies with latitude and platform dynamics while sharing deployments across UAVs, USVs and UGVs.
