C🅰️tSE

Comparing a cpuple of recent press-releases we see PNT mentioned in the first March 06 2023. The teaming agreement with Fairwinds. 2/n

Going further back in time we find an AST pitch submitted 14.04.2020 with AfWerx. (US AirForce). 3/n

Interesting read. It mentions PNT in some words. 4/n

Seen here. 5/n

6/n

Did AST get the DoD interested in 2020? We do know that AST executives has an ongoing R&D effort in PNT. See patents. There are several benefits from combining LEO + advanced Delay doppler managment + beamforming + communicating correction signals + round trip time measure. 7/n

Several advanced techniques to do alt PNT is embedded in 5G advanced standards. So there is a civilian standard for this, besides the DoD interest fueled by weak legacy GPS being challenged by many threats. 8/n

The only application ever filed by AST & defense, later AST SpaceMobile is to mount an GPS repeater antenna inside Midland main hangar. I’m going to show it in parallell with an L3 Harris application for the exact same gadget. AST left. L3Harris right. 9/n

We do know L3 Harris makes PNT satellites. (And a lot of coms gear). But the purpose of both companies to recreate outdoors GPS signals indoors in 2021 might just be to do Telemetry Tracking and Control experiments. Still, these are similar no? 10/n

Maybe just great minds thinking alike in 2021? But the similarities in the wording seems to suggest a connection of some kind between the two companies. Beyond the fact that the AST filer Midland manager Ken Kramer used to work at L3. 11/n

The timing of AST installing a GPS repeater in Midland main hangar is summer of 2021. A year after the AFWerx pitch. A year before launching BW3. In the year that followed there was a shift in strategy. Announced August 2022 prior to the delayed BW3 launch. 12/n

AST opted to postpone a few large ASIC block 2 test satellites and prioritize an intermediate step of many FPGA (software defined) intermittent service satellites. Needless to say The FPGAs are more flexible for more use cases incl broadcast. While less capacity for coms. 13/n

That shift of strategy might have been caused by alt use case doors opening up. It may also have been influenced by financial concerns. How to reach additional revenue streams from the tech early. And if so, what alt use cases likes the FPGA design? PNT perhaps part of it? 14/n

In the 2020-2021 period the president issued policy on GPS. Instructing on january 15 2021 several government entities to take actions to improve PNT. https://www.gps.gov/policy/doc... Did AST adapt in 2021-22 to this demand for fused / cooperative LEO PNT as a dual use case? 15/15