§2279b Council on Oversight of the Department of Defense Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Enterprise

Summary

Creates a council inside the Department of Defense to oversee the Pentagon’s positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems and services for military and non-military users. Members include the Under Secretaries for Policy, Research and Engineering, and Acquisition and Sustainment; the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; commanders of U.S. Strategic, Northern, Space, and Cyber Commands; the Director of the NSA; the DoD Chief Information Officer; the service secretaries; and any other officers the Secretary names. The council is co-chaired by the Under Secretaries for Research and Engineering and for Acquisition and Sustainment, and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The council must watch over PNT performance and interoperability, find and fix vulnerabilities, help design system architecture and backup methods, set resource priorities, and perform other tasks the Secretary assigns. Each year, when the President’s budget goes to Congress, the council must send the congressional defense committees a report covering last year’s work, planned activities for the future-years defense program, any requirement changes and their effects, and a budget breakdown for PNT programs. Within 30 days after the President’s budget is sent, the Commander of U.S. Space Command must give the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs an assessment of whether that budget supports required PNT capabilities for the budget year and the next four years and, if not, what steps will be taken; the Chairman must forward that assessment and any comments to the congressional defense committees within 30 days. If the council finds a congressional bill does not provide enough funds for PNT, the council must tell the congressional defense committees. The Secretary must notify those committees in writing within 14 days of learning of any PNT “anomaly” (any unplanned or abnormal event). The council ends 10 years after the date of the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.