Airborne infantry and artillery soldiers recently tested a new dismounted GPS system at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

Soldiers with 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division and 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery Regiment, got their hands on the Dismounted Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing System or DAPS, according to an Army release.

At Fort Huachuca, the soldiers ran reconnaissance and fire missions in different threat scenarios to assess how well DAPS performed in a realistic operational environment.

The system is going to replace the current Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, according to the release. The DAPS system is a “single source” of Assured-Position, Navigation and Timing. It can work with the Army’s new conformable battery — a body-fit battery that can power nearly all systems on a soldier’s body.

Soldiers spent several days on night operations in the Huachuca Mountains and then gave researchers feedback on how well the system worked.

Sgt. Jonathan Lechuga (left) from 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division and Sgt. Dalton Jordan from 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division test the new Dismounted Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing System (DAPS). (Nicholas Robertson/Army)

The DAPS system is designed to provide PNT to the Nett Warrior system, a smartphone-based device, and other networked command and control equipment.

“Soldiers played a significant role in helping the Army develop a replacement for the legacy Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR),” said Col. Dylan Randazzo, director of the Intelligence Electronic Warfare Test Directorate.

The DAPS program kicked off in 2017 and was approved to move ahead as a DAGR replacement in 2018.

The device hit initial operational capability this summer, according to the Army’s Acquisition Support Center website.

In May, at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Next conference, The director of the Army’s Cross Functional Team-APNT, William Nelson, pointed out that PNT resiliency was paramount to all Army modernization efforts.

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

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