eLoran Programme · UK public procurement notice

Introduction

There is recognition within the UK and internationally that much critical national infrastructure is dependent in some way on Global Positioning System (GPS) and/or other Global navigation satellite system (GNSS). In October 2023, UK Govt published its new Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Policy Framework which includes a “10 Point Plan” to enhance national PNT resilience . This plan includes:

“develop a proposal for a resilient, terrestrial, and sovereign Enhanced Long Range Navigation (eLORAN) system to provide backup Position and Navigation”

An eLORAN programme is being established within the National PNT Office with three main objectives:

a. Build a Nationally-owned UK eLORAN PNT system with initial operating capability (IOC) by start of 2028 and full operating capability by 2030, that will provide resilient, terrestrial, sovereign, backup Position, Navigation and Timing for UK Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and the wider economy and society.

b. Ensure interoperability with other national and international eLORAN systems.

c. Conduct research and development to ensure the long-term sustainability, continual improvement and expanded applications of the eLORAN system.

Achieving these objectives will result in three primary outcomes:

d. Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) resilient to the loss of GNSS provided timing. From 2027, a resilient, sovereign timing service provided to UK CNI from the Universal Coordinated time from National Physical Laboratory (UTC (NPL)) and eLORAN.

e. CNI resilient to the loss of GNSS provided PNT. From 2029, a full eLORAN system to be built to provide backup PNT across the UK.

f. New PNT use cases exploited. From 2030, the full eLORAN system can be exploited to find new innovative use cases that were previously inaccessible by PNT services by GNSS.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is currently developing the business case for an eLoran system, referred to herein as “eLORAN Programme”. To this end a set of potential services and associated mission requirements have been derived. These are presented at Annex A.

For the avoidance of doubt, this notice is not informing the market of an imminent procurement. All costs pertaining to the completion of this response are to be borne by the responders.

Please note, procurement dates and other data in this notice are subject to governance and should not be viewed as a firm commitment. This premarket engagement is purely to gain market knowledge and is not the launch of a new procurement. Timelines and technical requirements will be refined through market engagement. At this stage a contract start date April 2027 with an IOC in early 2028 is estimated.

Respondents are invited to review these services and provide responses to the questions below, with whatever level of detail and means is considered appropriate by the respondent, considering the objective is to support development of the eLORAN Business Case.

The questions are separated into two parts:

• Part A: Technical considers the technical feasibility and processes of developing the stated capabilities.
• Part B: Programmatic explores the projected costs and preferred commercial arrangements to deliver the capabilities.

Queries

If you have any queries or clarification questions with regards to providing a response to this questionnaire, please get in touch at NPNTO@dsit.gov.uk. The deadline for clarification questions is 30/05/25. Questions and responses will be provided to all participants, to ensure you have access to the same level of information.

Submitting Responses & Timescales

Responses should be submitted either as a word document or PDF to NPNTO@dsit.gov.uk

Target for responses to Part A and B is 30/06/25

These are not deadlines; later responses will be considered, but respondent’s scope to influence the programme is reduced the later submissions are received. These responses will be reviewed by the cross-government eLoran programme team members to:

• Identify potentially suitable candidate companies or proposals that might be able to meet the UK National eLORAN System requirements;
• Identify potentially suitable candidate companies that would best support specialised functions in the larger UK National eLORAN System;
• Inform further refinement of the National eLORAN Programme requirements and capabilities;
• Identify concepts or proposals with different solutions than those previously considered;
• clarify or expand understanding of potential relationships of national eLORAN systems dependencies and support to UK critical national infrastructure;
• determine the pathway for the next stage of commercial engagement.

Respondents should anticipate invitation to direct technical and commercial engagement with the National eLORAN Programme working group hosted by DSIT. The intention of this premarket engagement is to initiate the process to commercial competition leading to award of contract or contracts for a UK National eLORAN System commencing financial year 26/27.