Few folks need to get misplaced when touring. But when there are puts the place being misplaced feels particularly unsettling, they have a tendency to be the ocean, barren region and sky. Those environments proportion a defining characteristic: the absence of unique visible cues. The place horizons blur, landmarks disappear and each course can glance deceptively identical. Understanding the place you might be relies on data that you can not see for your self.
For many of human historical past, discovering your approach in such environments required talent, judgment and dependable consideration. Satellite tv for pc navigation marked a basic shift. The appearance of GPS has made navigation nearly easy: Press a button and voilà, location and heading seem immediately.
GPS’s nice power is that underneath benign prerequisites, it really works remarkably neatly in exactly the environments the place being misplaced can be most threatening. Civilian techniques automatically succeed in meter‑point accuracy. This accuracy, alternatively, mask a rising vulnerability.
Over the last few years, planned GPS interference has surged international, disrupting maritime and aviation operations at an unparalleled scale. I’m {an electrical} engineer who research selection strategies of digital navigation. My lab and others world wide are creating those possible choices as backup for when GPS is unavailable or unreliable.
When GPS is silent – or lies
Jamming overwhelms susceptible satellite tv for pc alerts with noise or radio frequency alerts, blocking off GPS role and time altogether.
Spoofing is extra insidious: Counterfeit alerts surreptitiously exchange original ones, deceptive GPS receivers about location and timing whilst showing to crews and automatic techniques to perform generally.
Interference arises from 3 resources: army task, felony exploitation and unintentional misuse. In struggle zones, GPS disruption has grow to be a regimen instrument of war, used to offer protection to property, degrade surveillance and counter drones. This task is easily documented throughout Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the japanese Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. It automatically spills over to impact civilian ships and plane, and civilian lifestyles.
Unintended GPS jamming has brought about severe disruption at world airports by way of making it tough for plane and air site visitors controllers to trace site visitors out and in of the airports. Intentional GPS spoofing used to be even utilized in a freeway heist to scouse borrow US$1 million price of restaurateur Man Fieri’s tequila.
An episode of “60 Minutes” tells the tale of ways criminals used GPS spoofing to scouse borrow two truckloads of tequila.
Making issues worse, spoofed GPS knowledge does no longer stay confined to a unmarried device. Ships use the Computerized Id Machine to broadcast their places and to look what different ships are close by to keep away from collisions. The device proclaims a boat’s GPS role data together with the send’s title, path and velocity, classification and speak to signal.
GPS spoofing successfully corrupts Computerized Id Machine alerts, sending false role data to close by vessels, shore government, insurers and business monitoring services and products. This task can create fleets of “ghost ships” that seem actual to others navigating close by.
Criminals use GPS interference to dam or adjust Computerized Id Machine data to evade oversight. Unlawful fishing fleets, oil smugglers, sanctions evaders and maritime sand thieves had been time and again connected to falsified or disrupted Computerized Id Machine and GPS alerts.
Fatal penalties
GPS intereference isn’t new, and the U.S. executive warned about it a long time in the past, however the scale of its have an effect on has considerably speeded up during the last few years. GPS spoofing and jamming incidents affecting civil aviation larger by way of about 500% from January to August 2024.
Maritime government reported loads of ships affected day-to-day, with groundings and collisions in 2024–25 publicly connected to interference of GPS and different satellite tv for pc navigation techniques, together with within the Baltic Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.
The effects have claimed lives. In December 2024, Azerbaijan Airways Flight 8243 used to be struck by way of a Russian air-defense device, killing 38 folks after the flight used to be diverted because of GPS interference. At sea, GPS interference within the Strait of Hormuz has brought about oil tanker collisions.
GPS jamming brought about the container send MSC Antonia to run aground within the Crimson Sea close to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Would possibly 10, 2025.
Disruption has additionally pressured runway closures, mass flight diversions and emergency procedures at Newark Liberty, Dallas-Fortress Value and Denver world airports.
Even senior officers aren’t immune: In 2025, GPS jamming pressured an plane wearing the Eu Fee President Ursula von der Leyen to make an emergency touchdown.
Strait of Hormuz: Navigation risk zone
Contemporary incidents within the Strait of Hormuz all the way through the U.S.-Iran struggle mark a decisive escalation within the possibility posed by way of GPS interference. The strait sits on the intersection of intense geopolitical struggle and one of the most global’s most important maritime choke issues. Round 20% of world petroleum industry transits those slender waters every day, along dense business site visitors. There’s little margin for navigational error. Right here, even modest errors in role or timing can all of a sudden escalate into collisions, groundings or environmental screw ups.
The Iran struggle has resulted in sustained spoofing around the Persian Gulf. Ships have reported positions by way of Computerized Id Machine that position them on land or differently miles from their true places with out triggering alarms.
Within the confined waters of the Strait of Hormuz, the place ships move one some other in shut proximity, GPS interference erodes situational consciousness exactly the place it issues maximum.
Crucially, interference in Hormuz is power fairly than episodic. Studies display jamming and spoofing used systematically over prolonged classes, no longer simply as momentary responses to precise incidents. This trend means that GPS disruption has grow to be regimen follow fairly than a distinct segment capacity in digital war.
As soon as normalized in one of the most global’s busiest sea-lanes, such practices are tough to include geographically. The result’s a navigation setting by which folks can now not absolutely consider role, timing and identification at sea. The effects lengthen a long way past the confines of the Persian Gulf.
Past GPS
The normalization of GPS disruption exposes a deeper factor: Fashionable navigation resilience has been constructed across the assumption that GPS alerts are in most cases to be had and faithful. As that assumption erodes, consideration has shifted from hardening GPS towards safety via diversification. This implies drawing navigation data from essentially other alerts.
For a backup to satellite tv for pc navigation, a number of nations, together with the U.Okay., France, Saudi Arabia, Russia, South Korea and China, are deploying or modernizing long-range radio navigation, or LORAN, a device that dates again to International Conflict II.
Every other selection that has won larger passion during the last decade or so is the usage of alerts by no means meant for navigation, known as alerts of alternative. By contrast to devoted navigation techniques, akin to long-range radio navigation, this manner makes use of present infrastructure and preserves scarce radio spectrum. A specifically fruitful form of sign to take advantage of is terrestrial mobile.
The creator’s staff tracked the trail of its automotive the usage of alerts from mobile towers all the way through reside GPS jamming at Edwards Air Drive Base.
Zak Kassas
My lab has demonstrated this sort of navigation with floor cars, unmanned aerial cars, or UAVs, excessive‑altitude balloons and plane, together with in GPS‑jammed environments. We advanced specialised receivers that exploit alerts from present LTE and 5G mobile networks.
We have now demonstrated sub‑meter accuracy on UAVs, near-lane‑point accuracy on floor cars, and meter-level accuracy on plane and high-altitude balloons, with out cooperation from mobile community suppliers.
The creator’s staff tracked the flight of a U.S. Air Drive aircraft it used to be aboard the usage of alerts from mobile towers, demonstrating that its manner aligned intently with GPS.
Zak Kassas
Every other manner leverages the fast proliferation of constellations of low Earth orbit conversation satellites. When compared with GPS alerts from medium Earth orbit, low Earth orbit satellites be offering more potent alerts, are a large number of, transmit in a much broader swath of the spectrum, and their alerts are extra resilient to wide-area disruption.
We demonstrated meter-level positioning accuracy exploiting alerts transmitted by way of Starlink satellites. We then advanced receivers that may passively concentrate to alerts emitted from a couple of low Earth orbit satellite tv for pc constellations.
The creator’s lab demonstrated the usage of satellite tv for pc alerts no longer supposed for navigation to approximate the position-tracking skill of GPS. The blue line represents the automobile’s GPS role and the golf green the automobile’s role estimated by way of the researchers’ device.
Since then, my lab has demonstrated navigation with low Earth orbit satellites around the U.S. In our newest experiment, we effectively navigated a vessel within the Arctic seas, off the coast of Greenland.
The creator’s staff tracked the process a boat it used to be aboard within the Arctic the usage of nonnavigation alerts from low Earth orbit satellites.
Zak Kassas
Those effects level to a practical resolution: Navigation resilience will come from a range of ways. We and others are already demonstrating the applied sciences to take action. Whether or not they’re put into sensible use is now a question of coverage, law and timing.
