GPS jamming amid wars playing havoc with airline navigation – report
Around 1,000 flights a day suffer GPS interference as they pass near Israel or Ukraine, experts tell UK’s Times; in some cases, errors continue even after planes leave region
Electronic countermeasures by participants in Israel’s battle against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed proxies, as well as Russia and Ukraine, are throwing off the navigation systems of tens of thousands of flights every month, the UK’s Times newspaper reported Saturday.
Specifically, the activities are impacting the Global Positioning System used by pilots to determine where they are by receiving signals from satellites.
Known as spoofing, the GPS jamming is used to confuse enemy missiles or drones, making it difficult for attackers to hit key targets accurately. However, the practice also scrambles signals that direct aircraft navigation instruments, making it difficult for them to determine their exact locations.
The spoofing is interfering not just with flights to and from Israel and areas around Ukraine, but also with planes that fly past those regions heading for other destinations.
According to the report, about 1,000 planes a day have their navigation systems interrupted as they fly near Israel and Ukraine, which is battling against a Russian invasion that started in 2022.
Since the spring, there has been a sixfold increase in GPS spoofing, it said.
A chart provided by the Times showed the number of GPS jamming hotspots over Europe and the Middle East in the 24 hours up to September 26. The highest concentration appeared to be over Israel, with 594 incidents. The next highest was 271, over western Russia.
Northern Israel has experienced intense GPS jamming since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, widely reported to be the result of Israeli efforts to limit the ability of Lebanese terror group Hezbollah — which has been attacking Israel on a daily basis since the start of the war — to carry out precise strikes.
Iran-backed Iraqi groups and the Houthis in Yemen have both claimed drone and missile attacks on Israel, too.
Raphael Monstein, from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, who has been watching how incidents have risen, told the Times that over the past month, there were more than 40,000 flights affected.
“The risk is not that just suddenly an aircraft falls out of the sky. But over time, you increase the chance that something bad is going to happen,” he said.
Monstein warned of a danger that GPS problems could “chip away at the safety margins.”
“These systems were introduced for a reason, and they help make the whole system safer,” he said.
Problems with GPS can also cause issues in other systems in which it is integrated, causing lingering problems, the report said. Even after leaving an area of interference, GPS issues can continue.
Matters could get worse with the approach of winter, when weather conditions are usually worse, said Mark Zee, who founded Opsgroup, a collaboration of aviation officials including 9,000 pilots.
Among the incidents that Opsgroup has heard of was a plane nearly landing on the wrong runway and another that almost strayed over an Iranian missile facility.
Opsgroup has recommended that pilots reboot their GPS system once they leave a spoofing area, the Times reported.
Aviation officials say that the satellite systems are only one of the navigation methods that modern planes use, the report said.
In July, The New York Times reported that an airbase in northern Israel was identified as the source of many GPS spoofing measures in the Middle East
The IDF declined to comment on the report.
Spoofing activities have also had an influence closer to the ground. Since the start of the war, users of driving navigation apps in Israel have often said their GPS was showing them to be in Beirut and other Lebanese locations, or in Cairo and its environs. Similar GPS disruptions were believed to be affecting dating apps in March as users in Israel and its bordering nations were being offered potential matches across borders, even in enemy countries.
The war erupted on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 251 as hostages to Gaza.
Israel responded with a military offensive to topple the Hamas regime, destroy the terror group, and free the hostages, 99 of whom remain in captivity.
The day after the Hamas attack, the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah began near-daily attacks along the border with Israel, saying it was acting in support of Gaza.
Fighting in the north has further escalated in recent weeks, as has the number of drone attacks claimed by Iraqi groups.
