As conflicts ramp up in the the Middle East and Ukraine, spillover effects of electronic warfare are making air travel in those regions riskier — and the threat is not limited to just there. Via the New York Times (full access):
Planes were built to trust GPS signals. Jamming and spoofing in the Middle East and Ukraine have diverted flights and caused inaccurate onboard alerts.
Electronic warfare in the Middle East and Ukraine is affecting air travel far from the battlefields, unnerving pilots and exposing an unintended consequence of a tactic that experts say will become more common.
Planes are losing satellite signals, flights have been diverted and pilots have received false location reports or inaccurate warnings that they were flying close to terrain, according to European Union safety regulators and an internal airline memo viewed by The New York Times. The Federal Aviation Administration has also warned pilots about GPS jamming in the Middle East.
Radio frequency interference — intended to disrupt the satellite signals used by rockets, drones and other weaponry — spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and has grown even more intense this fall in the Middle East. The interference can involve jamming satellite signals by drowning them out with noise, or spoofing them — mimicking real satellite signals to trick recipients with misleading information.
The problem is, the satellite technology used in GPS has become a critical element used around the world in ways that were never intended by the original designers of the system. Satellite signals are easily overridden because they are relatively low-power. They can be jammed, or ‘spoofed’ to give false readings. They weren’t designed with encryption or authentication in mind.
Spoofing is harder to handle because the signal appears legitimate. Only the European navigation satellite system, Galileo, incorporates an authentication system that can provide confidence that a signal is from its satellites. Galileo, which currently is the most accurate and precise navigation satellite system, plans to introduce an even stronger level of authentication, according to a spokesperson for the European Commission.
More insidious is “meaconing” — rebroadcasting authentic signals in a way that deceives navigation systems into providing false position data.
Modern airliners have multiple ways to find their positions like inertial navigation systems and air traffic control radar, so attacks based on GPS systems aren’t complete show stoppers — as long as the crew recognizes what is happening in time. Veering into restricted airspace can go bad quickly in a region where fingers are always posed over launch buttons. It’s also an issue when trying to avoid natural hazards like mountains, etc.
Private aircraft are less likely to have the kind of systems redundancy needed to recognize and not be deceived by these attacks.
A big part of the problem is that the advances in jamming and spoofing technology are making it more effective, cheaper, and more readily available. The Times report cites a disruption caused by a commercial truck driver parking his truck near an airport. He was using a GPS jammer to obscure his location from company tracking systems intended to keep track of where drivers were.
This turns up in other areas as well. Ships equipped with satellite tracking systems have been found to be tuning them off or using other means to operate in places where they should not be. Black Sea operations for shipping have been disrupted for some time now by Russian jamming operations. Blocking GPS signals keeps drones, missiles, and smart bombs from the precision targeting that has made them so effective, and such efforts are only going to escalate. What happens when critical government sites begin to deploy this technology in the face of rising threats, and that affects everything in their vicinity?
It’s one reason why the US Navy is teaching the use of sextants and stellar navigation again. It’s not just for ships either — the techniques can also be used in aircraft. It’s why aircraft crews on transports and bombers flying long distances used to carry navigators. This NPR story explains the concerns about over reliance on GPS:
So, why return now to the old ways? The Navy and other branches of the U.S. military are becoming increasingly concerned, in part, that they may be overly reliant on GPS. "We use it to synchronize all military operations, we use it to navigate everywhere — it's just something the U.S. military can't live without," says Brian Weeden, a former Air Force officer now with the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit that studies security issues in outer space. In a big war, the GPS satellites could be shot down. Or, more likely, their signal could be jammed or hacked.
Already, jamming has become more common, Weeden says. "You can buy a lot of GPS jammers off the Internet," he says. "A lot of those are made by Russia."
He thinks the Russians probably have systems to jam the special signals the military uses as well. And China may be developing similar capabilities.
The above two stories date back to 2016: looks like the military was ahead of the game on this one. I am reminded of an old joke. What are the two things that terrify a Marine? 1) A sailor with a rifle, and 2) a Lieutenant with a Map and Compass.
I’m of an age when gas stations used to hand out free road maps. (And had gas pump attendants.) I’ve navigated with map and compass across the back country in New Mexico to bushwhack a more direct route to a destination. Today though I am often using Apple Maps to find a location and a route to it. I have my phone set up in a holder on my dash that lets me use it for a moving map display. My prior life experience with using maps and trying to keep track of location in my head helps me get more out of it and recognize when I’m being led astray. That’s something people of a certain age missed out on, and if we suddenly lost that technology, a lot of people would also find themselves lost. (Bring back “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego!’)
International commercial air travel is something that expanded with the beginning of the jet age, and exploded as air travel became more affordable. It’s a system that evolved in an era of trust in the systems, technology, and institutions that made it possible. What happens when that trust breaks down?
ABC recently showed “Raya and the Last Dragon”. Although intended as a story for children, it’s also a parable about the importance of trust for a functioning society. The story turns on a critical betrayal of trust and how it splintered a country into warring tribes while allowing the rise of a monstrous evil roaming the land spreading death. While the heroine faces many challenges in a quest to undo the damage, the biggest struggle for her and others is how to embrace the risk of trusting others in a world that is broken.
Air travel looks to be able to continue for the moment, but it’s going to have to deal with the evolving threat that is spilling over from ongoing conflicts — as do we all.