Overview
During the first two days of the Israel-Iran war, GPS jamming incidents surged, impacting the navigation systems of nearly 1,000 vessels a day plying the waterways of the Persian Gulf (aka Arabian Gulf) and the Gulf of Oman, according to the France-based Maritime Information Cooperation & Awareness Center. Jamming persisted during the 12-day war. On June 17, two oil tankers collided in the Gulf of Oman in the dead of night, with GPS jamming being investigated as a possible cause of the navigation error. The increased navigational risks prompted shipping companies to take extra security precautions, such as avoiding nighttime transit through the narrow strait. But this created a second order effect of a major traffic jam in the Gulf, with fewer hours of operation each day leading to added congestion risks to safe navigation. In short, a regional conflict managed to disrupt commercial transit through a vital energy shipping lane for two weeks without a single munition fired upon shipping.
Aviation and shipping rely on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) to know their position. The US launched GNSS technology in the 1990s (GPS), with other nations subsequently developing their own: Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s BeiDou. These systems use satellites to determine the position of a receiver. GPS jamming occurs when GPS receivers are flooded with unknown signals, which renders the receiver’s unit unusable. GPS spoofing is more nefarious, transmitting a look-alike signal that GPS receivers will decode to indicate a position of the receiver at an incorrect position or time.
Electronic interference affecting global positioning systems and communication services is not new, but is a growing security risk. In 2024, Lithuania documented a 60% increase in GPS interference. Significant jamming operations occur near Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states and waterways in the area. NATO accuses Russia of using electronic warfare as part of its hybrid warfare operations in the war against Ukraine, targeting Kyiv as well as surrounding NATO member states. Increasingly sophisticated GPS spoofing techniques pose not only geopolitical risks, but commercial ones, as GPS failure could create operational interruptions and heighten costs for sectors including shipping, telecommunications, and finance.
Risks of Electronic Interference and Single Point of Failure
With technological advances, we are becoming dependent upon satellites to guide how we navigate our environment, from aiming missiles to transferring money electronically.
Military capabilities—aircraft, ships, land vehicles, munitions, and handheld devices—grab positioning, navigation, and timing data from the satellite signals for command and control. Hardening of the GPS has been a priority of the US Defense Department for decades, as it has sought jam- and spoof-proof systems upgrades. The Ukraine war has taken electronic warfare to a new level, with the deployment of autonomous systems and both sides using jamming and spoofing technology to make the weapons miss their targets.
The Defense Department has several different programs underway, one using an encrypted signal called M-code that has increased the US' ability to detect and reject false signals. A second program, R-GPS Constellation, which is still under development, adds resiliency through additional networks of smaller, less expensive navigation satellites to augment the existing network of GPS satellites. Both programs have faced delays and funding gaps, as there have been deep disagreements within the defense community on modernization priorities.
In the commercial sector, dependencies on GPS permeate critical infrastructure, creating the risk of a single point of failure. If satellites stop broadcasting positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data, there is no backup system in the US unlike in other countries which rely on different versions of the terrestrial-based Long-Range Navigation system (LORAN). Telecommunications, energy, transportation, and emergency services in the US that depend upon GPS services could suddenly be disrupted. More broadly, the US economy is dependent on reliable PNT, including financial systems and data centers, which process and manage vast amounts of transactional data that require accurate time synchronization.
While the US government has focused modernization efforts on the space-based GPS system for the military, a growing number of stakeholders are calling for a terrestrial complement and backup to the GPS for the civilian sector. Some stakeholders advocate that 6G planning should incorporate robust and resilient PNT with layered and intentionally diverse failure modes as an integral part of network deployments. However, PNT services have unique requirements for coverage, continuity, integrity, and time management. The services would need to scale nationwide and not have blackholes in rural or remote areas of the country that commercial interests may bypass because of insufficient market demand, such as what we currently see with 5G. While commercial PNT services should have a role as a regional layer, the government will also need to push forward on a backup plan for economic security of the entire nation.
During his first administration, President Trump signed the National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018, which mandated the development of a backup timing system for GPS, putting the Department of Transportation in the lead. The government expressed some interest in the concept of eLORAN—enhanced Long-Range Navigation—an update to the land-based system operated by the US Coast Guard for many years but decommissioned in 2010. eLORAN uses ground-based towers for transmission of a high-power signal that can penetrate buildings, reach subterranean environments, and is difficult to disrupt. However, there is currently no advocate government agency and political mandate to push the project forward.
That said, economic security resonates with the current administration. The disruptions to commercial activities as part of hybrid warfare could renew government interest in PNT resiliency. Russia, China, and Iran have been identified as leading protagonists of GPS jamming and spoofing. Russia uses a civilian version of LORAN-C, which Moscow is currently upgrading to an eLORAN system (which they call eChayka). In 2024, China completed a national eLORAN network for critical infrastructure. The US’ top rivals have backups to space-based systems they know are vulnerable because they disrupt them; President Trump may want to revisit the implementation of the 2018 law.
