Oct. 9, 2024
As reports of GPS signal jamming and “spoofing” continue to grow worldwide, an NBAA News Hour delved into these incidents and their effects on the safety of international business aviation operations.
“The bottom line is, GPS satellites are 12,000 miles up in the sky while a GPS spoofer can be just 10 miles away from the airplane,” said David Woodcock, principal applications engineer for customer and product support for Honeywell Aerospace. “The RF signals you receive from satellites are a lot weaker than what’s on the ground.”
Jamming poses relatively little risk to most business aircraft that can revert to other positioning equipment including inertial reference systems (IRS). Spoofing is a far greater concern, “because the GPS data is incorrect but still considered valid [by your aircraft’s navigation systems],” he continued.
That can lead to a deluge of conflicting system responses and equipment failures for flight crews. Adding to the confusion is a new tactic by spoofers to initially jam GPS signals before sending out false position information.
“This poses a significant impact not only on navigation [but also] other systems that will latch onto bad information,” added Nat Iyengar, NBAA International Operators Committee chair and captain with Jet Aviation Business Jets. Crews may experience erroneous EGPWS (enhanced ground proximity warning system) alerts, for example, or false inflight weather data.
GPS spoofing is also not confined to active conflict areas in the Middle East or Ukraine, with presenters citing spoofing experiences near Beijing, and over Myanmar and India.
With as many as 1,500 reported spoofing incidents daily, Steve Thorpe, CAM, director of standards and training and a senior captain with Merck Sharp & Dohme, LLC, advised operators to check NOTAMs for the most recent areas of reported GPS spoofing.
“When operating in the Mideast, routes east of Cairo and south of the Sinai Peninsula have shown the least GPS spoofing,” he added. “Find out where the active jamming and/or spoofing is going on, and then work with your flight planner to avoid those areas.”
The webinar presenters were also among the 950 operators who participated in an OpsGroup study of GPS spoofing incidents, leading to a 128-page report published in September that includes safety guidance and recommendations for flight crews on proper responses to such incidents. Review the final report.
“These airplanes are so complex,” Thorpe added. “You’ll learn about GPS and spoofing [in the report] but don’t worry about everything happening behind the scenes with your aircraft. [Focus on] the button you need to know about.”
GPS spoofing will be in focus at the 2025 NBAA International Operators Conference taking place Feb. 11-13, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
International Business Aviation Council Ltd.