GPS jamming across the Middle East has exploded since the US and Israel began their war against Iran in February, “plunging both sides into an ‘electronic warfare arms race’”, said The Independent.
“Underlying the dramatic clashes across the region”, forces on all sides are “quietly fighting an invisible war by land, air and sea, distorting tracking information to sow chaos or hide in plain sight”.
‘Electronic warfare arms race’
Jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) works by disrupting signals from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) with electromagnetic noise. “Spoofing” is more sophisticated and involves transmitting fake signals to provide a false location. Both are used to distort drone and missile guidance systems.
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Interference “isn’t a new phenomenon”, said CNN. It has been used in modern warfare since the Second World War but has become “a major issue” for shipping and aircraft since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The problem is now “endemic” in regions such as the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and parts of the Middle East, said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, from shipping intelligence firm Windward.
While all sides engage in it, Iran is particularly “prolific” in spoofing. Tehran uses it to “add confusion and disrupt any of the allied intelligence gathering”, said Philip Ingram, an intelligence expert and former British Army colonel.
The tools used by Iran are likely to be domestically produced or made with equipment sourced from Russia or China, Thomas Withington, from the Royal United Services Institute think tank, told the BBC.
Tracking ‘has stopped telling the truth’
The problem with GPS jamming is that it cannot be contained within precise geographic boundaries and does not discriminate between military and commercial systems.
On the first day of the war alone, electronic interference disrupted the navigation systems of more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani and Iranian waters, according to a Windward report cited by Inside GNSS.
“The missiles and drones make for good headlines, but they’re a distraction,” said Erik Bethel, from investment firm Mare Liberum, and Windward CEO Ami Daniel in Fortune. The “real story” is that the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes, has “gone dark. Not in some poetic sense, but literally.”
In effect, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) – the network that’s supposed to be the “gold standard” for commercial tracking and is used by ships to avoid one another – “has stopped telling the truth”.
The same thing happened in the region last year during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran and has also troubled vessel navigators in the Baltic Sea. But “this is next-level”, said Bockmann. “We can’t over-estimate the huge danger this places to maritime navigation and safety.”
“Without reliable and accurate” navigation systems, ships are “effectively sailing blind”, said The Wall Street Journal.
‘Anti-jam antenna system’
There are various technologies that offer protection against GPS jamming. These can include “automatically detecting jamming or interference and switching to unaffected frequencies”, said the BBC.
UK defence giant Raytheon produces an “anti-jam antenna system” device the size of an ice hockey puck that can be installed on different kinds of vehicles and uses multiple channels to overcome jamming. Other companies have “developed navigation tools that work around GPS’s flaws”.
Alternative navigational tools that do not rely on GPS at all but instead harness quantum technology are also in development “but remain a long way off operational use”, said CNN.
“GNSS is a wonder of the modern world,” said Ramsey Faragher, chief executive of the Royal Institute of Navigation in London. “You can switch it on and within a few seconds, it works out where you are to within a metre and what time it is to within a nanosecond. Unfortunately, the luxurious era of those signals not being messed about with intentionally is over. We need to rapidly catch up.”