Electronic GPS ‘spoofing’ behind civilian jet navigation failures over Iraq

The Washington Times ^ | Updated: 4:12 p.m. on Thursday, September 28, 2023 | Bill Gertz

[E. Pluribus Unum]

False location signals near Iran shut down onboard direction systems

False electronic signals imitating satellite data from Global Position System satellites recently caused complete navigation failures for 12 aircraft flights near Iran, according to a private aircraft security group.

“A troubling new development in enroute airspace is emerging: Aircraft are being targeted with fake GPS signals, quickly leading to complete loss of navigational capability,” the organization OpsGroup stated in a warning notice.

The crew of a Boeing 777 flying near southeastern Iraq toward Baghdad lost the use of its GPS in one incident, leaving the pilot in the dark. “What time is it, and where are we?” he asked an air controller, the security firm stated in a report.

The “spoofing” incident is the first time false GPS signals were detected penetrating aircraft systems. The Iraq events differed from past GPS jamming attempts. Jamming of GPS signals on civilian aircraft has been detected in the past elsewhere, including near South Korea and in the Middle East.

According to the report, the false GPS signals were received by state-of-the art navigation systems called inertial reference systems, or IRS, that until now had been thought to be impervious to false GPS signaling. The system collects signals from satellites at regular intervals to update the time and position of an aircraft in flight.

The false GPS signals apparently showed the aircraft to be off course from actual positions by between 69 miles to 92 miles, the report said.

GPS spoofing is considered particularly dangerous in the region because the aircraft could have risked being shot down if it strayed into Iranian airspace.

The area where the incidents occurred is considered a conflict zone and airliners risk terrorist attacks. Still, several airlines, including a European carrier, several Middle East carriers and private jets use...

[Flag_This]

"My uncle Ned was a navigator on B29s in WWII doing bombing raids on Japan. He was the most important man on the aircraft.

I've always felt badly for the crew -particularly the navigator - on the Lady Be Good. They were returning from their very first mission and the circumstances had worked out that they were alone, after night had fallen. They overshot their base in Libya and ended up flying into the Sahara desert. Though they had parachuted from the aircraft, none of the nine crew members managed to hike out of the desert. The wreckage of the aircraft was discovered in 1958, and eventually, 8 of the 9 crew members' remains were found.

[FrozenAssets]

Gosh! How on earth were my wife and I able to navigate from interior Alaska to central Florida, up to New England and back home across subarctic Canada without a GPS back in 1985?