Photo: Sauce Reques / Royalty-free / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have identified an Israeli air base as a large source of widespread GPS disruptions affecting civilian airline navigation in the Middle East, reported The New York Times. 

The spoofing disruptions involve the transmission of manipulated GPS signals, which can cause airplane instruments to misread their location. Lead researchers Todd Humphreys and Zach Clements stated they are “highly confident” that Ein Shemer Airfield in northern Israel is the source of these attacks. The Israeli military declined The New York Times’ request for comment. 

The research team utilized data emitted by the spoofer and picked up by satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to determine its location. They then confirmed their calculations using ground data collected in Israel.  

Spoofing, along with GPS jamming, has significantly increased over the past three years, especially near war zones such as Ukraine and Gaza. In these areas, militaries interfere with navigation signals to redirect aerial attacks. 

The Middle East has emerged as a hotspot for GPS spoofing, with The New York Times reporting that a separate analysis estimates more than 50,000 flights have been affected in the region in 2024 alone. Researchers from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, analyzeding data from the OpenSky Network and, found that these attacks have led pilots to mistakenly believe they were above airports in Beirut or Cairo. 

Swiss International Air Lines told The New York TimesNYT that their flights are spoofed “almost every day over the Middle East.” 

The issue extends beyond the region, with Estonia and other Baltic nations having blamed Russia for disrupting signals in their airspaces. Additionally, in April 2024, Finnair temporarily suspended flights to Tartu, Estonia, amid the rise of GPS jamming in the region affecting civilian air travel.  

The attacks have not led to significant safety risks as pilots can use alternative navigation methods. However, they do raise concerns. 

Jeremy Bennington, vice president of Spirent Communications, told The New York Times, “Losing GPS is not going to cause airplanes to fall out of the sky. But I also don’t want to deny the fact that we are removing layers of safety.” 

The spoofing attacks may cause false alerts about planes being too close to the ground, leading to navigation confusion and possibly compromising flight safety. 

As these disruptions continue to affect large areas far from active conflict zones, the aviation industry and international authorities are under increasing pressure to address this emerging threat to air travel security. 

<p>The post Israeli air base identified as alleged source of GPS disruptions in Mideast first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Image: FCC logo

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating whether the use of Russian and Chinese foreign satellite systems by U.S. mobile phones and other devices poses security threats.

The FCC has concerns that U.S. handheld devices are receiving and processing GNSS signals from satellites controlled by foreign adversaries in violation of commission rules.

The FCC is seeking answers from handset manufacturers Apple, Google, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and others that collectively cover more than 90% of the U.S. smartphone marketplace.

“There is no established record of what security threats, if any, these signals carry and whether the manufacturers of handheld devices are processing these signals in violation of the Commission’s rules,” an FCC spokesperson said in a statement.

Representative Mike Gallagher, chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, wrote FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel earlier this week raising concern about reports that U.S. cell phones were receiving and processing signals from Chinese and Russian satellites.

The FCC has only approved U.S. phones to receive and process signals from the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and the European Galileo GNSS.

<p>The post FCC warns of security risks first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Image: Phillip Silverman / iStock / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images / Getty Images

A plane carrying British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps had its satellite signal jammed as it flew near Russian territory, the government reported on March 14.

The government said that the Royal Air Force jet carrying Shapps, officials and journalists “temporarily experienced GPS jamming when they flew close to Kaliningrad” on a flight from Poland to the UK.

The Times of London, whose reporter was onboard, said that for about 30 minutes mobile phones could not connect to the internet and the aircraft was forced to use alternative methods to determine its location.

Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, home to the Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman, Dave Pares, said “the jamming didn’t threaten the safety of the aircraft at any point.” He added that it is not unusual for aircraft to experience electronic jamming near Kaliningrad.

<p>The post UK Defense Minister’s plane jammed near Russia first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Figure 1: Scientific observations with GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO), GNSS grazing-angle reflectometry (GNSS-GR) and GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R) techniques from low-Earth orbit (LEO). (Figure provided by the author)

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for peaceful uses are facing a hard reality due to increasing regional conflicts in recent years. As a dual-use technology, GNSS for civil, commercial and scientific applications is vulnerable to both denied/degraded service and flex power operation from GNSS satellites and to jamming from the ground.

One of the vulnerable scientific applications is the use of GNSS receivers on low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that utilize the civil navigation signals for Earth observation. These remote sensing techniques, such as GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO), GNSS grazing-angle reflectometry (GNSS-GR) and GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R) (see figure 1), are designed to observe weak GNSS signals either bounced off from Earth’s surface or refracted by the atmosphere. Thus, GNSS flex power operation and intentional radio frequency interference (RFI) can severely degrade the quality of the scientific data or even prevent Earth observation.

One example of such impacts is a dramatic decrease of GNSS-RO observations over Europe and the Middle East during 2023. Monthly statistics from Spire show the region without GPS-RO measurements grew substantially from the localized Ukraine-Russia conflict zone in January to a much wider area in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in December 2023 (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Number density distribution of monthly GNSS-RO measurements from the GPS tracking by the Spire constellation over Europe and the Middle East in 2023. The black area indicates no data. (Figure provided by the author)

This vast data void in the science observation is likely a result of the intensified electronic warfare used in Ukraine-Russia and the nearby conflict regions. The Spire RO receivers are configured to track the civil signals from GPS, GLONASS and Galileo. To increase signal protection against jamming in a conflict zone, GNSS service providers often use flex power operation. However, flex power operations can cause poor quality tracking with the RO receiver due to weaker signal power. Unlike a precise orbit determination (POD) antenna, the GNSS-RO antennas typically have a high gain to improve the detection of weak GNSS signals at limb and occulted views. However, if the transmitter power of civil signals drops below a quality-control (QC) threshold, the data are flagged as bad. This results in a poor coverage of Spire GNSS-RO in the conflict zones.

Lost or degraded GNSS-RO, GNSS-R and GNSS-GR observations are unfortunate, as these all-weather sensing, long-term stability, and high-accuracy measurements are becoming increasingly important in scientific research. GNSS-RO is a remote sensing technique that uses the GNSS-LEO link to profile Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere with high vertical resolution. Since the first GNSS-RO six-satellite constellation, known as Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate-1 (COSMIC-1), these high-quality RO profiles have become a key data source for weather forecasting, climate monitoring, model evaluation, and space weather research. The current backbone of GNSS-RO observations comes from the COSMIIC-2 and Spire constellations, which have been producing more than 20,000 profiles per day since 2020. GNSS-R is a bi-static radar technique that uses the GNSS signals reflected by the surface for altimetry, ocean surface wind speed, wave height sea ice, soil moisture, and inundation measurements. At a view angle between GNSS-RO and GNSS-R, GNSS-GR can provide complementary measurements for sea ice and atmospheric column water vapor. Because of low-cost LEO SmallSat/CubeSat constellations with the GNSS receivers, geoscience studies have benefited greatly from the sampling density and coverage of these new data.

Civilization and science have been diverted by wars before. Despite the increased dependence on GNSS in recent years, their vulnerability to jamming and flex power operation poses a great challenge for scientific observations that need uniform global coverage.

<p>The post Research Report: A Black Hole in Earth science first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Prior to Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia’s navigation sector was developing well and had a healthy growth rate, which is reflected by the steady growth and improved performance of its satellite constellations. However, the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine and the consequent international sanctions regime against Russia has put an end to the hopes for further development of the sector and especially of its flagship GLONASS global navigation satellite system (GNSS).

As for GLONASS, as academician Nikolai Testoedov, general designer of JSC Information Satellite Systems Reshetnev, one of Russia’s leading satellite manufacturing companies, said during a general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the main problem is that Western sanctions do not allow Russia to bring its positioning accuracy to the desired 30 cm or at least 50 cm.

According to Testoedov, the main reasons for this are serious problems with the supplies of electronic components, most of which Russia traditionally imported. “Until 2014, when the first sanction restrictions were introduced, the share of imports in Russia’s entire satellite constellations reached 42%,” Testoedov said. “Currently we implement a strategy of import substitution in the sector, which is designed until 2030 and involves a transition to 100% domestic products. As of 2014, we had 6,000 electronic components of foreign origin. Since 2014, a lot of work has been done to combine various equipment. Now, it is used in Russia’s satellite constellations.”

It has already brought some results. According to Ivan Revnivyh, head of the GLONASS department of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, thanks to the new satellites that have been launched in recent years, the accuracy of GLONASS civil signals has increased up to 1.32 meters. According to Revnivyh, Russia plans to continue work in this direction as part of its existing federal project “Maintenance, development and use of the GLONASS system,” which intends to increase the accuracy of the signals up to 0.3 m.

Russia plans to continue to improve GLONASS’s accuracy until it matches that of other GNSS and meets International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requirements.

“When landing a civil aircraft at unequipped airfields,” Testoedov said, “the signal should arrive with a delay of no more than 6 seconds, with an accuracy of no worse than half a meter.”

Despite the sanctions, Russia plans to continue to develop GLONASS. As part of these plans, starting from 2025, it plans to launch modernized GLONASS-K2 satellites in an import-substituted and multifunctional version. Thanks to this, the signal will be 100 times more powerful than the standard one. That will be primarily achieved by using dedicated navigation satellites weighing about 1 ton.

After 2030, Russia also plans to place six satellites in geosynchronous orbits (about 36,000 km), which will increase the availability of the signal in Russian cities and difficult terrains.

There are also plans to create a constellation of 300 satellites in low-Earth-orbit (LEO) at an altitude of 500 to 100 km. They are expected to increase the strength Russian satellite signals by more than 1,000 times.

In recent years, Russia has faced restrictive policies implemented by various international bodies, including the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and the International Association of Geodesy. According to Russian experts, many of these bodies are currently taking discriminatory measures against Russian systems and technologies.

In this regard, Russia plans to propose to the countries members of BRICS — an intergovernmental organization comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — to design products and systems whose characteristics will be comparable to those of Western origin. According to Reshetnev Systems’ experts, however, this could improve results — mainly, accuracy — by only 20 percent, which would not be critical for Russia.

GLONASS, which first achieved a full constellation of 24 satellites in 1995, currently consists of 24 satellites of three types: GLONASS-M, which has been produced since 2003, GLONASS-K which has been produced since 2011, and two GLONASS-K2, which Russia launched in 2023. All the satellites are part of the Cospas-Sarsat system.

Despite the fact that the life expectancy for most Russian GLONASS satellites is seven to 10 years, many of them, according to Testoedov, are already more than twice as old. Russia plans to replace at least six GLONASS satellites within the next two to three years. In the first years of launching the constellation, Roscosmos usually launched nine satellites into orbit at once; currently, it is launching only one or two at a time.

Still, it is possible that these rates will increase significantly, as by 2030 Russia plans to increase its constellation of satellites by up to 1,000 satellites. For this purpose, the country plans to produce 200-250 satellites per year.

According to the head of Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, space industry enterprises should produce one satellite per day by 2030. According to him, the Russian Federation is ready to learn from the experience of other countries in this area, such as China.

<p>The post Tough Times for Russian Navigation System first appeared on GPS World.</p>

NASA’s Ingenuity took this picture on Jan. 18, 2024. The sand-dune, rock-less area where Ingenuity last
showing the shadow of its damaged rotor blade. (Image: NASA)

It appears that the little extraterrestrial drone that could has come a cropper on Mars and now will not be flying again – it is permanently grounded. The Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) crew managing Ingenuity was running a regular scouting trip over a featureless sand-dune area on Dec. 22, 2023. Suddenly, the UAV’s visual navigation system malfunctioned, which led to a hard emergency landing.

When the autonomous navigation system did not have any landmarks to match its digital reference map, it reverted to an emergency landing. Maybe the poor guy should have had a few moments to gather its airborne wits and to come down softly, but alas at the same time the connection with the rover was lost, he dove for cover and broke a chunk off at least one of the counter-rotating blades. This now apparently prevents further take-offs. Mars’ atmosphere is only 1% as dense as Earth’s, so those rotors need all their designed lift capabilities to grab enough ‘air’ and get the 4 lb helicopter airborne. The flight control system may be unable to cope with the resulting compromised lift profile. Either way Ingenuity’s flying days are over, according to NASA.

Conceptual design for the Sample Recovery Helicopters
(Image: Aerovironment/ NASA/ JPL)

Ingenuity completed 72 flights over the course of three years, surpassing its original 30-day mission to prove the possibility of a miniature, autonomous helicopter flight on Mars. After its initial four flights, NASA and JPL chose the UAV to scout out safe paths for the Perseverance rover from an airborne perspective.

All is not lost for Ingenuity, however. AeroVironment, the UAV manufacturer that co-developed Ingenuity with NASA/JPL, has been awarded another contract to design and develop two prototype ‘sample-return’ helicopters for NASA’s next major Mars expedition.

Building on Ingenuity’s design, the new UAV will have wheels and a grappling contraption to pick up sample tubes, which could assist in the Mars sample recovery mission. Perseverance is currently expected to be the lead in transferring cached sample tubes to the new Sample Retrieval Lander for return to Earth, but the new helicopters provide a different backup option on Mars for pick-up and transport of the tubes.

Back here on Earth, the latest tragic news from the Middle East — the UAV attack on the US Tower 22 military outpost in Jordan which cost three soldiers their lives and injured at least 34 others — appears to have been due to a lack of defensive capability. Earlier news releases indicated that the kamikaze UAV had arrived at the same time as the expected return of a U.S. UAV from the base, implying that defenses may have been taken down temporarily. It now seems that there was little active defense to prevent the attack.

The attacking UAV reportedly came in very low, and the base was unable to track its approach. The base is said to have defensive signal jamming capabilities, but without radar visibility of the UAV and knowing an attack was in progress, the jammers may have been ineffective or inactive.

Tower 22 was thought of as a low-risk-of-attack U.S. base, perhaps supporting another U.S. base in Syria with logistics, so no active drone suppression system had been provisioned. This assessment, and those for similar bases in the area and around the world, may perhaps have to be revised and sufficient active defenses may need to be installed.

While U.S. and Ukrainian forces deal with attacking drones, Iran has unveiled its latest addition to its arsenal of one-way killer unmanned aircraft.

Image: Iranian Military Media

Iran displayed the Shahed-238 in public in November 2023, so there may have already been enough time to get some of these very fast-flying vehicles through the manufacturing process and begin deliveries to Russia and Iranian proxy agents. The advantage of jet-power is of course significant speed over propeller-driven variants, while the range may be significantly less for the same fuel capacity. The disadvantage for the United States and Ukraine is that most fielded conventional UAV detection radars have difficulty seeing fast targets in time to activate and aim defensive weapons.

The situation for Ukraine and the United States in the Middle East appears to be worsening as large numbers of Iranian-supplied and locally manufactured kamikaze UAVs are pumped into the war zone and ‘hot spots’ in the Middle East.

It is sad that Mars aerial views may be limited as Ingenuity seems to be permanently grounded, and the Middle East doesn’t sound too safe to be hanging around in either! Further escalation of prices might be expected, too, as a good part of the volume of cargo ships settle into sailing around Africa. Let’s look for better news in the coming months.

<p>The post Final grounding for Ingenuity? first appeared on GPS World.</p>

For many, these clues conjured up images of bombs falling to Earth from space, satellites destroyed by powerful electromagnetic pulses, shrapnel impacting the space station, and so on.

Yet, putting nuclear weapons in space would be a clear violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to which Russia and the United States are both signatories. It would also significantly increase East-West tensions at a time when Russia has enough tension and international condemnation to handle.

Thursday evening the White House calmed the waters a bit by saying that Russia was pursing an anti-satellite weapon that cannot cause physical destruction on Earth.

The most reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this is that Russia is closing in on its goal of having a nuclear-powered electronic warfare capability in space.

Such a reusable weapon could be far more useful than any one-use nuclear explosive device.

Threat = Intent + Capability

A lengthy and detailed 2019 article on the site “Space Review” examined indications that Russia had begun construction of such a device. Titled “Ekipazh: Russia’s top-secret nuclear-powered satellite” it begins:

“There is strong evidence from publicly available sources that a Russian company called KB Arsenal is working on a new type of military satellite equipped with a nuclear power source. Called Ekipazh, its mission may well be to perform electronic warfare [EW] from space.”

The author, Bart Hendrickx, goes on to explain that development of such a weapon would be entirely in keeping with reported Russian government plans. Citing one Russian language source he says:

“… the deployment of EW platforms in orbit would be in accordance with a policy for Russia’s electronic warfare program until 2020 approved by the Russian government in January 2012. A summary of this policy indeed mentions space-based electronic warfare as one of the objectives to be accomplished in the period before 2025. More specifically, it talks about the need to deploy ‘multifunctional space-based EW complexes for reconnaissance and suppression of radio-electronic systems used by radar, navigation and communications systems.’”

When intelligence agencies assess the severity of a particular threat, they look at an adversary’s desire or intent to carry out a particular act, and their capability to do so. If the reporting is correct, Russia has intended to put a nuclear-powered EW satellite or spacecraft in orbit for some time. This week’s political dust up may mean that the decades of hard work described by Hendrickx in Space Review have paid off and given them the ability to do so.

More Useful Than Orbiting Bombs

The United States is far more dependent upon space than any other nation. As regular GPS World readers know, this is especially true for the essential positioning, navigation, and timing services that underpin virtually every technology.

Destroying satellites would quickly lead to a shooting war that no one would want.

On the other hand, electronic warfare doesn’t necessarily lead to casualties right away and is harder to recognize as actual warfare. For example, Russia has been attacking NATO countries, ships, and aircraft in the Baltic with GPS jamming and spoofing on and off since mid-December. No one has died (yet) and NATO, to the best of our knowledge, has not responded.

Rather than destroying satellites, how much more useful is it to be able to temporarily disrupt the operation of one or more satellites? Or perhaps one type of satellite, such as GPS?

Such attacks are reversable, so the attacked party is less likely to send bombs and bullets in return right away. And if the attacker gets what they want, or suddenly discovers they have gone a bit too far and are approaching a kinetic exchange, backing off is as easy as flipping a switch.

Just the threat of being able to deny GPS or other satellite signals over a wide area would be useful.

In fact, Russia has already made this kind of threat and it didn’t backfire.

In November 2021, prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia used a ground-based missile to destroy one of its own defunct satellites. Shortly thereafter Russian state-sponsored media claimed the demonstration “… means that if NATO crosses our red line, it risks losing all 32 of its GPS satellites at once.” Aside from a strong diplomatic tongue-lashing, there were few consequences. Additionally, wherever the “red line” was, it seems that NATO did not cross it.

Nuclear Powered EW Most Likely

It’s hard to know what more will be revealed, if anything, about this week’s dust-up over Russia, weapons, space, and nuclear.

But Russia has long prided itself on its electronic warfare prowess. It sees EW as a counterbalance to the West’s dominance in high tech weapons and warfare.

It is highly likely that Russia is executing its plans to extend this prowess and advantage into space with a nuclear-powered EW satellite.

Whether or not this is the root Washington’s kerfuffle, the possibility should be an on-going concern for the United States.

Our dependance on space makes us vulnerable. Our critical over-dependence on space for PNT, especially in light of the terrestrial PNT alternatives available to Russia and China, exposes our jugular and virtually invites attack.

We have placed most of our eggs in the same basket — and there are too many ways in which it can be knocked to the ground.

Until the United States establishes a resilient national PNT architecture, one with GPS at its center supported by other diverse and robust sources, we will continue to unintentionally encourage such things as space-based nuclear-powered electronic warfare and be at severe risk.

<p>The post Russia’s space-based nuclear weapon? Here’s an educated guess first appeared on GPS World.</p>

3D-printed drone seized by anti-terror officers and rear access panel (Image: West Midlands CTU/PA)

The experts who analyzed the vehicle stated that it was only partially built and appeared somewhat ‘primitive’ in its construction. It would seem that an explosive charge or chemical weapon would need to be located with its fusing circuitry at the front end of the UAV, and maybe the enclosure was rather an access panel to aid the build process.

It is unclear whether the protruding black item towards the front of the UAV is either a GNSS or communications antenna. This antenna would normally be placed on the upper skin and relatively close to the autopilot or comms radio. It is possible that there is a communications/control signal antenna at the top of the vertical stabilizer. Rudimentary landing gear can be seen aft of the control surfaces of the wing, but the rear propulsion does not appear adequate for the size of the vehicle. Not a bad attempt to create an amateur UAV, but a pretty bad idea for the guy involved to intend it to be a kamikaze, one-way drone for ISIS — he received a 20-year sentence.

Both Russia and Ukraine continue to churn out new models of one-way UAVs, which they enthusiastically hurl at one another. Russia unveiled a new swarm drone known as ‘Product 53’ which apparently has the ability to seek and identify targets autonomously.

With a payload of only 3-5 kg it cannot inflict severe damage on major targets, but the plan is apparently to bombard an area with large numbers of Product 53 controlled as a swarm.

So, Russia’s latest software-driven, sophisticated kamikaze UAV is a far cry from the primitive, partially constructed, 3D-printed UAV which lead a UK court to jail its constructor. Much more was obviously made of his encrypted online contacts with ISIS and his intent to inflict potential death and destruction on behalf of a terrorist group.

On a far brighter note, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project known as Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE), which first went out to industry for proposals back in 2021, has now moved into Phase 3 build and manufacture following a successful Phase 2 Critical Design Review (CDR).

Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company subsidiary, has been authorized to begin building a 7000 lb X-wing manned/unmanned aircraft. The aircraft is intended to prove out a design for aerodynamic control without the use of moving surfaces.

Illustration of proposed X-Wing aircraft (Image: DARPA)

Elevators, flaps, slats and rudders on conventional modern aircraft require significant internal hydraulics and/or cabling and actuators throughout the airframe, which add to the complexity, and potential failure modes, aerodynamic drag and weight. Most current UAVs emulate these flight control systems and use external control surfaces.

The DARPA X-Wing aircraft may use compressed air jets or even electrical discharges emitted at critical actuation points along its outer surface to ‘gently push’ the aircraft from its existing path through the airstream, which allows the remote pilot to maneuver the aircraft. Known as Active Flow Control (AFC) this technology has been prototyped to one extent or another in recent years, but this DARPA/Aurora project aims to prove the concept.

For the demonstration aircraft, normal moving control surfaces will be installed and retained. The aircraft will initially be flown using these standard airflow controls to form a baseline for how the aircraft performs. The control surfaces will then be locked down and the aircraft will be flown using AFC, and the performance will be compared to the standard controls baseline.

Understandably, the earlier phases of the project likely worked through the required control systems for the unique X-wing configuration. Aurora may have been well positioned to provide such flight control systems, autopilot and software from its store of Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) technology — the basis for the operation of autonomous air vehicles.

Building illicit UAVs intended for terrorism may not be one of the best academic projects to undertake when you’re an ISIS supporter; Russia and Ukraine appear to be in a race to mass produce ever more sophisticated UAVs; and DARPA/Aurora appear to be headed to a relatively heavy prototype air vehicle demonstrating not only X-Wing technology, but also active flight control. Overall, there is a variety of news on UAVs in various configurations and applications.

<p>The post Kamikazi UAVs and X-Wings first appeared on GPS World.</p>