False signals mimicking GPS and GNSS have been creating trouble for flight operations in the Middle East amid the ongoing military conflict.
Aircraft use GPS (Global Positioning System) and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) to determine precise position (latitude/longitude), ground speed, and altitude.
Due to signal jamming and spoofing, ground-based systems receive wrong information about an aircraft's position and other details. However, aircraft have additional systems to fall back on for safe navigation when they lose satellite signals.
NDTV's Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team has reviewed the paths of several flights that pass over the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Oman - the worst-affected areas experiencing signal interference since the war broke out in West Asia on February 28.
Positions relayed by the affected airplanes through ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) sketch erratic and abnormal flight paths when visualised on a map. These false signals show aircraft positions at places where they didn't fly over.
What Are Signal Jamming And Spoofing?
Signal jamming and spoofing are two different phenomena. Jamming is the most common type of signal interference that occurs when signals powerful enough to overpower the GPS signals are transmitted.
Spoofing, on the other hand, happens when someone broadcasts a signal on a similar frequency, as GPS or GNSS, confusing the real signal with bad data. This results in aircraft broadcasting incorrect positions by ADS-B.
Impact On Flight Safety
Signal jamming or spoofing creates navigational challenges for aircraft pilots, but doesn't mean they can't fly safely.
When an aircraft loses satellite signal, or the pilot feels the signals are false, they rely on the plane's inertial reference system (IRS) that uses gyroscopes and accelerometers to continuously calculate position, attitude, velocity, and heading without external references.
Insert Map Of Flight Paths
"Signal interference could give us some failures that we have to handle. For example, it could (falsely) tell us that we are flying over mountains. The aircraft clock will perhaps be wrong. Sometimes the clock starts going backward. In such cases, we have to use our instincts and rely on the IRS," a pilot interviewed by flight tracking service Flightradar24 says.
Passengers may also lose internet connection in such cases, he adds.
"It (loss of GPS signal or false signal) is not a major problem for en-route flying, but it is a problem during landing," another pilot featured in the same interview explains.
Signal interference is often observed in conflict-hit areas. It has become a regular phenomenon in parts of Russia and Ukraine since the war started between the two countries in 2022.
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