Pilots are warning about a growing international problem that could have tragic consequences, GPS spoofing, a warfare tactic to throw off the position of the enemy. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, Sept. 23, that commercial flights are now being increasingly impacted by GPS spoofing, with incidents rising by 400% in the past six months.
Spoofing typically uses radio transmitters to disrupt GPS signals and displays fake coordinates on devices.
Spoofing cases have gone from dozens a day in February to more than 1,100 cases per day in August, and the cyberattacks are spreading beyond warzones near Ukraine and the Middle East into places like Cyprus and Estonia, causing glitches in commercial airplanes heavily reliant on GPS technology.
Pilots said spoofing has led to false warnings of incoming collisions and even misdirected flights.
While pilots are trained to deal with these situations by using non-GPS systems as backup, airlines and aircraft manufacturers are scrambling to figure out a solution to the problem, including new equipment standards to harden commercial aircraft defense against spoofing, which industry experts are pleading to be fast-tracked. However, it doesn’t appear those changes are unlikely to come until next year at the earliest.
Experts cited dangerous encounters as reasons to fast track a solution, like a private jet flying into hostile Iranian airspace by mistake because of spoofed GPS signal in 2023, and a Boeing 787 forced to abort two landings after it lost GPS signal.
In the short-term, industry and government officials are in talks about new procedures allowing pilots to reset cockpit circuit breakers when they get “spoofed.”
So far, industry experts note that there are no widespread incidents reported yet in the United States.
