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 the airspace.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman and a spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization had no comment on the incidents. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command had no immediate comment.
In addition to areas near Erbil, Iraq, the signal spoofing was detected by aircraft near northern Iran, eastern Turkey and near Baku, Azerbaijan.
The reported incidents followed a similar pattern. During the flights, a fake GPS signal was directed at an aircraft or received by onboard avionics. The signals caused the equipment to misreport the aircraft’s location. The fake signals produced “navigation failures” by confusing computers with conflicting data.
Some air crews were able to prevent the failures by immediately cutting off GPS input signals entirely.
The report stated that aircraft use IRS systems for location information regularly updated with GPS signals for precise accuracy. If GPS is jammed, the IRS can still work from the aircraft’s last know position.
“However, if it receives a spoof position, the system still believes the GPS input received to be accurate as all sources ‘say’ the same thing, and this spoof position is then updated to the IRS(s) to match,” the report said.
The result is that all primary navigation systems become corrupted.
Spoofing “has the potential to be very dangerous and is part of the reason why pilots should back up navigation still with ‘green needles’ / ground-based aids wherever possible,” the report said.
The type of electronic spoofing in the recent incidents can only affect civilian aircraft navigation systems, the report said. Military aircraft employ special GPS receivers that are designed to be protected from deceptive signals.
Civilian avionics, however, are vulnerable to spoofing and jamming, the report said.
The report did not identify the origin of the false signals other than noting the proximity to Iran. The closeness to Iran suggests Tehran may have developed sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities to thwart civilian or foreign intelligence aircraft such as drones.
A Defense Intelligence Agency report on Iran’s military power said the Iranians announced a new emphasis on using electronic warfare in 2017. Shahrokh Shahram, a senior Iranian Defense Ministry official told the official IRNA news agency in 2021 that Iran was first in the region in electronic warfare and the building of EW systems had increased by a factor of five that year.
Iran is known to operate at least two electronic warfare aircraft: the Kaman-12 drone equipped with an electronic warfare pod and Boeing 707s outfitted for EW.
Last month, Iran carried out electronic warfare exercises against simulated enemy drone aircraft, fighter jets and helicopters, according to Iranian state television, using forces from the navy, ground, air force and air defense forces that employed radar, drones, jets and micro aerial vehicles, according to the Reuters news service.
Ten separate reports of the GPS spoofing “are seen by all of us as alarming for two reasons: the sophistication of the methodology and the unexpected ‘infection’ of the IRS,” the security report said.
OpsGroup is a membership group that includes pilots from private air charters and large airlines. The 12 spoofing reports were obtained from reports sent by pilots and occurred over the past few weeks along a flight path in eastern Iraq that runs parallel to Iran.
Affected aircraft included Boeing’s 777, 747, 737, Embraer 190 and 600 jets; Gulfstream G650, Bombardier Challenger 650 and Global Express jets; and a Dassault Falcon 8X.
Most of the jets were in a flight zone called Airway UM688 in Iraqi airspace that runs north and south along the western border of Iran.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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