From Ukraine to Taiwan, Jamming of 50-year-old GPS is a Protection Tech Nightmare

As warfare turns into extra high-tech and billions proceed to be invested into sensible weapons, an Achilles’ heel has emerged in America’s protection capabilities – the 50-year-old GPS L1 sign.

GPS L1 interference is occurring in battle zones world wide and is thwarting even probably the most superior weapons on the battlefield. In Ukraine, Russian forces are jamming American weapons, together with drones and missiles that depend on GPS, a serious blow to Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

This interference isn’t restricted to the battlefield. Russia can be accused of interfering with civilian plane GPS techniques all through Japanese Europe, as evident in additional than 40,000 flights experiencing navigation points over a six-month interval. GPS interference can be going down in and round different battle zones within the Center East.

Nevertheless, what’s most worrying are specialists’ considerations concerning the resilience of GPS within the occasion of any potential Chinese language escalation round Taiwan. China has elevated its navy actions across the island in recent times and its warships are accused of interfering with civilian airplanes’ GPS techniques all through the Asia Pacific. GPS jamming is already getting used as a weapon in right this moment’s wars and we ought to be ready for it for use within the conflicts of tomorrow.

The prevalence of GPS interference is due partly to America’s reliance on outdated GPS know-how that may simply be compromised by our adversaries. First invented greater than 50 years in the past, these preliminary GPS alerts – often known as L1 – performed a vital function in bringing this know-how to billions of individuals world wide. Nevertheless, the event of latest and superior alerts – particularly these within the L5 band – has made these legacy alerts outdated.

Fashionable L5-band alerts are cleaner, higher-quality, and broadcast at larger energy utilizing larger bandwidth – all attributes that enhance its resilience to jamming. Moreover, they incorporate coding achieve and error correction, enhancing their resilience towards multipath interference.

Nevertheless, regardless of these superior alerts being broadcast from satellites for the previous decade, the L5 band just isn’t absolutely utilized in our trendy know-how gadgets – together with these used on the battlefield. 

At the moment, most civilian and a few navy gadgets use hybrid or dual-frequency alerts, which means a mix of each L1 and L5. In concept, upgrading from L1 to twin frequency ought to enhance efficiency, however the actuality is that our gadgets nonetheless overwhelmingly depend on outdated L1 alerts, even in a hybrid system.

It’s because dual-frequency processors, together with these that are L5 appropriate, should acquire the L1 sign earlier than accessing L5. That means that, regardless of using the fashionable GPS L5 alerts, present gadgets are constrained by legacy L1 alerts – and the vulnerabilities that include them. At the moment, if such gadgets lose the L1 sign, not often can they purchase and navigate by L5 alone. In a battle zone, this may be the distinction between mission success and failure.

Whereas America’s navy operates its personal devoted GPS sign, often known as M Code, many allies can not entry these alerts. The identical is true for a lot of navy contractors, relied upon for essential companies resembling logistics and provide chains. Third-party contractors and the house owners and operators of our nationwide important infrastructure (power, rail, ports, aviation, and many others.) wouldn’t have entry to categorised navy receivers and utterly depend on civilian GPS alerts – the identical alerts which can be being jammed in battle zones world wide. Any suggestion that the navy just isn’t affected by interference with civilian GPS alerts is solely incorrect.

Current advances in know-how can scale back our reliance on L1 alerts whereas offering a low SWaP (area, weight and energy) resolution that improves GPS efficiency, reliability, and most significantly, security and safety.

GPS know-how developer oneNav has efficiently developed L5-direct™, a brand new GPS product class able to immediately buying and monitoring L5-band alerts with out first having to amass L1. 

The advantages of direct acquisition of L5 alerts are huge, significantly for builders of protection know-how. These alerts provide superior efficiency in difficult-to-navigate areas resembling city canyons and tree-covered areas and are broadcast from 46 satellites operated by the U.S. and our allies, offering greater than ample international protection.

Most significantly, these alerts are 30x more durable to jam and intrude with in comparison with the unique L1. This implies these trendy alerts can have a considerably smaller interference radius when encountering future L5 jamming transmissions – basically making a a lot smaller goal for unhealthy actors to aim to intrude with that will require roughly 20x extra energy to jam the identical space.

A number of discipline research in GPS-contested environments verify the resilience of L5 alerts. Most lately, an April 2024 discipline research carried out by oneNav close to the Polish/Russian border in contrast the efficiency of L1 and L5 alerts in areas with frequent GPS interference. Whereas researchers noticed widespread jamming of L1 alerts throughout the area, from Finland to Turkey, alerts that immediately acquired the L5 band demonstrated immunity to L1 jamming.

The resilience of L5-direct™ to widespread jamming in Ukraine ought to be a blueprint for countering GPS jamming in different battle zones. Because the conflict within the Center East dangers increasing and tensions proceed to rise round Taiwan, GPS resilience have to be entrance and heart when contemplating protection tech capabilities.

L5-direct™ offers the chance to higher defend our most important navy applied sciences from unhealthy actors trying to exploit outdated L1 know-how, and it offers way more correct PNT companies within the course of. This know-how may also be utilized in industries the place GPS techniques are below assault, resembling aviation, the place the operational and monetary stakes of GPS interference are huge.

oneNav’s silicon-proven L5-direct™ know-how is at the moment out there for analysis and integration by chip developer companions and is appropriate with a variety of protection tech gadgets together with drones, artillery shells and handheld radios, and for private location gadgets resembling smartwatches, low-power trackers and extra.

If you need to study extra concerning the subsequent era of location companies, please go to https://onenav.ai/l5-direct-sn/.

Steve Poizner is the CEO of GPS know-how developer oneNav, Inc.