At the 2025 Munich Satellite Navigation Summit, Ramsey Faragher, Director and CEO of the UK Royal Institute of Navigation, delivered a sobering assessment of satellite navigation vulnerabilities based on findings of the ‘Operational Performance of Satellite Navigation Systems’ (OPS) report.
Faragher said civil aviation GPS receivers are “much more susceptible to spoofing than we ever would have expected,” with impacts extending far beyond simple positioning errors. “If you haven’t read the OPS report yet,” Faragher said, “download it now, but maybe read it after you’ve flown home, rather than before.”
GNSS interference does far more than confuse pilots; it commonly contaminates up to 30 other aircraft systems. Critical functions like terrain awareness, weather radar, and systems as basic as toilet flushing suffer. “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “In severe cases, interference can even brick the GPS hardware, rendering receivers permanently non-functional.
Faragher described the alarming behavior of spoofed aircraft: “We’ve seen planes teleport hundreds of kilometers, jump decades in time, and confuse integrity systems that normally guard against these anomalies.” One reason is that spoofed signals often exploit GNSS receivers’ acquisition mode, a vulnerability stemming from how devices are tested during manufacturing. “We need firmware switches to take receivers out of testing mode and into deployed mode,” he said.
Clear recommendations
Based on their research, Faragher and colleagues have advocated for the aviation sector to adopt controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs), a technology that uses multiple antenna elements and adaptive beam forming to suppress spoofing and jamming signals. Happily, key ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) restrictions have recently been lifted, clearing the way for CRPA antennas to become available for civil aviation.
But the problem extends beyond technical fixes. Faragher urged all operators of critical national infrastructure (CNI) – aviation, maritime, nuclear, telecommunications, etc. – to map systems that depend on GPS positioning and timing. “Once you see that dependency diagram,” he said, “you then have to ask yourself if GPS is really the safest source for that function.”
Real-world events underscore the urgency. Multiple recent aviation incidents have been tied to GNSS interference, including a controlled flight into terrain by a freight aircraft at Vilnius and a tragic airliner downing last Christmas, likely by Russian air defense, when degraded GPS capabilities hampered air traffic control coordination.
Despite the warnings, Faragher ended on a note of cautious optimism: “Aviation is still the safest way to travel,” he said, “and we’ve made huge strides. Today, pilots are routinely flipping circuit breakers to reset GPS receivers when interference happens, a critical practice that we have pushed for. But overcoming these challenges will require more than just new technologies. We need changes in certification processes and new international standards. And we need the policies, practices, and urgency to put them into place.”
