Somebody Is Spoofing GPS Signals In The Middle East – The Results For Commercial Aircraft May Be Fatal

If you fly frequently you may want to stop what you are doing and focus for a minute. Commercial airliners rely on GPS position signals for navigation. It turns out those position signals can be spoofed, and the crew on board the aircraft may not be able to detect it.

Commercial aircraft can be lured off course by individuals on the ground.

So far it has happened in a number of locations in the Middle East. In some cases, the aircraft targeted have suffered complete navigation failures, but in others, there has been subtle and untraceable erroneous tracking. There have been at least fifty instances of such spoofing.

According to the online site Ops Group, these fifty instances have included:

·    A Gulfstream G650 that experienced full nav failure on departure from LLBG/Tel Aviv on October 25, 2023. The crew reported, “ATC advised we were off course and provided vectors. Within a few minutes our EPU was 99.0, FMS, IRS, and GPS position were unreliable. The navigation system thought it was 225nm south of our present position.”

·    A Bombardier Global Express was spoofed on departure from LLBG/Tel Aviv on October 16, 2023. A false GPS position showed the aircraft’s position as overhead OLBA/Beirut. Crew advised “The controller warned us that we are flying towards a forbidden area”. 

·   A Boeing 777 experienced a 30 minute GPS spoofing encounter in the Cairo FIR on the same date. A false GPS position showed the aircraft as stationary overhead LLBG for 30 minutes.

·    A Bombardier Global 7500 was spoofed 3 separate times in the Cairo FIR. This also happened on October 16^th.   Crew advised: “The first took out one GPS, the second took out a GPS and all 3 IRS’s, and the third time took both GPS’s and all 3 IRS’s.” The distance from LLBG was roughly 220-250 miles, and the spoofing stopped once we were approx 250nm west of LLBG.

These are representative examples only. Aircraft traveling from Europe to the Persian Gulf have also been spoofed on numerous occasions over Iraq. They have lost GPS tracking. In some cases, as a result, they almost strayed into Iranian airspace before they realized what was happening. The disruption to navigation was so severe and so unexpected in some cases, that the flight crews literally had no idea where they were for a while.

The spoofing appears to work like this.

Planes flying over parts of the Middle East receive a spoofed GPS signal. This signal fools the aircraft's in-built system into thinking that they are flying miles away from their intended route. The signal is often strong enough to compromise the integrity of the aircraft's system. As a result, the plane’s inertial reference system (IRS) becomes unstable and in many cases, the plane loses all navigation capability.

The primary area of concern is the busy airways in Northern Iraq and Azerbaijan. Several incidents have been reported near Irbil in Northern Iraq.

The implications of these attacks are obviously potentially fatal. Aircraft can be spoofed into entering restricted airspace. They can also be tricked into crashing into each other.   Of note is that the IRS was previously thought to be immune to external attacks. This is clearly not true, and it means the aircrew no longer have any instruments they can trust implicitly for navigation.

Last month the FAA released a memo for aircraft operators titled “Iraq/Azerbaijan – GPS Jamming and Spoofing Poses Safety Risk“.” The memo advised that “Potential spoofing activities reported by various civil air operators in Iraq and Azerbaijan pose a safety of flight risk to civil aviation operations in the Baghdad (ORBB) and Baku (UBBA) Flight Information Regions (FIR).”

“The recent open source reporting regarding spoofing incidents, if confirmed, would pose increased safety of flight risks, due to potential loss of aircraft situational awareness and increased pilot and regional air traffic control (ATC) workload issues, which can lead to potential accidents and/or loss of life.”

“FAA recommends that U.S. civil air operators transiting ORBB and UBBA monitor regional NOTAMs, put additional emphasis on maintaining continuous communications with appropriate air traffic control authorities while monitoring aircraft equipment performance closely for any discrepancies or anomalies, and be prepared to operate without GPS navigational systems.”

Suspicion has fallen mostly on Iran as being behind these attacks. Per, Matthew Borie of Osprey Flight Solutions: “Iran has recently deployed additional military forces to its northwest border with the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and Iraq has deployed security forces to this area as well as part of a border security pact reached between the two countries in March. Both Iran and Iraq have Electronic Warfare equipment capable of GPS jamming and spoofing and may have these deployed to the northern border area.”

“The U.S. military is present at several bases in northern Iraq (Erbil, Harir & Sulaymaniyah). Turkey has military bases on its side of the Iraq border as well as inside Iraqi territory in several areas (Amadiya, Harkuk & Bashiqa). These deployments are enduring and not new – both the U.S. and Turkey have electronic warfare (EW) equipment capable of GPS jamming and spoofing and they may have these deployed to Iraq.”

“Iran has also recently deployed additional military forces to its northwest borders with Armenia and Azerbaijan in the wake of the Azerbaijani military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition, tensions between the Armenian military and Azerbaijani armed forces remain high on the border between the two countries at present in the wake of the Azerbaijani military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh. Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan all have EW equipment capable of GPS jamming and spoofing and may have these deployed to border areas”

An intelligence brief from Dyami Intelligence Services noted that “Iran is known to successfully intercept a drone by GPS spoofing.  Spoofing provides an attack vector that enables control over the target UAV (aircraft) without compromising the flight control software or the command-and-control radio link. Furthermore, a GPS spoofing attack can be carried out by an attacker who is equipped with an RF transmitter that can be ground or airborne-based.”

What exactly is happening remains unclear as is how Iranian military forces near Iraq could be interfering with GPS signals over Tel Aviv and Cairo. What is well established already is that somebody is spoofing GPS signals in the Middle East and the results for commercial aircraft may be fatal.