Is GPS Under Threat?

Is GPS Under Threat?

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The GPS (Global Positioning System) is a navigation tool that supplies positioning data and guiding maps to a target point. Not only us drivers use it. Prior to its civilian use, the military has integrated GPS into most of its technology-based systems used in the battlefield. Among these systems are UAVs, cruise missiles and guided bombs. CEO of DARPA says that these navigation systems provide position, navigation, and timing which are “as essential as oxygen for our military operators”.

The army, then, is becoming increasingly dependant on GPS for positioning, navigation and timing in different operational environments. However, military operations sometimes pass through areas with faulty GPS reception or areas with no access to the system at all, which makes the team very vulnerable. What’s worse is that enemies can block access to the GPS via various kinds of disruptions. A UAV, for example, can be taken down midflight by disrupting its navigation system.

If in the past technology for disrupting GPS was available to precious few enemies, nowadays there are countless products or components needed to put together such Electronic Warfare systems, available for purchase, even on eBay. The GPS-related threats keep evolving with time, and as a result new reliable tools or electronic components are needed. Research and Development companies are already looking for possible alternatives for the GPS. The U.S. military is examining the possibility of highly accurate optical atomic clocks with internal navigation systems as an alternative technology. This products is not meant to replace GPS, but to function as a system impervious to signals jamming to work anytime and anywhere.

For years now that the Israeli security services are preparing for a possibility that in a future conflict with an enemy state or a terror organization, the military GPS will be jammed. the IDF has considered the possibility that North Korea has sold jamming systems to its Middle Eastern allies – Lebanon, Syria and Iran, and is aware that in a possible future war, Israel’s enemies will have the ability to jam GPS guided weapons.

Are we close to the day when terror organizations or enemy states will get their hands on such jamming systems and be able to change the course of the IDF’s guided missiles? The military top-rank officials must be busy, as well they should be, searching for solutions.

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