Study – ‘GPS Disruptions in Aviation Show Importance of Backups. U.S. and Europe may be headed in the wrong direction.’
To thwart increasing GPS jamming, backups are needed for flight AND ground operations.
ALEXANDRIA, VA, UNITED STATES, June 4, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/
Media Contact: Mr. Dana A. Goward President 800-522-6948 [email protected]
Alexandria, Va. — In a recently released paper, the respected analytics firm London Economics determined that the presence of backup systems at the Denver and Dallas Fort Worth airports prevented any noticeable impacts to air travel despite each having experienced a disruption of GPS signals for 24 hours or more. By contrast, recent GPS interference at an airport without a backup system caused scheduled air service to be cancelled until a GPS alternative was established.
Also important to the lack of impact at Denver and Dallas was that the signals interfering with GPS, with a few minor exceptions, only impacted aircraft in the air.
GPS is essential for safe and efficient movement of aircraft and support vehicles on the ground at airports, transport of crews, passengers, supplies, and cargo to and from airports, communication systems, and numerous other services.
Previous work by London Economics has shown that disruption of GPS for these ground functions would likely cause numerous flight delays and cancellations. Delays in arrival of flight crews, passengers, and supplies, for example, would quickly upset flight schedules. If this happened at a major airport like Denver or Dallas Fort Worth, disruptions could ripple through the entire air transport system. Wide-spread delays, cancellations, and schedule adjustments would bog down air travel across the nation, if not the world.
Both the Denver and Dallas GPS disruptions occurred in 2022.
The incident in Denver was caused by an accidental transmission from a government installation on the 21st of January. It impacted aircraft within approximately 50 nautical miles of the airport and lasted 33 hours before the source was identified and turned off.
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The Dallas incident began on the 17th of October and affected aircraft within about 110 nautical miles. It continued for 24 hours before ending on its own. The source has never been identified.
In addition to recognizing the value of terrestrial navigation systems for?aviation, the London Economics paper cautions about moves in the U.S. and Europe to “rationalize” these systems by reducing their number. In the event of longer or widespread GPS disruptions, the impact of an insufficient number of terrestrial systems could be significant. The cancellation of air service to an airport in Estonia because of chronic GPS jamming is used in the paper as a cautionary tale.
Instead of reducing the number of old backup systems, London Economics suggests policy makers consider establishing more widely available sources of terrestrial “positioning, navigation, and timing” or?PNT. Taking a fresh look might identify alternative PNT sources for aviation that could also be used by other critical infrastructures. Perhaps even in consumer applications as well.
U.S. government representatives were approached for consultation and comment for this paper and expressed their willingness to participate. Unfortunately, they were unable to obtain permission to do so.
London Economics’ work on this effort was commissioned by the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation.
The paper “Aviation GPS Incidents Show Importance of Backup Systems. Policy Makers Take Note.” can be accessed from the foundation’s on-line library at?https://rntfnd.org/library/
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About the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation
The RNT Foundation is a public benefit, scientific and educational charity advocating for policies and systems to protect GPS and GNSS satellites, signals, and users. For more information, visit?www.rntfnd.org.
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Solutionprovider for Mission Critical PNT, IoT and 5G Telecom Ctrl Cmd and Trusted Precise Wireless Timing, TPWiT.
9 个月...I think you can put a thick line across the word 'may be' and substituted it with 'have'. Too many people very deep into the government bodies have procrastinated very straightforward and simple decisions, costing next to nothing compared with the resources spent in a never-ending admiration of the vast problems arising from complete lack of operational instincts and experience. There is too much money in the 'waiting-game' that the hyper-academic government officials has advocated for, where the objective to present a 'good-enough' affordable solution has been replaced with their personal goal of staying in their seats for too long, harvesting salaries way beyond their personal competencylevel together with fringes travelling around our world, while polluting our common environment. Where do these people receive their marchingorders from, making what's a real deal into an non-understandable cacophony, where a lot of bla-bla-bla-talk replace real actions that would ensure our societies an honest and resilient PNT and CNI, based on what's already known to work? https://www.blv.no/bo/industri/naringsliv/stoppet-loran-riving/s/5-9-106161
Director and Principal at RethinkPNT, Vice President Royal Institute of Navigation
9 个月An interesting report, well done to London Economics Ltd (Rasmus Flytkj?r and team). It shows the importance of having backups ready to use, people who know how to use them (and are prepared to), and to keep them maintained. This report is key to help people understand backups are not just there for tickboxes, but are vital and budgets need to be allocated accordingly.
COO at DCA
9 个月Working in aviation in an area (eastern Mediterranean) heavily affected by gnss rfi and spoofing i can vouch for the need of alternative means of navigation.
Aviation Policy, Regulations & Safety; Mekong-Lancang, AIG. Advanced Air Mobility Institute; APAC Contributor to Aviation International News; Executive Writer
9 个月We have redundancy built into a lot of systems to avoid single point of failure. Just seems common sense to address GPS jamming and spoofing with the same view.
Navigation, Radar and Broadcast systems
9 个月Again, it seems we are always talk about backup to GPS, but nothing ever happens, this is why I am looking other areas for my PNT technology, such as Radar applications. Lets just get on with the job of install this technology and provide a ground based PNT service, other than been told we do not need it. Is this because governments do not want to spend any money or these government employers are so poorly informed on the importance of PNT backup systems?