Our RYA instructor Debs has some interesting news on GPS:
‘Wicked crooks jamming GPS signals to hijack ships and lorries sounds like something from an Ian Flemming James Bond novel. Surprisingly it is very real and happening now.
I recently attended a conference and sat in amazement when I heard an Expert Witness and Professor in Radio Navigation and Communication talk about how he regularly gives forensic evidence in such hijack cases.
GPS or Global Positioning Satellite is used in many aspects of our daily lives. Many of us use GPS at the heart of our on board navigation systems. Some of us have GPS in our cars and on our mobile phones. GPS position information is also at the heart of our distribution industries, emergency service operations, mining, road-building, farming the list goes on.
GPS also provides the high-precision timing that keeps telephone networks, the Internet, banking transactions and even some electric power systems on line. GPS has become essential element of the civilised worlds’ infrastructure.
Switching GPS off could have a huge and very serious impact on the world we live in. Switching off is not likely to happen but there have been incidents where solar activity, particularly solar flares have had a huge impact on the accuracy of GPS giving false timings and therefore very incorrect positions.
What was most shocking about the lecture was how readily available GPS Jamming systems are on the internet. A low power jammer can be purchased for as little as £5!
These Jammers are already being used to interfere with or spoof the tracking systems of freight lorries and ships. Luring them untraceably into a hijack situation. I am sure many of you have been to outdoor events sponsored by a particular phone company and find there is no signal on all other networks. The work of a low power Jammer.
The US Government has carried out vulnerability assessments and found there are significant risks to national security. Organisations like the General Lighthouse Authority are carrying out experiments on the impact of these low power jammers on our marine navigation systems.
During the exercises it found that with the use of a low power jamming signals the ship’s navigation systems gave Hazardously Misleading Information. This is “hazardous” because no alarms sounded; it is “misleading” because positions and velocities were false, yet plausible.The vessels navigation systems gave incorrect information without an alarm.
The impact of these Jamming signals also affected the Automatic Identification System, the vital means by which each vessel signals its position and velocity to neighbouring ships, transmitted wrong information.
This AIS position data was also received on shore by the local Vessel Traffic Service. Their display showed ships a long way from their true positions, even sailing through the countryside!
On board the GLAs’ vessel the echoes from nearby ships on the radar display were widely displaced from those ships’ AIS markers. This is a confusing and dangerous situation. Yet this jammer was only as powerful as a mobile phone and up to 15 nautical miles from these ships.
Its all very frightening stuff and highlights the need to know and understand the shortcomings of electronic navigation. It also emphasises why we should always use more than one method of navigation.
Commercial shipping is now looking at using non GPS reliant systems such as eLORAN. There is a lot of information on the internet. It’s as interesting as 007′!!