GNSS Jamming and Spoofing: The Next Asymmetric Warfare Front

Introduction: The Invisible Threat We Can’t Afford to Ignore

In the early hours of a routine day in 2024, aircraft over the Baltic Sea began reporting navigation failures. GPS signals, normally reliable to within centimetres, were suddenly giving spurious positions hundreds of kilometres off course.

The culprit?

Russian GNSS jamming, deliberately interfering with satellite navigation signals.

For governments, the immediate concern was aviation safety. But for telecom operators and boards, the implications are even more far-reaching.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) like GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou are the unseen heartbeat of telecom networks. They synchronise base stations, align fibre networks, and underpin timing for critical financial and energy systems.

If GNSS is denied - whether through jamming (overpowering the signal) or spoofing (sending fake signals) - entire national networks could degrade or collapse.This is the next asymmetric warfare front.

The Growing Weaponisation of GNSS

GNSS has become a target because it is:

• Weak by design: GNSS signals are extremely low-power by the time they reach Earth, making them easy to overpower.

• Foundational: Almost every sector relies on precise timing — from mobile networks to stock exchanges to power grids.

• Difficult to defend: Attacks can be mounted from mobile vehicles, drones, or even small-scale portable jammers.

Recent events underscore the scale of the problem:

• Baltic and Nordic jamming incidents (2023–2024): Affecting aircraft navigation and telecom synchronisation across Finland, Norway, and Poland.

• Black Sea spoofing campaigns: Ships and aircraft reported being teleported to airports miles away, disrupting traffic control.

• Ukraine conflict: Tactical jamming has been used extensively to neutralise precision-guided munitions — a preview of what could happen to civilian infrastructure in a broader conflict.

These are not isolated events — they are rehearsals for future conflicts, and they are becoming more precise, more targeted, and more persistent.

Why Telecom Boards Should Care

Telecom networks are highly dependent on precision timing:

• 4G/5G Base Stations: Require synchronisation to within microseconds to avoid interference between cells.

• Fibre Networks: Depend on GNSS-derived timing for accurate handover and error-free data transport.

• Critical Infrastructure: Power grid phasor measurement units (PMUs) and financial trading systems rely on GNSS time stamps.

A GNSS outage can lead to:

• Dropped calls and data sessions as cell sites lose sync.

• Increased packet loss and latency in transport networks.

• Network-wide outages if holdover oscillators drift too far.

• Cascading failures into other sectors — power, finance, transport — creating a national crisis.

Boards must view GNSS denial not as a theoretical risk, but as a board-level resilience issue — on par with cyber security and physical sabotage.

Jamming vs Spoofing: Understanding the Threat

• Jamming: Overwhelms GNSS receivers with noise or high-power signals, effectively “blinding” them.

• Spoofing: More dangerous — generates fake GNSS signals that deceive receivers, causing them to report false time or location.

Spoofing can be particularly insidious for telecom:

• A cell site may continue operating, but with subtly incorrect timing.

• Over minutes or hours, this drift leads to synchronisation loss and customer-impacting service failures.

• Worse, spoofing could create asymmetric network degradation, targeting specific regions or operators.

Mitigation Strategies: The Case for Timing Resilience

Boards have actionable options to reduce reliance on GNSS:

1. eLORAN – Terrestrial Backup for GNSS

• What it is: A low-frequency, high-power terrestrial navigation system resistant to jamming and spoofing.

• Why it matters: Provides nationwide coverage with strong signal penetration — even indoors.

• Status: The UK has already recommitted to eLORAN; other nations are evaluating deployments as part of critical infrastructure resilience programmes.

2. High-Quality Oscillators (Holdover Clocks)

• Rubidium (Rb) Clocks: Offer high stability during GNSS outages, maintaining sync for hours or days.

• Chip-Scale Atomic Clocks (CSAC): Ultra-compact, increasingly affordable, and capable of microsecond accuracy.

• Strategy: Boards should mandate minimum holdover specifications for new base station and transport network deployments.

3. Multi-GNSS and Anti-Jam Antennas

• Using multiple constellations (GPS, Galileo, BeiDou) improves resilience against single-constellation attacks.

• Controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs) can reject interference from known jammer bearings.

4. AI-Driven Anomaly Detection

• AI models can spot suspicious timing drift patterns, enabling proactive switch-over to backup timing sources before customer impact occurs.

Board-Level Questions to Ask

Directors should be asking management:

• How much of our network timing is single-point dependent on GNSS?

• What is our mean time to failure during a GNSS outage?

• Do we have eLORAN or other terrestrial timing sources integrated into our architecture?

• What percentage of our sites have Rb or CSAC holdover capability?

• Are we running live monitoring for spoofing attempts, and who receives the alerts?

These questions should be embedded into capex planning and risk registers, not left to technical teams alone.

The Investment Case for Timing Resilience

Resilient timing is not just a cost — it is a value-protecting investment:

• Prevents large-scale outages that could lead to reputational damage, regulatory fines, and customer churn.

• Qualifies operators for resilience-linked government funding or tax incentives (where available).

• Attracts infrastructure investors who increasingly screen for ESG and resilience factors.

A relatively small capex investment in eLORAN receivers, Rb clocks, and monitoring systems can dramatically reduce the risk profile of national telecom networks.

Board Conclusion: Make Timing Resilience a 2025 Priority

GNSS jamming and spoofing are no longer hypothetical. They are active, ongoing, and escalating.Boards must elevate timing resilience to a standing agenda item:

• Audit current GNSS dependencies across the network.

• Invest in multi-layer timing architectures — GNSS + eLORAN + Rb holdover.

• Create a response playbook for GNSS denial events, including customer communications.

• Engage with regulators and ministries to push for national eLORAN coverage and cross-industry coordination.

In the next conflict, the first weapon deployed may not be a missile — it may be a jammer.Boards that prepare now will be the ones keeping their nations connected when it matters most.

“Boards must invest in eLORAN and Rb clocks — or risk national-scale outages.”