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September 2021: Authors of new PNT textbook: Position, Navigation, and Timing Technologies in the 21st Century: Integrated Satellite Navigation, Sensor Systems, and Civil Applications, met in-person at the ION GNSS+ conference.  The textbook covers the latest developments in PNT technologies, including integrated satellite navigation, sensor systems, and civil applications and features RNL director Todd Humphrey, RNL […]

September 2021: The FAA authorized the MITRE Corporation to perform a series of tests that used commercial smartphones inside of aircraft as a method to detect GPS spoofing.  These tests involved a feature of wireless cellular networks called Timing Advance that is available through standard 4G and 5G wireless networks operated by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.  A range estimate can be deduced from the

August 2021:  Dr. Todd Humphreys was featured in NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday.  The segment focused on AIS spoofing in the Black Sea, specifically the contested waters of Russian-occupied Crimea.  U.S. and European naval vessels tend to be the primary victims, however, there are Russian vessels spoofed in the same manner.  Dr. Humphreys suggests that Russia could

July 2021:  Over 100 warships from at least 14 European countries, Russia, and the United States appear to have had their AIS location spoofed since August 2020.  Amongst these unlucky warships, some of the spoofed tracks show the warships approaching contested areas, such as, foreign naval bases or intruding into disputed waters.  These activities could escalate

July 2021:  Todd Humphreys has been elected Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) “for improving understanding of GNSS vulnerabilities and pioneering the use of alternate techniques to achieve resilience.” Established in 1947 in London, the institute aims to advance the art, science and practice of navigation while promoting knowledge of the subject and

June 2021:  There was tension in the Black Sea near Crimea, Ukraine as Russian authorities claimed to have fired warning shots at the UK Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender; however, the UK Ministry of Defence denies the event ever happening.  Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracking logs showed that the HMS Defender traversed the Black Sea and sailed within a

May 2021: Reports of maritime GNSS spoofing have become all but routine in recent years. Ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz have been reporting suspicious navigation problems which may be the result of Iranian spoofing. Many theorize that Iran uses spoofing to lead unsuspecting vessels into Iranian waters where they may be captured. This article from The Economist mentions Dr. Humphreys’s experiments

May 2021: Ligado, an American communications company, received approval from the FCC in 2020 to build a terrestrial 5G network which will operate in the spectrum adjacent to GPS. Many worry that Ligado’s network will inadvertently jam GPS receivers because the frequencies are near one another and Ligado’s signals will be much stronger. Interestingly, the FCC only

May 2021: German broadcasting station Südwestrundfunk (SWR) featured Dr. Humphreys in their news report on GNSS spoofing. In his interview, Dr. Humphreys explains the leading theory on GNSS spoofing in Syria: that the Russian military has been deploying a “bubble of GPS spoofing” to help protect Vladimir Putin on his visits there. Watch the news broadcast on YouTube here. This report, entitled “Above Us

April 2021: The prevalence of unmanned aerial vehicles has caused a plethora of safety and regulatory problems in recent years, which is why several companies are developing counter-UAV technologies. Some of these use kinetic methods to disable offending drones, but others use microwave radiation to either jam or disable the drones’ onboard electronics.  “A ray gun that can fry a drone’s