GPS — now 30 years past full operational capability — supports vast swaths of civilian life but is increasingly targeted by jamming and spoofing. Reports of interference in the Baltic, the Middle East and near U.S. airports show the vulnerability of GPS‑dependent systems, and a sustained outage could cost the U.S. economy about $1.6 billion per day. Terrestrial PNT backups using 5G and existing infrastructure are technically feasible and cost‑effective; the remaining hurdle is urgent policy action and coordinated deployment.
America Is Dangerously Unprepared For A GPS Attack — Time To Build Layered Resilience
This year marked the 30th anniversary of the Global Positioning System reaching full operational capability. What began as a military navigation and precision‑strike tool now underpins enormous swaths of civilian life — from smartphones and ATMs to aviation, shipping and financial markets — all of which rely on accurate timing and location data.
A Growing and Active Threat
That invisible infrastructure is under sustained strain. Adversaries have turned to GPS jamming and spoofing as routine tools of navigational warfare. Reports of signal interference in the Baltic region and the Middle East are increasingly common, and Russia and China have been observed shadowing satellites and making risky close approaches in orbit. Jamming and spoofing, once rare, are now battle‑tested techniques in electronic warfare.
Similar disruption has already been detected in U.S. airspace: interference near airports in Dallas and Denver affected nearly 350 flights. Investigations in those cases did not attribute the events to nation‑state actors, but the incidents illustrate how fragile systems that depend on satellite signals can be.
Real-World Consequences
These are not plot points for a movie. A coordinated, sustained attack on GPS would cascade through aviation, finance, emergency response and everyday services within minutes. The 2022 volcanic eruption in Tonga offers a glimpse of the immediate effects a communications outage can cause: the island’s only undersea cable was severed, satellite links were impaired, commerce stalled, ATMs could not verify account balances, cargo manifests stalled, supply chains froze and essential services suffered for months.
Analysts estimate that a single, sustained GPS outage could cost the U.S. economy roughly $1.6 billion per day. Our heavy dependence on a single, vulnerable technology should be a national wake‑up call.
Solutions Already Exist — But Policy Lags
We do not have to start from scratch. The technical building blocks for resilient Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) backups already exist. American companies are developing terrestrial PNT services that use 5G networks and other ground‑based infrastructure to deliver timing and location signals independent of satellites. These approaches are scalable, cost‑effective and can integrate into existing telecom assets such as cell towers.
The primary barrier to rapid deployment is not technology but policy and coordination. Turning promising commercial capabilities into operational national resilience requires urgent action across government and industry. The Federal Communications Commission has opened an inquiry into strengthening national PNT infrastructure — including ground‑based alternatives — but the next step must be execution, not just study.
What Must Be Done Now
Policy and procurement: Create clear authorities and funding streams for PNT resilience projects and accelerate pilot deployments with industry partners.
Standards and interoperability: Establish technical standards and testing regimes so terrestrial backups can be trusted across aviation, finance and emergency services.
Spectrum and security: Reserve and protect necessary spectrum for resilient PNT signals and harden receivers and networks against spoofing, jamming and cyberattacks.
Public‑private partnership: Leverage existing telecom infrastructure and commercial innovation to scale fast and reduce costs.
Replacing GPS entirely is neither affordable nor feasible in the near term. The pragmatic path is to build a layered, resilient architecture that gives users multiple, interoperable options when satellite signals are lost or degraded — including a robust ground‑based component.
Adm. Michael S. Rogers, U.S. Navy (Ret.), served as commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency.
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