Sribala Subramanian
Myanmar is the epicenter of GPS jamming in Asia.
A map from Flightradar24, the aircraft tracking website, shows a cluster of red hexagons blanketing the country’s southern region. The pixelated dots represent areas experiencing high levels of interference with satellite-guided navigation systems and serve as a warning to aircraft in the region.
“GPS jamming involves saturating GPS receivers with unknown signals. . . essentially degrading everyone’s ability to effectively use GPS for navigational purposes,” explained a post on Flightradar24. The crowdsourced service, started by “two Swedish aviation geeks” in 2006, now operates the largest aviation surveillance network using ADS-B receivers.
Scrambled signals, the website warned, can result in “flight deviations, missed approaches, or potential collisions, especially in critical phases such as takeoff, landing, or during instrument approaches in low visibility conditions.”
The motivating factors behind specific jamming incidents are not always clear. Natural phenomena such as solar flares can degrade GPS signals. However, defense analysts agree that the recent surge in large-scale jamming comes from nation-states “driven by the desire to protect military targets” from satellite-guided missiles or drones.
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