TL,DR: The BIMCO webinar, held on the 3rd of septembre 2025, was moderated by Jakob Larsen and featured NATO MARCOM officers Eric (French Navy) and Kadir (Turkish Navy) on GPS jamming and spoofing threats to maritime operations. Eric highlighted recent incidents: Ursula von der Leyen’s aircraft disrupted by jamming in Bulgaria, the merchant vessel Green Admire spoofed near Russia, and widespread interference in the Eastern Mediterranean linked to military activity. He emphasized that GNSS disruption is now a deliberate tool of hybrid warfare, not accidental.
Current hotspots include the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and Red Sea. Kadir stressed the importance of NATO’s Shipping Centre website and cyber interference reporting channels for timely incident sharing.
Eric explained the difference between jamming (signal blocking) and spoofing (false signal injection) and their consequences: navigation disruption, timing inaccuracies affecting ship systems, safety hazards, and potential military and supply-chain impacts. Spoofing is especially insidious as crews may not detect false positions. Kadir cited the MSC Antonia grounding in the Red Sea as a clear case of spoofing leading to real-world accidents.
They noted recent Baltic NAVWARNs covering widespread GNSS, AIS, and RADAR interference, urging crews to prepare for degraded navigation systems. Motivations behind GPS disruption include political signaling, force protection, and Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD). Attribution remains difficult.
Mitigation measures discussed included: use of eLORAN and ground-based navigation, directional antennas and signal filters, redundancy via RADAR and inertial navigation, cross-checking with charts and visual bearings, crew training, local timing sources, and leveraging other constellations (Galileo, BeiDou, GLONASS). However, no GNSS is fully safe against military-scale jamming. Future solutions may include encrypted Galileo signals and even AI-based stellar positioning systems.
In Q&A, they clarified that differential GPS cannot counter spoofing, GLONASS is more resistant to jamming but not immune, and multifrequency receivers usually require manual switching. Training remains critical, with IMO guidance, flag-state requirements, and backup navigation methods recommended.
The session concluded by underlining three points: jamming and spoofing are real and increasing; risks extend beyond navigation to safety and security; and resilience requires technology, procedures, and international cooperation.
The video can be watched on the great BIMCO website: https://www.bimco.org/news-insights/video/2025/09/03-gps/ .
Here’s the full transcript (mistakes, if any, are my own):
Jakob Larsen: Hello everyone, and welcome to this BIMCO webinar about jamming and spoofing of the merchant fleet. With us today, we have two renowned experts from the NATO Maritime Command who will brief us about the current threat, some of the attacks that we have seen and also talk about what the shipping industry can do to best protect against this risk. From NATO’s Maritime Command, we’re joined by Kadir and Eric, and they will now take us through a presentation after which we will have a Q and A. Please pose your questions in the Q and A function in the application, and we will then pick them up after the presentation is over. With that, over to you, Eric.
Eric: Thank you very much, Jakob. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Lieutenant commander Eric, French Navy, and together with my colleague, Lieutenant commander Kadir, Turkish Navy, we will present today our “Lost at sea : confronting GPS jamming and spoofing in maritime operations” presentation. So let’s switch to the presentation right now. Two days ago most of you I think heard about something happening in Bulgaria. In fact, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission airplane has been so-called attacked by a GPS jamming action, that forced her airplane to be stuck on a Bulgarian airport. Moreover, in May 25, I’m sure you heard about that, the Green Admire, which is a merchant vessel, which has been seized by the Russian forces close to the Russian border. And if you see on the bottom right picture, something really specific happened to this ship and especially to its AIS tracks . As soon as it was sent to a Russian island, it appeared that this ship had a very strange behavior rounding around what we called in the GPS jamming and spoofing area, a crop circle that have been already observed in China or elsewhere in the world. And this action is clearly a GPS spoofing result, by modifying artificially the position of the vessel, which has then a direct consequence on AIS report. To finish on this introduction, in December 24, the GPS jamming action was really huge at the very beginning of the month in East Mediterranean. But, as soon as the Syrian regime and the Russian forces left the Syrian coast at Tartus especially, we saw 15 days later quite no more GPS jamming action. What I would like to highlight there, GPS jamming is no more just a mistake or just a script kiddie’s test. It is nowadays a clear mode of action that is used by nations, by armies, by governments, to try to have an effect in the hybrid warfare domain. So what is the situation currently. This very quick video from the last week will show you the most impacted areas in the world. So, first of all, we’ve got two standing jamming areas in the Baltic Sea, let’s say between the German border and the Gulf of Finland. We also have a global GPS jamming area in the Black Sea. We still have some GPS jamming identified in the East Med, and we also have standing GPS jamming area in the middle of the Red Sea. Sometimes it is, it was not the case in the last week as you saw, but sometimes some GPS jamming also occurred in the Persian Gulf. There are other places in the world in the Indian ocean and seas. But it is outside the NATO and MARCOM AOR [Area of Responsibility]. So, we focused on our side, and that’s my job, on what happened in the MARCOM AOR, which is around Europe.
Kadir: And this is a great point to advertise NATO shipping center’s role and function here. So, before we get into technical aspects of GNSS interference, I want to highlight a point directly relevant to everyone here: the NATO shipping center website. It’s https://shipping.nato.int. The site is a central hub for maritime security information in NATO Area Of Responsibility, including adversaries incident reporting and guidance for commercial shipping. One feature I would like to particularly want to draw attention is the is the cyber interference reporting channel. This allows mariners and operators to quickly report suspected GNSS spoofing, jamming, and all other cyber-related navigation anomalies. And timely reporting, as you may know, not only helps to protect your own voyage but also contributes to a shared maritime picture benefits the entire shipping community, as well as allied forces. The faster we share data, the faster we can detect patterns and issue warnings. So I repeat our website https://shipping.nato.int, and you’ll find the links that lead to cyber interference reporting channels. Back to you Eric.
E: Thank you very much. It is very important on my side as a cyber technician, to have your reports because we mostly built our awareness map that we share with merchant vessel companies, from open sources and military sources. The more we will have information, reliable information, the most precise our awareness capability will be. So it’s a win-win exchange. So, I know that most of you are aware of it, but very quickly, in two minutes, what is the difference between GPS jamming and GPS spoofing? GPS jamming means to block the genuine, the legit GPS signal coming from satellites with a noise at the same frequency. So the consequence is clear: GPS jamming means no capabilities for GPS receiver to calculate a geolocation, a position, a precise time or, a course. Spoofing is slightly different and, to be honest, much more difficult to achieve. It is the capability to emit at the same frequencies as satellites, a signal, mimicking exactly what is the legit genuine GPS signal coming from satellite, but modifying the data in order to force the GPS receiver to calculate a fake position. But what are the consequences? First of all, navigation disruption. Clearly, there is a risk of accident, of collision and ships could lose their route as they are no more able to calculate automatically via GPS information where they are and where they have to go. The second point, and that is maybe one not so well known, is the loss of timing accuracy. On board digital vessels we have nowaday, a lot of system are dependent to a precise time source. And in most case, this precise time source is coming from the GPS receiver. So, if we jam the GPS signal, the receiver won’t be able to calculate a precise time that will impair the capabilities of our CIS communication and information system, to use a precise and accurate time source. There is, of course, a risk on safety for aviation, of course, as pilots, we may lose the ability to fly and land safely, but also in the maritime domain, as ships can be forced to ground or to get lost as I see if they do not have GPS genuine and legit precise information. As a military, I’m more focused of course on a national and alliance security. The GPS jamming is clearly nowadays used, it is not a “can be”, it is used as a cyber warfare by the capability to disrupt critical infrastructure and defense systems and even autonomous vehicles like drones, that rely on GPS timing and location. So, the GPS jamming Is something very easy to do, on a large scale, with a limited amount of power. So it affects large areas of the maritime domain as I showed you in the map. And for us, as military, and for you, as shipping companies, it has clearly impact on the ability to sail safely and to find our route, so to achieve our mission. GPS spoofing has also technical consequences, of course. It is more insidious. Instead of a blackout, the crew see just false information on GPS, which can be transmitted to onboard systems, for example, ECDIS. A ship may think it’s on its planned route, but it’s actually drifting in hazardous waters. The consequences include diversion of course, leading to grounding or collision, Kadir will speak about that. On the on my side, as a military, there are some threats, drone or missile, could be misled, with potential catastrophic results. There are consequences on the supply chain, as spoofed cargos tracking may be disrupted and the global logistic capability will be hampered and, perhaps, the most damaging: it undermines the trust in GPS and it forces our crews to be much more involved in course in high sea as well and not only in close to the ground areas. So, it’s now a problem of human involvement, crew involvement, crew capability to identify a GPS spoofing action. So, imagine a ship redirected to a mined water or to the shore: that’s the power of spoofing.
K: It’s a great place to give an example from May the 10th, this year, MSC Antonia the ship that ran aground off course of Saudi Arabia. Although it’s outside of our NATO area of responsibility, we also keep an eye on all the maritime incidents happening globally in this NATO Shipping Center. So, on 10th of May this year, 7000 ton container ship MSC Antonia ran aground near south of Jeddah port of Saudi Arabia in Red Sea. Analysis indicate that the vessel was likely affected by deliberate GPS spoofing. False satellite signals injected into her navigation system and causing a deviation from her intended route. This incident is also a good textbook example how GNSS interference can have immediate high impact consequences: a large vessel grounded in congested sea lane, salvage operations required subsequently and potential environmental risk is always on the table. It also underlines a key operational lesson over reliance on GNSS without cross-checking with RADAR, visual bearings or other means of navigation leaves ships vulnerable. In contested or high risk regions, bridge teams must be ready to detect and respond to navigation anomalies in real time.
E: But the States are not passive in front of this problem. And some NAVWARN have been advertised in the last months around GPS jamming and GPS spoofing problem.
K: So in Baltic sea, as we mentioned before, the GNSS interference is widely observed and some NATO nations have advertised and published their navigation warnings separately first, and then they all combined into the single navigation warning which is depicted on the slidedeck, number 026/25 issued on 2nd of July. It covers the southern Central and Northern Baltic and Gulf of Finland and Riga and Sea of Aaland. The warning reports GNSS, AIS, RADAR and DGPS interferences observed across in this wide area, and all mariners are advised to exercise caution and be prepared for navigation impacts. This is significant advisory, because it’s not just GNSS, it’s multiple navigation and tracking systems being degraded simultaneously in that area. That means redundancy is reduced and situational awareness can be compromised quickly. For operators in the Baltic, this is a reminder to brief crew members and all your team, review manual navigation procedures and ensure all watchkeepers alert all the possibilities of degraded or misleading positional data. You can find this navigation warning on Swedish NavWarn website [https://navvarn.sjofartsverket.se/en/Navigationsvarningar/VHF ].
E: So, attack the GPS. Why? Let’s look at the motivation. We, as MARCOM, identify mostly two kinds of motivations. First of all: political. Attacking the GPS signal and the GPS system is, first of all, a signal of power and influence. A country, a government that is able, on a large scale, to impact the GPS capability, is clearly a nation that has far and advanced electronic warfare capability. It’s also, as I already mentioned, the possibility to undermine the trust in Global Positioning System. And it, of course, accompanies campaigns of influence and propaganda. As a military, I focus mostly on military motivation and I want to open with you this domain as it is not yours, but it can pretty surely open your mind to what are the consequences for the shipping business and shipping companies. First of all, attacking the GPS is, a force protection action. When you deny the ability, in a larger area, to use the GPS, you protect your infrastructure, port, air base, ships, whatever you want by denying the capability to identify via AIS, for example, to use GPS guided munitions, to use UXVs, surface or aerial vehicles. So it’s mostly a defensive, a protective action. Then, it is also an Anti Access and Area Denial, what we call the A2/AD capability. It deny adversaries to access to the contested zone, as it becomes a hazardous one. It also degrades the enemy effectiveness, by disorienting the forces, blinding the surveillance capabilities, for example, by just denying the access to drones, observation drones. So, it’s clearly something to try to degrade the ability of maritime and aerial forces, to have a clear view of what happens onshore and afloat in the denied area. And it’s also a capability to train and ensure the ability to use electronic warfare assets by practicing in peacetime, for potential conflict, their assets and their systems and electronic warfare systems. In short, GPS disruption is becoming a strategic weapon. It’s cheap and it can be achieved by a script kiddie in a room with a 100 dollar radio. It’s effective, as nothing protects at the moment the GPS system. And it’s really hard to attribute. Is it just a solar flare problem? Is it a denying governmental action? Is it just someone playing with the radio at the good frequency or at the wrong frequency, to be honest ? It’s very difficult, for us, to achieve an attribution to a country. So, we know that some areas in the Baltic, in the East Med and Black sea are certainly linked to the actual current situation in the defense military domain, but we are not sure about that. We can just see what happened and stick to the facts. But we are not passive again that and, to to finish my presentation. I will go to the potential mitigation capabilities. First of all, use alternative navigation systems. Initial navigation systems that have been abandoned by the digitalization of our ships in the last 20 years are nowadays back on board our vessels. Some complementary positioning system using no more satellites, but ground-based radio, like the eLORAN, are back on the frequencies. It has been abandoned 20 years ago, it was the LORAN at this time, and now it is back in the USA and South Korea as enhanced LORAN capability. The problem with this system, it is limited in distance, it is not a global covering. Then, there are anti-jamming and anti-spoofing technology, existing ones: directional antennas. In fact, when the signal, the legit signal comes from satellites, it comes from up to down. What if I receive a signal, a signal from left or right? It is not a genuine or legit signal. So, some directional antenna pointing directly to the satellite constellation, are very good at that, to identify and discard fake signal. The same way, signal filters ,as the legit signals coming from satellites have a very specific waveform and they can be identified and filtered by some signal filters. You can also use redundancy and cross-checking. We are sailors, i am a sailor as well, and we all have, some common sailors sense, which means use others means: RADAR, INS, compare your route with what you see. Use charts and maps: that is not becauseit is a paper that it is no more useful. It is useful and still mandatory. And, of course, visual observation. Look at your environment. It’s easier, of course, close to the shores, but look at your environment. Do a comparison, just cross-check information. We can also real time monitor systems and try to identify anomaly and detect them as an early warning capability. You can, for instance, use other GNSS constellation. There is not only GPS: Galileo, BeiDou 2, or the Russian GLONASS are available. Use them, they can maybe provide useful information to see if GPS has been jammed, as GPS is clearly the most impacted system. But the other can also be impacted, I won’t go further on this point. Train, train, train your crews: recognize the GPS disruption, use manual navigation capabilities, train them: education is the key. When a human on the main deck identifies a problem with automatic geolocation capability and when it is well trained, it can directly take the lead, and avoid being grounded. And, for the very specific precise time problem, there are also local timing sources, precise clocks, that are now back on board as well. It has been discarded, as most of them use nuclear or, at least, atomic sources, to be precise. They are back on board. Use them. It is not just a waste of money to have this kind of local timing sources on board. It’s a question of risk mitigation. So, that concludes my hour presentation and, to conclude, I want to pinpoint three points. First, GPS jamming and spoofing are real and they present a growing threat. Every day, we manage and monitor the situation. I can tell you it’s growing, not declining, except in some areas of the world, like East Med for the reason I already explained. Secondly, the risk goes beyond navigation, it is a problem of safety, of trade, of national security. Third, mitigation requires technology, procedures and, of course, an international corporation, Kadir spoke about that. Safe seas depend on trust in navigation. When that trust is under attack, our response must be the resilience. Thank you for your attention and we are now welcoming your questions.
JL: Eric and Kadir, thank you very much for this really interesting presentation, which covers all of the problem of GNSS jamming and spoofing in general termsa, and I’m sure that there will be appetite among the audience to go in and ask some more detailed questions. We already had one question in the Q&A tab, and I encourage you all to, have a think about what you would like to know more about, and then type in your questions in the Q&A tab. First question is: why is differential GPS not able to mitigate against spoofing?
E: So, the differential GPS use mostly two sources of information. One, coming from the GPS legit and normal signal coming from satellite and another ground-based source with a precise location. So that is then compared and added as a differential calculation to see if the position moved or changed. But, if we have a precise point that does not move and someone who has a position that evolves due to spoofing, the differential will just modify the spoof calculated position, and no more the legit one. I don’t know if it is clear, but it’s not because you’ve got something that can tell you, oh by the way you move by X metres or X kilometres, that your spoofed position will be more accurate. It will just be moved by another point, because the differential source, the ground based emitting source is not spoofed. So for the ground based antenna, everything is normal and it emits just a normal position. For the vessel at sea, spoofed, the differential position does not make a difference.
JL: Okay, thanks a lot, Eric. So the differential GPS actually only gives you that slightly more precision. So if it’s completely spoofed at sea, then it will not have an impact. I think that’s exactly that’s pretty clear.
E: It will just modify your spoofed position. That’s it.
JL: Our vessels are frequently facing GPS spoofing while navigating Straight of Hormuz and Persian Gulf ports approaches. They tried changing to GLONASS system but, still, no position displayed. Kindly advise some other suitable measures for safe navigation around such areas. I thought that was quite interesting that apparently the GLONASS also didn’t work but, perhaps you can elaborate a little bit on the different systems we have. We have the big four, we have GPS, we have GLONASS, we have the Chinese Beidou, and we have the European Union’s Galileo. How are these systems impacted by jamming and, is there some sort of lesson learned or take away that the commercial industry can use to better protect against these problems? Eric or Kadir, over to you.
K: So before Eric pointing out the technological perspective on this question, as a mariner, I would definitely take this incident recorded and, for civilian industry, then report to the ship owner or the commercial operator. Of course, that’s something need to be done aside from the technological aspect. The second part is: there are maritime rescue coordination centers in that area. So I would just revert back, to relay back to their advices in that area because this also can lead to a problem to maritime rescue coordination centers, after all. If a ship is grounded, then they are the responsible authority to provide support. So I would highly suggest getting their recommendation, advices in that particular region: what to use if GPS is not working, if GLONASS is not working, what to use?
JL: Yeah, many thanks for that Kadir. Do you have anything to add to that Eric?
E: No, no. In fact, GLONASS, to be fully honest, is the most reliable against jamming and spoofing, because it uses a different system. It is based on 12 frequencies and not one, and it is much more difficult to jam or to spoof 12 frequencies,it is quite impossible to spoof. But, when you front military electronic warfare capability that have a widespread jamming capability, such GNSS, so satellite based system, not one can be protected against jamming. So my opinion is to use ground based information and to go back to the charts, to go back to inertial onboard local systems and to rely on the capability of officers to sail on the, let’s say, old way, ancient way, which was by observing stars, by observing the ground and the lights coming from the shore when you are close to. So, no GNSS can be protected against jamming when it comes to military action.
JL: Sorry to hear that, Eric. But, I think this is just the reality of things and something that shipowners have to adjust to. And I can only echo your advice to go back to the old virtues of terrestrial navigation, RADAR navigation, parallel indexing, all the rest of it. I mean, it used to work in the good old days when I was a navigator, and I think it still works. Thanks a lot. Here’s another question.
E: A last point about this question, I heard like a year ago that new systems, stellar positioning systems, are coming on the market. They are functioning, of course, by night, but also by day and by cloudy weather, with the highly capability optical systems and based on AI, that can provide a geolocation based on the star position. The ancient way, by the way, but with digital and AI-powered system. I’m not someone to advertise on the brand or something like that, but by looking into the Internet, you will find it pretty surely.
JL: That sounds really interesting and that’s new to me. But again, I’m not surprised given the pace of technological developments. But but thanks for the heads up, Eric. That’s that’s really interesting. Well, there’s another question. What is the recommended training which the officers in the shipping industry can be attended to?
K: It’s a rather hard question for us, because we are from the military perspective and we all get our education and training opportunity from our respective nations. But, for the industry, I’m checking the related IMO circulars on this perspective and best practices manuals available on various sources in organizations and in some flag states. Also, consulting a flag state of that ship can lead to show you a better training perspective to crew and crew members, because training is also part of a falg state responsibility as such. And the whole training and awareness, like from the let’s say, we are coming from the global level to unit level. Now, for instance, check your secondary ECDIS on board, if the primary is not functioning, how do you like, is it operative, are the maps updated? Can you use it as if you’re using the primary devices on board is something that the master can also train. As we say in NATO “train as we fight and fight as we learned”. So, checking your secondary devices can also give you a good insight.
JL: Thanks a lot for that, Kadir, I tend to agree and probably you know ECDIS courses that are delivered by the maritime training institutions, they will probably train you on on equipment breakdown or technical difficulties and the rest of it and, also of course, jamming, you know, loss of GPS signal and so on. And then, the good old rule of always navigate by two independent means of navigation, so that you have two independent means of of verifying the position. Thanks a lot. And here’s a question: how effective are the multifrequency receivers? Can they hop automatically, or do they need manual shift when jamming is recognized? I don’t know if this is something you know anything about, gentlemen?
E: So most of them are GPS-based and they use the other GNSS capabilities of systems as alternate. So, most of them have to be manually shifted. I hope that, thanks to AI and to geolocation comparison, some automatic receivers will appear on the market. But at the time I never saw such one. So, unfortunately it needs to be crisscrossed by the master and with visual observation or just an ECDIS or whatever probe, to switch to the other GNSS constellation I think it’s still manually most of the time.
I want to answer the question from Amid Kumar about positioning systems such as Galileo, BeiDou and GLONASS are more susceptible for spoofing? So, Galileo, BeiDou and GPS use quite the same system. They are on the same frequencies. And so, if they are jammed, they are jammed all of them, the three of them. GLONASS, as I already said, is a bit different and is more robust against jamming. About spoofing, GPS and, as far as I know, BeiDou, do not come with encryption. But Galileo, as soon as it will be widely available, will have an encrypted protected system, that will make the receiver able to identify, by a digital signature, the signal coming from the satellite and discard the one that won’t be well signed. So, that will be a very interesting protective system against spoofing, because an attacker, as he won’t have the crypto keys, won’t be able to generate the right signature. So, I think that the future is clearly in encrypted civilian services, and Galileo will come with one of them.
(…)
JL: Kadir, Eric, thanks a lot for taking the time to give us this presentation, I thought that was really helpful. And also, thank you for offering to answer any outstanding questions we have. And I can say to the audience that what we’ll do is we will share a recording of this webinar, we will share the questions and answers, and we will also share the relevant links to the NATO Shipping Center website where you can report the incidents of jamming and spoofing.