The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and International Maritime Organization (IMO) have issued a joint statement expressing “grave concern” over increasing incidents of jamming and spoofing attacks disrupting critical satellite navigation systems worldwide.
The agencies warned that such interference poses severe risks to aviation safety, maritime operations, and emergency response systems, calling on governments to urgently strengthen protections for the Radio Navigation Satellite Service (RNSS) frequency bands.
Global Navigation Satellite Systems are constellations of Earth-orbiting satellites that provide positioning, navigation, and timing services worldwide that are critical for the safety and efficiency of civilian aircraft, maritime vessels, humanitarian assistance vehicles, as well as for time synchronization of telecommunications networks.
Call for action
While calling on governments across the globe to take action to end the disruption, ITU Secretary-General, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, said:
“Global Navigation Satellite Systems are critical to our safety on land, at sea, and in the air.
“Member States should ensure the uninterrupted operation of these systems for everyone’s safety and the resilience of essential services that our lives depend on.“
The joint statement, cosigned by the three UN agencies, requests Member States to:
- Protect the RNSS from transmissions that can adversely cause harmful interference, degrading, interrupting, or misleading signals used for civilian and humanitarian purposes;
- Reinforce the resilience of the systems that rely on RNSS for navigation, positioning, and timing in relation to this type of interference;
- Retain sufficient conventional navigation infrastructure for contingency support in case of RNSS outages and misleading signals, and develop mitigation techniques for loss of services;
- Increase collaboration between radio regulatory, civil aviation, maritime, defence, and enforcement authorities; and
- Report cases of harmful interference affecting RNSS to the appropriate telecommunication, aeronautical, and maritime authorities, and to the ITU Radiocommunications Bureau, to enable the monitoring of the situation.
“Protecting radiocommunications systems from harmful interference is at the core of ITU’s mandate.
“We call on our Members to make responsible use of the radiofrequency spectrum, which is a precious, natural and shared resource we rely on for communicating, travelling and working in our daily lives,” said Director of the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau, Mario Maniewicz.
What you should know
Countries employ jamming devices for various reasons, primarily for military and security purposes, such as disrupting enemy communications or radar, and also to prevent unauthorized communication in areas like prisons or during exams.
Jamming is an unnecessary transmission, or the transmission of superfluous signals, or the transmission of signals without identification.
Spoofing is the broadcast of GNSS-like signals that can cause a GNSS receiver in a vessel or aircraft to calculate erroneous positions and provide false guidance.
