Final Up to date:November 07, 2025, 22:30 IST
GPS spoofing is a type of cyber interference the place faux satellite tv for pc indicators are broadcast to deceive navigation methods about their precise location
GPS spoofing | Consultant Picture
Over the previous week, Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Worldwide (IGI) Airport has confronted uncommon operational turbulence, with authorities investigating a collection of suspected GPS spoofing incidents.
These are sometimes seen in battle zones or alongside delicate borders such because the India-Pakistan frontier.
Faux satellite tv for pc indicators seem to have been transmitted to mislead plane about their true positions, resulting in flight diversions, delays, and congestion.
Including to the chaos, almost 800 flights had been delayed on Friday, although the speedy trigger was attributed to a technical fault in Delhi’s Air Visitors Management (ATC) system.
The disruption rippled throughout airports in northern India, compounding the difficulties attributable to the spoofing incidents earlier within the week.
In line with a Occasions of India report, Delhi ranked second globally for flight disruptions on Tuesday, with at the very least seven flights diverted to Jaipur and Lucknow, regardless of all 4 of its runways being operational.
Experiences counsel that on Tuesday, the Navigation Integrity Class (NIC), a measure of plane positioning accuracy, plunged from its ordinary degree of 8 to 0 inside a 60-nautical-mile (110 km) radius round Delhi.
Pilots first flagged these anomalies, prompting the Directorate Basic of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to launch an investigation, as reported by The Hindu.
The scenario has been additional difficult by the non permanent shutdown of the principle runway’s Instrument Touchdown System (ILS), which is being upgraded to Class III to allow low-visibility landings throughout heavy winter fog.
With the ILS offline, pilots have been relying extra closely on satellite-based navigation, making plane extra vulnerable to spoofing assaults. These elements mixed have led to heavy delays at IGI Airport, which handles over 1,500 flights a day.
What Is GPS Spoofing?
GPS spoofing is a type of cyber interference the place faux satellite tv for pc indicators are broadcast to deceive navigation methods about their precise location.
It differs from GPS jamming, the place indicators are blocked fully, a technique typically utilized by militaries in battle zones to disrupt enemy monitoring or communications.
As an instance, think about your telephone immediately displaying that you just’re a number of kilometres away from the place you actually are.
That’s how spoofing works, by tricking the receiver into deciphering counterfeit indicators as authentic ones. In aviation, such deception may be harmful: an plane flying over Delhi may seem, on cockpit devices, to be over Chandigarh.
This miscalculation may cause critical navigation errors or flight path deviations.
Why It Issues
GPS spoofing isn’t new, however it’s changing into a rising international concern.
The Indian authorities knowledgeable Parliament earlier this yr that 465 spoofing incidents had been reported between November 2023 and February 2025 alongside the India–Pakistan border, notably close to Amritsar and Jammu.
In line with the Worldwide Air Transport Affiliation (IATA), there have been greater than 4.3 lakh situations of GPS jamming and spoofing over international battle zones in 2024, a 62% bounce from 2023.
In some of the critical instances, an Azerbaijan Airways flight crashed in Kazakhstan in December 2023, killing 38 folks, after reportedly being affected by GPS interference.
Nearer residence, in March 2024, an Indian Air Drive (IAF) plane carrying earthquake reduction to Myanmar below Operation Brahma encountered spoofed indicators, believed to have originated from China-linked methods.
November 07, 2025, 22:30 IST
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