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What’s new: A press item about disruption that is not about aviation or maritime.
Why it’s important:
- All kinds of applications and infrastructures can be impacted. We have mostly seen disruption effects in aviation and maritime because the jamming signals propagate line of sight and more aircraft and ships tend be “in view” of a jammer or spoofer.
- Precision agriculture enabled by GPS is becoming increasingly important. It requires less manpower, energy, fertilizer, and pesticide. And it makes food less expensive.
What else to know: About 40% of the produce in the U.S. comes from precision agriculture. That number increases every year.
Finnish farmers and foresters suffer GPS disruption
Justin Roberts
January 22, 2025 7:30 pm
The Global Positioning System or GPS is one of several systems that make up the collection of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), as we really should be calling satellite navigation as there are several other networks now available for all to use.
GPS was devised by the US for military purposes and it is now a fundamental part of its combined forces with a huge number of weapon systems relying on it, including drones.
The war in Ukraine has relied heavily on drones with both sides using them extensively, so there is little surprise in reports that there have been attempts to disrupt GNSS signals, with the finger being pointed firmly at Russia for doing so.
GPS interference
This interference has already caused problems with aircraft navigation in the Baltic region with Finnair going so far as to suspend certain routes as the signals have became too unreliable in certain regions.
What is less often reported is that farmers in Finland are also affected by this jamming and there are a growing number of reports of tractor GNSS systems failing in the southeast of the country.
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