Image: MaritimeTraffic.com
Great post last week on LinkedIn by Lorentz Ryan, Managing Director at AD Navigation AS.
“Total navigational mayhem entering Gulf of Gdansk this morning. Strong GNSS spoofing attack taking place. This is “sending” most ships all around the area. Pay attention to the track of container ship “ELBINSEL” by the end of the movie as she tries to find her way towards Gdansk.
European’s decision to destroy the LoranC stations only a few years ago was terrible. Russia and China utilize this technology as alternative PNT.”
Click here for the post and video.
For background, the U.S. terminated Loran in 2010, despite a decision by the National PNT Executive Committee (a group led by the deputy secretaries of Defense and Transportation and representing almost all federal departments) to meet President Bush’s mandate for a GPS backup with eLoran. Forces within government and industry did not want anything in the budget competing with the very GPS program.
Similarly, Europe shut down its Loran-C system in 2015 despite objections from the U.K. Galileo was still being build, was very expensive and European leadership wanted to show unequivocal faith in the project.
In fairness, at the time, there were a lot of uninformed people in the U.S. and Europe who thought relying entirely on space would not be a problem. They had either not heard of jamming and spoofing, or not regarded it as a serious threat despite an extensive report and serious warning from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2001.
