GPS-Täuschungen im Zivilluftverkehr

[Schneemann]

Der Name ist bislang erst einmal ein Arbeitstitel. Hintergrund ist das sog. GPS-Spoofing (Vortäuschung, Manipulation) von Flugzeugen bzw. deren Positionsbestimmung im zivilen Luftverkehr. Anscheinend hat dieses Phänomen in den letzten Monaten v. a. im nahöstlichen Bereich zugenommen.

Ich bin nun kein wirklicher Fachmann dafür, aber das Thema an sich finde ich es sehr gewichtig. Im schlimmsten Fall kommen Flugzeuge von der Bahn ab und dringen in geschützte Lufträume ein, was dann einen Zwischenfall bis hin zum Abschuss bedeuten könnte. Und es stellt sich die Frage, wer hier dahintersteckt?

The Serious Threat Of GPS Spoofing: An Analysis

A serious threat to the safety of air navigation has emerged in recent weeks, occurring to a wide range of civilian transport aircraft while traversing airspace in which deviations would lead to intrusions into Iranian airspace without a clearance. The culprit appears to be fake GPS signals which are causing complete navigation failure.

OpsGroup, a membership organization specializing in international flight operations, has collected 20 separate incident reports as of September 28, 2023. The number of incidents and the geographic focus of these recent incidents make this more than a mere coincidence.

Nefarious (though yet to be identified) forces are likely behind this, and the consequences could turn into an international crisis and possibly the loss of an innocent civilian aircraft in a region that is already a high-risk area near an active conflict zone. The name of this new menace is “GPS Spoofing”, which is different from GPS jamming. GPS jamming means that one’s aircraft is unable to receive standard GPS signals and the aircraft’s navigation system must rely on other inputs to determine its position. Aircraft equipped with advanced Inertia Reference Systems (“IRS”) are able to continue operating sufficiently when GPS signals are jammed, but GPS Spoofing is a new threat which found a hidden back-door through the navigation software to completely disable the entire navigation system. [...]

These latest incidents involve “Spoofing” in which the false GPS signals trick the aircraft’s FMS into indicating that the aircraft is more than 60 nm off-track, and then completely disables the aircraft’s Inertia Reference System (IRS). Since the IRS utilizes GPS signals to continuously update the position information, the navigation system software assumes that the fake GPS is correct, causing the IRS to fail. When the navigation system compares the (fake) GPS signals to other navigation inputs such as from ground-based nav-aids, the software is unable to comprehend the gross error, and all of the navigation systems end up being corrupted. [...]

One of the reports in the OpsGroup database occurred on Sept. 9 to a Challenger 604 while on a flight from Europe to Qatar. The route of flight went through Turkey and Iraq. The aircraft experienced minor jamming while transitioning from Bulgarian to Turkish airspace. As they neared the Turkey/Iraq border, they lost both GPS sensors but continued the flight with the back-up navigational input in the IRS. North of Baghdad, the flight crew lost anything related to the navigation system, and the IRS indicated that they had drifted 70-90 miles off track. [...] Clues that your aircraft has been targeted by spoofing include a large Estimated Position Uncertainty (“EPU”), incorrect display of the UTC, a large shift in the GPS position, nav page or PFD warnings about position error, as well as other aircraft transmitting comparable errors. [...]

Manufacturers of military navigation systems have been developing a multi-layered approach to combat the problem of GPS disruptions. For instance, Honeywell has introduced a multitude of alternative navigation systems to augment the availability, integrity and performance of inertia navigation. They have developed a Vision Aided Navigation System using a live camera (optical and/or IR) which compares the image with maps to provide an un-jammable position with a horizontal position accuracy of 10 meters. Their Celestial Aided Navigation system utilizes a star tracker. It is likewise un-jammable and recently demonstrated an accuracy of 30 m. An Embraer 170 was recently used as a test platform to demonstrate the effectiveness of Honeywell’s Magnetic Anomaly Aided system which measures the earth’s magnetic strength to compare with magnetic maps to identify a vehicle’s position. Honeywell’s Radar Aided system uses radars to measure velocity and provide this information to the INS, thus improving the INS’s accuracy.

https://aviationweek.com/business-aviati...g-analysis

Schneemann