Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Friday seemingly confirmed reports from pilot dating back to at least 2022 regarding radio signal interference in the country’s airspace, endangering aircraft navigation systems.
In a note issued as an Aeronautical Information Services supplement, the aviation regulator said GPS signal interferences had been reported in the airspaces around Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. “All pilots promptly report to ATC of such interference with appropriate details,” it said.
The note advises pilots to take necessary measures for safe and efficient continuation of flights during any frequency interference. It further directs them to notify the Air Traffic Control for assistance in case of any navigational difficulty.
The note confirms reports dating back nearly three years from pilots plying the skies over Lahore. Those reports raised an alarm over fake signals endangering aircraft navigation systems, with the origins of the anomaly remaining a mystery.
According to the reports, fake or jammed global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals that affected the U.S. global positioning system (GPS) have caused both commercial and private aircraft navigation systems to show missing or inaccurate information when landing or taking off, primarily from Lahore. This is borne out by gpsjam.org, a website that identifies regions with GPS interference. It advises pilots to avoid flying into any such region.
GNSS refers to any satellite-based position, navigation, and timing system that transmits information to receivers. The U.S. GPS is one such GNSS and the one most often used by aircraft.
GPS jamming overwhelms relatively weak GNSS signals, an illegal act in most countries, including Pakistan. GPS spoofing, meanwhile, refers to tricking the receiver into calculating a false position, which risks diverting an aircraft off the desired course. Jamming and spoofing carry the addition risk of forcing an autopilot to switch off.
According to the gpsjam website, an area covering cities around the Wagah border crossing, including Lahore, Kasur, Amritsar is consistently reporting “high” levels of GPS interference. Per pilots flying routes in this region, this results in their instrumentation showing incorrect information or stopping working altogether. Consequently, the pilots rely on air traffic controllers providing vectors and visual aids to land, raising safety concerns. An official of the Civil Aviation Authority, on the condition of anonymity, confirmed to the Standard that the issue had verifiably persisted for several months.
They could not provide any reason for the anomaly, stating only that it appeared linked to geopolitical concerns.
Similar issues were witnessed in the area over the Black Sea earlier this year when Israel ramped up its aerial bombardments of Gaza and its surrounding regions. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the International Air Transport Association held a workshop in January in which they confirmed rising cases of GNSS jamming and spoofing. They said countering the risk posed to safety was a priority for the agency.
Possible reasons
While there is no way to determine what might be causing the anomaly along the Wagah border, an aviation expert has noted that spoofing attacks usually originate from the periphery of Tehran and became widespread in the area of the Israel-Gaza conflict. This could have been caused by either Israel or Iran.
For the Wagah border region, the most likely culprit is either India or Pakistan. Both states, rivals since Partition in 1947, possess the technological capabilities for GPS jamming or spoofing. Neither has been widely accused in any significant incident due to the secretive nature of electronic warfare activities.
However, both have previously utilized the technology during military operations or in response to perceived threats. In 2022, ahead of the current issue arising, India accidentally fired a BrahMos missile originating from Ambala, Haryana into Pakistan. It crashed into Mian Channu in Punjab province. The incident drew strong condemnations from Pakistan, with the military spokesman saying the Pakistan Air Force had “initiated requisite tactical actions” after tracking the missile from its point of origin.
No further details were offered, but the worrisome incident might have triggered “corrective” actions that persist today.