A recent study released by a nonprofit think tank called C4ADS details Russian spoofing and jamming of GPS signals that resulted in erroneous position fixes, sometimes by many miles. The Russian interference with GPS is reportedly more widespread than previously thought.
The report, titled “Above Us Only Stars,” details almost 10,000 cases of GPS interference impacting more than 1,300 commercial vessels. The locations of this interference included the Black Sea, the Gulf of Finland, the waters near the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok and, most important for voyaging yachts, the Mediterranean. There have also been reports of Russian jamming and spoofing of GPS signals in the Barents and Norwegian seas along the Norwegian coast. While this type of GPS interference is not a widespread problem for most ocean voyagers, it does underline the ways that relying only on GPS for navigation might be a problem.
