GPS Spoofing

[United744]

GPS can show you to be anywhere, instantaneously. Airbus deal with this slightly differently as they at least had the sense to know that GPS can't shift position at Mach 20, which spoofing would cause, at least initially. Airbus aircraft now warn when this condition is encountered.

Boeing treat GPS differently. Seems they considered it too reliable, and don't even allow for it to be completely failed. That is a serious problem.

[ccapilot]

So, back to the original question, is it possible to add a "GPS INTERFERENCE" and a "GPS SPOOFING" scenarios to the list of external malfunctions?
That would be highly appreciated as it is something that we have to deal with very regularly nowadays. I hope this can be implemented, thanks

[Hardy Heinlin]

That would be a feature that requires more research regarding the system interactions, and that would be some work I can't do free of charge, unfortunately.

[Mawea]

Hi Hardy,
will spam/spoof you with info if you like, check your mail
Cheers

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Older girls like the 744 don't really bother much with GPS jamming or spoofing. When jammed, the thing goes inop just as when it would fail or the antenna cable would break. It may also indicate reduced redundancy and therefore decreased accuracy, leading to dropping out of RNP. When spoofed, it warps to a new position and causes map shift. I am not sure whether the 744 uses GPS UTC time to adjust the captain's clock. If it does, stuff happens all over in terms of waypoint ETAs and other things and invalid CPDLC messages from the past or the future. But I would not touch this too much as we don't truly know what would happen.

So the simple effects could probably be variants of existing malfunctions. Or just be equated to these.

GPS failure not-severe/severe can be a good one.
Currently not-severe is GPS-L fails, severe is both GPS fail.
With nearly all logic concerning nav system priorities already in place, what would happen if GPS severe would include a chance of "GPS-R jumps to an airport within 250 nm and sticks there for the next 30 minutes"?

[Hardy Heinlin]

Indeed, for GPS jamming there is already a malfunction in the Nav section on the Malfunction pages. If you select "severe", both GPS units will fail.

If I were to add spoofing I would also have to implement another Instructor page for the design of spoofing patterns or fixed spoofing locations and some trigger conditions. It's obviously more complicated than a simple IRS map drift.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Yes and no. To simulate expected GPS spoofing/jamming in known areas, yes you would probably need to design something. The typical current pilot instruction is to disable GPS before getting close to that area, which on a bird like the 744 is painless.

To simulate unexpected GPS jamming, any current malfunction trigger would be fine. For any set training scenario I think there are plenty of ways to trigger a GPS jam around the same spot. I don't know whether many people would fly set scenarios without an instructor present and without peeking ahead what is going to happen?

GPS spoof options could be very complex, but you don't really want to offer all options known to mankind today. A good standard way to simulate a spoof is to do what probably the Israelis do: hard-lock every GPS around the country to Beirut airport at 20:00z on May 1st, or something. That is why I suggested a lock to the nearest airport.

Hoppie