“America is at risk of high impact GPS jamming and spoofing from space” was the title of my SpaceNews opinion article in October 2024. Little did I know that its publication would set into motion a series of events that ended up proving Russia has been jamming GPS from space since 2019.
In the 2024 article, I quoted remarks at a conference by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas Radionavigation Lab. I included additional speculation by Todd, me and my colleague General William Shelton, USAF (ret), one time commander of Air Force Space Command, about China’s and Russia’s space-based capabilities.
Shortly after it was published, I was surprised to be contacted by a researcher in the United Kingdom. He said that interference from space was more than a possibility — he had observed it.
Examining data from terrestrial reference stations operated by the International Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Service, he had noticed instances in which GPS signal strength had decreased markedly. In each case it was for less than ten seconds, but the events had been recorded by stations across a very broad section of northern Europe.
While he did not want to be publicly identified, the researcher did agree to the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation putting him in touch with others who could confirm his findings and perhaps discover more.
