The race to safeguard navigation

The location of Scuttlebutt HQ is a bike ride from Naval Base Point Loma – home to the US Navy’s premier organization for communications and cybersecurity. Cool… except when they emit powerful comms, our car key fobs and garage door openers stop working.

With heightened tension in the Middle East, this has been a recent occurrence, which is a reminder of this vulnerability. But a bigger issue is disruption occurring with GPS signals.

For most of human history, navigating required skill, judgment, and constant attention, but satellite navigation marked a fundamental shift. The advent of GPS has made navigation almost effortless: Press a button and voilà, location and heading appear instantly.

However, over the past few years, deliberate GPS interference has surged worldwide. Zak Kassas, an electrical engineer who studies alternative methods of electronic navigation, is developing alternatives as backup for when GPS is unavailable or unreliable. – Full report