Congress Calls For GPS Vulnerability Study

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner is calling for a joint study on the vulnerability of the Global Positioning System (GPS) along with the actions taken by federal agencies to mitigate associated risks.

Senator Warner is chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and this study is included in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal 2022.  The study will look at vulnerabilities; potential negative effects from an extended GPS outage from the standpoints of both national security and the economy.  It will also look at alternatives that could be backups for positioning, navigation, and timing for civil, commercial and government users.

The report is due to Congress within 180 days.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a threat assessment that reported that China has the “ability to jam common satellite communications bans and GPS signals, and it has made the development and deployment of satellite jamming systems a high priority.”

The same threat assessment also noted that the government of Russia has been jamming and spoofing GPS since 2014.