India’s GPS Disruptions Mirror Global Electronic-Warfare Patterns

NEW DELHI: India's recent Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) anomalies, reported across seven major airports since November 2023, match the multi-city, sustained signature of state-grade electronic warfare (EW) observed previously in Russia, China and several Middle Eastern theatres. Aviation specialists say the pattern of disruption now emerging across India is strikingly similar to incidents abroad where extended bouts of interference were eventually traced to electronic warfare systems operating near civil air routes.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha this week, Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu confirmed that instances of GPS spoofing or interference had been reported at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Amritsar, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. At Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), pilots flying GPS-based approaches to Runway 10 encountered anomalies that forced them to revert to contingency procedures. Other runways equipped with conventional navigational aids functioned normally.

Officials said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) began systematically collecting data after issuing a November 2023 directive mandating that airlines, pilots and air traffic controllers report any suspected jamming or spoofing within ten minutes. Since then, a steady flow of reports from major airports has revealed a countrywide pattern rather than isolated glitches, prompting the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to seek assistance from the Wireless Monitoring Organisation (WMO). The WMO, under the Department of Telecommunications, has been directed to deploy additional resources and trace the physical source of the interference.

Globally, similar multi-city or multi-airport GNSS disruption patterns have been documented over the past decade.

In Russia between 2017 and 2023, tens of thousands of spoofing incidents were recorded across Moscow, St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Crimea and Russia's Syrian bases. Merchant vessels in the Black Sea appeared on GPS as if located at inland airports, while aircraft reported sudden navigation drift during approach. Independent GNSS researchers found the anomalies repeatedly aligned with presidential movements, air defence zones and military EW platforms, pointing to domestic electronic warfare systems operating routinely in these regions.
In China between 2018 and 2021, ports such as Shanghai, Ningbo-Zhoushan and Qingdao experienced unusual "circle spoofing," where ships' tracks formed perfect loops or jumped kilometres without real movement. Maritime analysts linked these recurring disruptions to coastal security operations, anti-drone countermeasures or calibration of new EW infrastructure near critical ports.
In Israel and conflict-adjacent regions of Syria and Iraq between 2019 and the present, civil aviation warnings have been issued regularly as aircraft experienced sudden GPS loss or false waypoints around Ben Gurion Airport and along eastern Mediterranean air corridors. Investigators attributed these to defensive EW systems activated to counter drones and precision-guided weapons in active conflict theatres.
In Iran from 2020 to 2024, pilots approaching Tehran, Shiraz and Mashhad reported periodic GNSS failures, while ships in the Persian Gulf recorded abrupt position jumps. Aviation security assessments linked these events to the activation of Iranian EW systems during military exercises and heightened tensions in the region.
In each of these international cases, the anomalies were localised, persistent over months or years, and concentrated around strategic or high-security transport corridors. While governments rarely acknowledged responsibility, the technical signatures measured on parameters of directionality, corridor specificity, repeated short bursts and multi-city footprints led investigators to conclude that domestic electronic warfare systems were the primary cause.

India's emerging data closely resembles that global profile. The anomalies appear in short bursts, are confined to specific approach paths such as IGIA's Runway 10, and have been logged across multiple cities over an extended period. All these features tend to rule out satellite malfunctions, consumer-grade jammers or random interference, which would produce wider and more chaotic impacts.

While Indian authorities have not attributed the disruptions to any actor , aviation analysts say the parallels with foreign cases are hard to ignore. "Given the strong similarity to known incidents in Russia, China and the Middle East, where subsequent technical analysis pointed to domestic EW activity, it is reasonable to assume that at least some of the interference in India may also stem from electronic-warfare exercises, calibration or testing," said an aviation-security expert who requested anonymity. "However, this remains a hypothesis until radio frequency direction-finding results and signal forensics are available," he added.

According to officials, flight safety has not been compromised. This was also confirmed by the civil aviation minister who told Parliament that operations on other runways remained unaffected and that India continues to maintain a Minimum Operating Network (MON) of ground-based navigation systems to ensure redundancy when satellite-based navigation degrades. Investigators will now rely on direction finding equipment, captured RF waveforms and aircraft navigation logs to determine whether the interference is emanating from commercial emitters, malfunctioning equipment or more advanced electronic-warfare systems. A clearer picture is expected once the WMO completes its field analysis and submits its findings to AAI and DGCA, which is expected to happen within two weeks.