Why it’s Time to Rethink Our Reliance on Satellite Navigation

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20 May 2025

GPS: The Invisible Infrastructure We All Depend On
The Cracks Are Showing: GPS is No Longer a Reliable Single Source of Truth
The Path Forward: A Smarter Architecture: Layered, Modular, and Mission-Driven
The Time to Build Resilience is Now

The World Runs on GPS. Until it Doesn’t.

GPS: The Invisible Infrastructure We All Depend On

GPS is arguably one of the most powerful and transformative technologies of the modern era. It guides planes, ships, and trucks. It synchronizes financial markets, power grids, and telecom networks. It helps farmers plant with precision and enables emergency services to respond faster. It’s embedded in defense systems, mining vehicles, and autonomous drones.

So, what happens when it stops working?

In a Black Mirror-esque style, The Collapse portrays a near-future world where our overreliance on GPS (as a single technology) triggers cascading failures across agriculture, mining, defense, finance, transport, and emergency response. The video presents a chilling “what if” scenario that exposes the fragility of modern infrastructure and the urgent need to change course.

Is this fiction? Yes. Is it far from reality? Perhaps not.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), GPS spoofing incidents surged by 500% and interference rates rose by 175% between 2023 and 2024.

The vulnerabilities of GPS are already unfolding in the real world, with consequences emerging across industries.

Defense: From UAVs to military ships, these systems depend on GPS. In conflict zones like Ukraine and the Middle East, electronic warfare is actively degrading GPS signals, forcing a shift toward alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems.
Mining: Autonomous haul trucks and drill rigs lose accuracy without GPS, risking both safety and productivity. Outages have led to costly halts and the reintroduction of inefficient manual processes.
Shipping & Logistics: Vessels in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean have been tricked into false positions through GPS spoofing – jeopardizing trade routes, maritime safety, and global supply chains.
Finance: GPS provides the timing backbone for high-frequency trades, stock exchanges, and banking systems. A momentary disruption could ripple across the entire global economy.
Emergency Services: GPS outages are delaying ambulances, disrupting dispatch systems, and hampering disaster response efforts when speed matters most.
Agriculture: Precision farming relies on accurate positioning. Signal drops have caused scheduling delays and reduced crop yields. Some farms have had to revert to manual operations.
Telecom & Energy: GPS time synchronization is vital to maintaining service uptime. Outages have triggered temporary communication blackouts and energy grid issues.
Rail: European rail networks using GPS for coordination have seen failures, forcing a return to manual operations and reduced scheduling efficiency.

The Cracks Are Showing:
GPS is No Longer a Reliable Single Source of Truth

GPS was designed for a different era – one with fewer threats and lower demands. It was never meant to shoulder the weight of our modern infrastructure alone.

Today, GPS is increasingly exposed to:

Spoofing & Jamming Attacks: Adversaries are actively jamming or mimicking GPS signals to create confusion, particularly in conflict zones. Signal interferences for commercial airlines have quadrupled in the last two years, resulting in unplanned landings and elevated risk of an international crisis.
Harsh Environments: GPS signals struggle underground, underwater, inside buildings, or in densely forested areas and deep urban canyons.
Solar Storms: Sudden bursts of solar radiation can disturb Earth’s magnetic field and disrupt satellite communications, including GPS.
Weather Extremes: Heavy storms and atmospheric anomalies degrade GPS signal accuracy and availability.

This growing list of vulnerabilities makes one thing clear: GPS alone is no longer a reliable source of truth.

The Path Forward:
A Smarter Architecture: Layered, Modular, and Mission-Driven

Does GPS still matter? Yes.

GPS will remain a cornerstone of modern infrastructure – but treating it as the single source of truth is a risk we can no longer afford. To protect critical systems and future-proof our operations, we must transition from GPS-only to a multi-sensor, inertial-centered architecture – built for resilience, precision, and real-world adaptability.

Our approach:

1. INS at the Center of Every Decision
At the center of every reliable navigation platform is a trusted source of truth – the Inertial Navigation System (INS). Built with ultra-sensitive sensors capable of detecting Earth’s rotation, it provides consistent position and attitude data, independent of satellite signals.

Inertial Navigation with no GPS in a complex terrain

Inertial Navigation in a complex terrain with GPS loss

2. Modular Sensor Stack
Layering complementary sensors – optical, magnetic, radar, sonar, LiDAR – tailored to the mission builds redundancy and enhances accuracy, survivability, and adaptability in any environment.

Inertial Navigation + Modular Sensor Stack in a complex terrain with GPS loss

3. AdNav OS Fusion
Drawing on sophisticated algorithms, AdNav OS Fusion intelligently interprets and filters sensor data in real time.

It dynamically weighs each sensor input – adjusting in real time based on reliability scores, environmental conditions, and operational context. This ensures continuous, high-confidence state estimation even when signals are lost, degraded, or distorted.

Inertial Navigation + Modular Sensor Stack + AdNav OS Fusion in a complex terrain with GPS loss

This architecture is built to work with both Advanced Navigation and third-party systems, our platform is plug-and-play, reducing integration time and enabling faster deployment.

The Time to Build Resilience is Now

The future of navigation lies not in reliance on a single technology, but in the integration of a diverse and adaptable suite of sensors.

Advanced Navigation’s recent demonstrations, integrating a high-performance fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) inertial navigation system (INS) with a Laser Velocity Sensor (LVS) aid for a fused Hybrid navigation system, proved to achieve superior resilience in GPS-denied environments. Read more in our whitepaper.

The question isn’t if GPS will fail. It’s when. And when it does, what will systems fall back on? As our world becomes more automated, connected, and contested, we must evolve our navigation infrastructure.

The future belongs to systems that are intelligent, modular and built for resilience.

Let’s build that future together.

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