High-power, and ideally authenticated, alternatives to space-based GNSS are desperately needed, given the sharp uptick in jamming and spoofing incidents in many places.
In a true "end of history" moment, the US and other NATO members discontinued both of their ground-based systems (which are inherently harder to jam due to their much higher transmission power, since transmitters are not power limited) – Omega in the late 1990s and Loran-C in the early 2010s – in favor of GPS, while Russia kept their equivalent functional, and China completed an eLoran network last year.
Add to that the FAA's reduction of their ground-based VOR/DME station network that lets planes navigate when GPS is unavailable...
GPS jamming, and much more concerningly spoofing, will probably quickly come within reach of non-nation-states and smaller groups of all kinds, and ultimately individual actors, and that can't possibly end well for civil aviation if robust countermeasures don't become available very soon.
In a true "end of history" moment, the US and other NATO members discontinued both of their ground-based systems (which are inherently harder to jam due to their much higher transmission power, since transmitters are not power limited) – Omega in the late 1990s and Loran-C in the early 2010s – in favor of GPS, while Russia kept their equivalent functional, and China completed an eLoran network last year.
Add to that the FAA's reduction of their ground-based VOR/DME station network that lets planes navigate when GPS is unavailable...
GPS jamming, and much more concerningly spoofing, will probably quickly come within reach of non-nation-states and smaller groups of all kinds, and ultimately individual actors, and that can't possibly end well for civil aviation if robust countermeasures don't become available very soon.