GNSS Resilience: The Economic and Security Imperative of Modern Warfare

by Professor Aled Catherall

GNSS signals underpin far more than navigation. Precise satellite timing synchronises power grids, financial markets, cellular networks and industrial automation. Yet the degradation of GNSS is far easier to achieve than many assume, and the consequences can be severe.

The scale of the problem is growing fast. IATA data shows GNSS interference now affects over 5% of commercial flights in Europe, with signal loss events up 220% between 2021 and 2024. The jamming of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's aircraft brought the issue into sharp public focus, but disruption can also arise from natural phenomena like solar flares or technical anomalies within satellite constellations.

The UK government estimates that a single day of nationwide GNSS outage would cost the economy more than £1.4 billion. For transport, the effects cascade quickly: aircraft navigation, maritime operations, logistics chains and road networks all depend on satellite-derived positioning. And because GNSS disruption is rarely confined by borders, the economic exposure is global.

This vulnerability has not gone unnoticed by adversaries. Jamming, spoofing and signal denial are now recognised tools of hybrid warfare, capable of undermining civilian infrastructure and military readiness without a single shot being fired. Defence spending is rising worldwide partly in response, as governments recognise that conflict now plays out through electronic disruption, cyber interference and space-based vulnerabilities rather than conventional confrontation alone.

The response centres on layered resilience. Rather than relying on any single positioning source, armed forces and critical infrastructure operators are turning to systems that fuse GNSS with inertial sensors, atomic clocks, terrestrial backups and real-time signal integrity monitoring. When GNSS degrades, these layered approaches detect the disruption early and maintain positioning, navigation and timing continuity through alternative sources.

The full article, by Prof Aled Catherall of Plextek, examines how this layered approach works in practice, what happens when GNSS protection fails at high-profile international events, and why resilience is becoming a collective imperative rather than a purely national one. It argues that the question is no longer whether disruption will occur, but how societies can build resilience against it, and how trusted civilian-military technology partnerships can help safeguard critical events, infrastructure and economies.

Link to full article.