GPS spoofing and jamming now affect over 1,500 commercial flights per day, and ADS-B -- the backbone of NextGen air traffic surveillance -- has no authentication mechanism to detect it

ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast), which became mandatory for all aircraft in controlled US airspace on January 1, 2020, relies entirely on unencrypted, unauthenticated GPS signals to determine aircraft position. State-level actors in conflict zones are now deliberately spoofing and jamming these signals, causing aircraft navigation systems to display incorrect positions. In April 2024, GPS spoofing in the Middle East surpassed 1,500 affected flights per day for the first time. Why it matters: When GPS signals are spoofed, ADS-B broadcasts incorrect aircraft positions to ATC and to other aircraft's collision avoidance systems, so controllers and pilots lose situational awareness of where aircraft actually are, so standard separation assurance breaks down and TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) may generate false or missing alerts, so crews must revert to legacy radar and raw navigation techniques they may not be proficient in, so catastrophic outcomes become possible -- as demonstrated when Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024 after experiencing GPS jamming and spoofing, killing 38 of 67 people on board. The structural root cause is that ADS-B was designed in the 1990s as a cooperative surveillance system optimized for cost and simplicity, with no signal authentication layer, and retrofitting cryptographic verification onto millions of existing transponders and ground stations would require a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure overhaul that no single nation or international body has funded.