“Spoofing” looks like it’s here to stay as a feature of the new kind of warfare on display in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. Despite the lighthearted name, spoofing is a deadly serious missile-defense technique used by countries with very advanced technical abilities. It also carries risks that may stretch well beyond the battlefield. By using spoofing, Israeli forces can make it appear that an airplane, precision-guided missile, or any object that uses GPS is somewhere other than its true location. Israel is already using the technique to its full advantage. The Israeli government doesn’t disclose details about its spoofing techniques, but experts believe it likely uses a simulator that simply re-broadcasts a signal captured through a GPS antenna. The Israeli military has publicly said only that GPS has been “restricted in active combat zones in accordance with various operational needs.” One experiment appeared to confirm the extent, and possible impact, of GPS spoofing. Using an open-source commercial airline tracker, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin noticed earlier this month that a large number of planes flying around the Mediterranean sea would appear on their normal flight path and then apparently appear over a single location in Israel. Their best guess is that this was the result of Israel’s spoofing tactics. Basically, the same kind of signal tampering that fools plane trackers can also fool missile guidance systems that use GPS. This satellite masking technique appears to be a clever way to thicken the fog of war in the face of ever-increasing reconnaissance capabilities, but experts fear that it might spread that fog beyond the battlefield — creating an even more chaotic, unpredictable future of war than the one we’re already experiencing. Todd Humphreys, the UT Austin professor who hacked into Starlink last year, said of the airplane tracking “this is the most sustained and clear indication of spoofing I've ever seen. His graduate student, Zach Clements, first discovered the spoofing pattern. Their research suggests that Israel has been deploying it since the Hamas militant group’s Oct. 7 surprise attack, setting up a widespread spoofing system to deter Hezbollah — a well-equipped militant group backed by Iran — from launching its long-range missiles into Israeli territory. Rather than hitting its target, a precision-guided missile that uses GPS would veer off course and (ideally) land in the middle of nowhere. Experts believe advanced weapons that use GPS will become more common in battle, so Israel using it now makes sense, and that its use in battle will increase. “Every major conflict has heavily involved electronic warfare, particularly against GPS and other satellite systems, and that is likely to be a feature of any future conflict,” said Brian Weeden, who served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force for nine years with a focus on space and intercontinental ballistic missile operations. Weeden, now director of program planning at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Secure World Foundation, added: “I would expect that in any modern warfare, someone is going to just disrupt [navigation signals] in and across the battlefield.” The U.S. and other Western countries have conducted large-scale spoofing exercises before, but not in times of war, Weeden said. Ukraine and Russia have both used GPS spoofing in their current conflict, and China has also used it in recent years. Whether it’s ethical is another question. There’s a risk that spoofing can disrupt civilian air travel in potentially dangerous ways. Pilots on commercial airlines use GPS as one of their key navigation tools, optimizing flight routes, reducing fuel usage and helping with landing, among other important functions. A spoofing incident over Iraq and Iran in September almost caused a business jet to fly into Iranian airspace without clearance. And it’s also possible a misguided missile initially aimed at a military target could mistakenly hit civilians. “It's not like we're condemning Israel for this. We understand the situation going on,” Humphreys said. But Israel is “putting at risk not just Israelis, but everyone who's flying in the eastern Mediterranean and there are many, many flights.” There isn’t much precedent in international law regarding GPS interference and other satellite tampering, as its military application is so new. “There's a lot of murkiness there because a lot of these things haven't actually been brought to fruition,” said Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Security and International Studies, and the Pentagon’s former principal deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In times of war, however, the rules can be different. Hezbollah’s arsenal poses a real threat to Israel, as the group is estimated to have 130,000 rockets and missiles. Most have a range of a few dozen miles, but a sizable number are long-range precision-guided ones. If they decided to fire into Israel, the war would inevitably escalate. Spoofing isn’t being used “to attack somebody. They're using it to protect their forces,” Bingen said. “They have every right to defend themselves. You have to defend yourself physically; you have to defend yourself in the electromagnetic spectrum.”
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