When GPS Fails: Why Maritime Needs Resilient Navigation in International Shipping News 30/04/2026 Every day brings new reports of GPS interference affecting shipping, particularly in regions like the Persian Gulf. Less visible are the collisions, groundings, and near misses that follow when positioning becomes unreliable. For an industry now built around continuous, high-accuracy satellite navigation, these are not isolated incidents. They’re early signals of a much broader vulnerability. And without navigation and maneuvering solutions that allow safe operations even in the face of interference, maritime is going to see a lot more, and possibly a lot worse. Chosen and implemented properly, systems to complement and backup GPS will not only make shipping safer, but will enable greater efficiencies and automation moving forward. Danger at Sea GPS has made maritime operations of all kinds safer and more efficient. GPS enabled AIS has reduced the number of collisions and improved harbor and near-shore operations. The size and procedures for bridge crews have been modified. Container and other port operations have been streamlined. Over the course of several decades the industry has restructured itself around those benefits. It only stands to reason that when GPS is not available, things are going to be less safe and less efficient. And we have more than enough examples: • In June 2025, the 1,100 foot (335m) tanker Front Eagle, carrying approximately 2 million barrels of crude oil in the Gulf of Oman, made a quick and sharp right turn that resulted in a collision with Adalynn, a 900 foot (275m) tanker. GPS was being interfered with in the area and was a likely cause. • In May, 2025 GPS interference was blamed for the grounding of the 912 foot (278m) container ship MSC Antonia near the port of Jedda. The ship grounded on Eliza Shoals. • In July 2019 the tanker Stena Imperio was lured into Iranian waters by GPS spoofing and was seized by the Revolutionary Guards in retaliation for seizure of a vessel by UK forces. Thousands of vessels are impacted by interference with GPS each year. While the Baltic, Black Sea, eastern Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and other conflict areas are hot spots there is scarely a region in which it cannot be found. A 2019 German Aerospace Center (DLR) study on an 18 month voyage from the Mediterranean to the far east and back detected interference during every segment of the trip – port, coastal, and even open sea transit. Pirates, Theft, & Smuggling Interference with weak and easily imitated GPS signals has also been linked to cargo theft. In one well publicized instance celebrity chef Guy Fieri lost $1,000,000 of his branded tequila to hijackers that used GPS spoofing to divert the shipment. Officials in the U.S. have reported spoofing used to steal pharmaceuticals, and jammers or spoofers are regularly used in the theft and illegal export of luxury vehicles. Across the globe vessels spoof their own locations to help conceal a broad range of illicit and illegal activity. The Russian “shadow fleet” transporting sanctioned oil is merely one example. It could even be possible for bad actors to hijack an entire vessel without the crew being aware until their last moments. In 2013 Professor Todd Humphreys and his students at the University of Texas demonstrated just how that could happen on a yacht in the Mediterranean. A 2017 article in Maritime Executive magazine outlined how this could be done fairly easily to hijack