Testing for Efficient Transportation in War Zones

The demand for efficient transportation systems extends beyond traditional development projects, such as subsea transportation tunnels or deployment scenarios where positioning technology delivers centimeter-level accuracy for fleet vehicles. In active conflict zones, positioning signals are more susceptible to jamming and spoofing, which disrupts civilians’ daily activities. 

In the northern Israeli city of Haifa, after decades of relying on digital navigation, shopkeepers have started stocking paper maps again. The reason is not nostalgia, but survival in an age of electronic warfare.

The coastal city has become a testing ground for advanced GNSS technologies, where traditional satellite navigation systems regularly fail due to sophisticated spoofing attacks. These attacks not only disrupt military operations but also affect every smartphone, smartwatch and navigation device that relies on standard GPS signals.

Dror Meiri, business development and strategy advisor at oneNav, said that in Haifa, “You start driving. Everything is fine. You know that the drive is going to last for 37 minutes or so, and then all of a sudden, you lose your location.”

Researchers from oneNav conducted a comprehensive GPS resilience test in an active conflict zone near Haifa. The company’s mission was to compare how different navigation technologies perform when under electronic attack.

The Journey North 

For the test, four devices were mounted side-by-side on a car dashboard: three leading smartphones and one device equipped with experimental L5-direct receiver technology. All four would make the same journey from south of Haifa toward the city center, passing through zones where GPS spoofing is known to occur.

The drive began in an area free from interference, where all devices accurately displayed their location in northern Israel. But as the car moved north toward Haifa, it entered what researchers describe as a “spoofed zone” — an area where military defense systems actively jam and spoof GPS signals.

While still physically driving through Haifa’s streets, the three commercial smartphones suddenly began displaying a location more than 100 km away in Beirut, Lebanon. A fitness smartwatch included in the test showed the same false location. Only the L5-direct enabled device maintained accuracy to within 1 m of the actual position.

The Technical Challenge 

OneNav explains the vulnerability stems from the aging L1 GPS signal on which most consumer devices rely. First deployed decades ago, L1 signals are relatively easy to spoof with commercially available equipment. According to U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) documentation, spoofing has become so prevalent that it affects devices across vast geographical areas; in some cases, every smartphone and smartwatch tested was spoofed across distances exceeding 120 km.

In response to the March 6 FCC inquiry on “Promoting the Development of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Technologies and Solutions,” oneNav provided technical insights into spoofing vulnerabilities across different satellite navigation bands. The company explained that “spoofing in the L5 band will be much more difficult because the spoofing transmitter must have 10x wider bandwidth and 10x more precise spoofing correlator peaks to capture the L5 receiver. Spoofing transmitter power needs to be 20x higher in the L5 (GPS) band and 40x higher in the E5 band (Galileo) compared to spoofing L1C/A.”

This technical assessment highlights why the newer L5 signal represents a significant advancement in navigation security. The enhanced signal architecture, with its wider bandwidth and more sophisticated coding structure, creates substantial barriers for potential attackers. The exponentially higher power requirements — 20 times greater for GPS L5 and 40 times greater for Galileo E5 compared to legacy L1 signals — combined with the demanding technical specifications, make widespread L5 spoofing both technically challenging and prohibitively expensive for most threat actors.

Beyond the Battlefield 

While Haifa’s situation is tied to regional security concerns, the implications extend far beyond conflict zones and affect autonomous vehicles, ride-sharing services, and logistics networks that have become essential infrastructure in modern cities. 

“When I want to wait for a bus or public transportation, for gas or something like that, my phone tells me exactly where the bus is and how long it will take to reach the station,” Meiri said. “But the core system for that is the GPS, which is based on the bus, so the bus cannot send the right information to the server.”

Local businesses are grappling with the unreliable GPS environment. According to oneNav researchers, companies in the region — including one that uses drones to clean windows on Haifa’s skyscrapers — face significant operational challenges when their navigation systems are deceived into believing they are operating in a different country entirely.

Meiri, who conducted the oneNav test, notes the challenging conditions affecting transportation in Haifa could emerge in other urban areas as spoofing technology becomes more accessible.

The ground transportation implications are particularly concerning for emergency services. When 911 calls are placed in areas experiencing GPS spoofing, emergency responders may be directed to locations hundreds of kilometers from the actual emergency. This challenge has prompted regulatory discussions about upgrading emergency location accuracy requirements. Current GPS emergency location systems can achieve accuracy within 50 m in ideal conditions, but dense urban environments and electronic warfare zones significantly degrade this performance.

As spoofing technology proliferates beyond military applications, transportation systems worldwide may face the same navigational chaos currently seen in Haifa.