GPS is no longer the quiet, reliable utility it once was. A wave of jamming and spoofing incidents, including mass interference around the Strait of Hormuz, has exposed the vulnerabilities of the 1970s-era system and renewed efforts to build a more resilient navigation network for the U.S. economy and military.
In July, Iran attempted to make good on its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. Yet the waterway had already stopped functioning as reliable commercial infrastructure long before. More than 1,100 vessels recorded GPS and AIS interference in a single day, ships appeared on tracking systems at airports or deep inside Iranian territory, and crews navigated one of the busiest waterways in the world by radar alone because satellite navigation could no longer be trusted.
The episode demonstrated what a determined adversary can do to the satellite infrastructure on which the modern world depends. GPS timestamps every credit card swipe and equity trade, synchronizes the power grid and cellular networks, guides combines through fields, brings container ships into port and helps infantry navigate contested terrain. That faint signal, engineered in the 1970s, now carries the weight of the entire global economy and much of the U.S. military edge.
Threats to the system are escalating. Global aviation logged roughly 430,000 jamming and spoofing incidents in 2024, a 62% increase in a single year. A basic jammer can be built from off-the-shelf parts for a few hundred dollars. The underlying problem is physical rather than technical. A satellite in medium Earth orbit broadcasting at limited power will always produce a faint signal at the receiver, and a nearby jammer will always be able to overpower it. Military M-Code signals offer only marginal improvements and do not change the basic math.
China has drawn the obvious conclusion. The Chinese Communist Party is rapidly expanding next-generation navigation satellites, including low Earth orbit constellations that operate closer to Earth, broadcast far stronger signals and are designed with electronic warfare in mind. Beijing wants to dominate the navigation layer of the 21st-century economy. Congress took note in unusually blunt terms last year, stating in the defense authorization that the United States is falling behind China in satellite navigation.
The emerging answer is not another slow government program. U.S. companies have designed and launched navigation satellites in domestic factories using private capital. These systems operate in low Earth orbit and deliver signals up to 100 times stronger than GPS. They resist spoofing by design, provide centimeter-level accuracy and work with the GPS receivers already installed in millions of aircraft, vehicles, vessels and weapons. In many cases, a software update is all it takes to shift existing equipment to navigation that can survive attacks.
The Space Force has already shifted direction. It canceled plans for a government-owned Resilient GPS constellation, known as R-GPS, in favor of leveraging commercial services. The fiscal year 2027 defense bill advancing in the House would require the Air Force to demonstrate capabilities with commercial LEO providers, including operating without GPS, resisting jamming and spoofing, and restoring services rapidly if satellites are lost.
That demonstration is a good start, but it is not enough. Three concrete steps could turn congressional direction into deployed capability. First, the 2027 defense appropriations bill should create a dedicated budget line for the commercial LEO demonstration and follow-on services. Such an investment would cost a fraction of a single GPS III satellite and far less than the $1 billion once earmarked for R-GPS. Second, the Department of Defense should contract for resilient navigation as a service, similar to how it contracts for launch services, and pay for proven performance in orbit rather than more studies. Third, federal regulators should set minimum resilience requirements for critical infrastructure. Merchant crews navigating the Strait of Hormuz by radar this spring used receivers roughly 15 years out of date, and farmers, utility operators and airline pilots face the same exposure.
The United States made a wager in 1973 that a constellation of navigation satellites would transform warfare and the global economy. That wager succeeded beyond the dreams of any planner, but it also taught adversaries exactly what to hold at risk. Iran disrupted a strait the world assumed would remain open. More capable adversaries intend to disrupt a signal America assumes will always be overhead. The next era of navigation will belong to the first nation to focus on fielding resilient capabilities. American industry has already placed those capabilities in orbit. Whether the U.S. government moves at the speed of relevance will determine whether the country keeps the advantage it has held for 50 years or cedes it to another power.
