GPS glitches from warzone ‘manageable’, electronics official says

GPS systems being affected in Cyprus due to the conflicts in Israel cannot be avoided, however the situation is so far “manageable”.

Senior officer of electronic communications at the deputy ministry of research and innovation, Andronikos Kakkouras, told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) that the glitches are caused by interference.

This is part of electronic warfare – sending interference to the GPS frequency system, Kakkouras explained.

He said that due to Cyprus’ proximity to Israel and the conflict zone, any radio systems using GPS signals were being affected.

“We have interference in mobile telephony, land digital television and any other system using GPS, such as drone applications. We have had cases where we lost drones because the operators couldn’t communicate with the drones due to a GPS problem,” Kakkouras added.

He noted that the problem is not continuous. “It appears periodically and disappears but reappears at unspecified times.” 

Kakkouras said that unfortunately there were not countermeasures to be taken, such as installing a different system, adding however that so far, the problem is “manageable”.