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Tech & AI Oct 12, 2026 · 7 min read

UK tells ships to plan for life without reliable GPS

UK tells ships not to count on GPS in the Gulf, Black Sea or Baltic. Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency has told ships to plan for satellite navigation failing. Windward counted an average of 5,131 GPS jamming incidents a day in Q3, hitting more than 124,000 vessels, Splash247 reports. Our view: this is now a data problem for forwarders, not just a problem for the bridge. In one September week, 379 ships in the Gulf of Oman logged 1,702 impossible position jumps. Ship-tracking ETAs in those waters are a guess. Our call: by end of Q1 2027, at least one major visibility platform will start flagging ETAs built on jammed positions.

GPS jamming has moved ashore, and forwarders’ ETAs are exposed
Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has told the shipping industry to plan for days when satellite navigation fails. Its new Marine Guidance Note, MGN 719, was published on 1 October. Trade press picked it up this week. The numbers behind it are large. Windward, a maritime data firm, counted an average of 5,131 GPS jamming incidents a day in the third quarter, affecting more than 124,000 vessels, according to Splash247.
Our view is simple. This guidance is written for ship officers, but the bigger bill lands on land. For forwarders, the real risk is not a ship getting lost. It is a tracking screen showing the wrong place, a wrong ETA, and a customer promise built on it.

What the UK actually said

MGN 719 warns of the “increasing risk of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) service degradation or denial”. GNSS is the umbrella term for GPS and its peers, such as Europe’s Galileo. The note describes two threats. Jamming drowns out the satellite signal so a receiver gets nothing useful. Spoofing feeds the receiver a false signal so it reports the wrong position.
The MCA says interference is happening “particularly in the Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Gulf region and parts of East Asia.” It warns that “GNSS-derived information may be susceptible to disruption”.
The note is guidance, not regulation. It asks operators to map which systems depend on satellite data, set up ways to detect interference, and drill crews in older skills. It says mariners should “exercise the ability to navigate safely using alternative sources of navigational information.” Those include radar navigation and position fixing, visual navigation, celestial navigation and dead reckoning, which means working out position from speed, heading and time.
The list of exposed systems is long. On board, it includes ECDIS (the electronic chart system), autopilots, radar, dynamic positioning and AIS. Ashore, it includes vessel traffic services (VTS, the port equivalent of air traffic control) and port management information systems.
The note also points at timing. GNSS does not only tell a ship where it is. It also supplies a precise clock signal that many networks use to stay in sync. The MCA lists communications networks and control systems that depend on that time signal among the exposed systems. That widens the problem from navigation to the IT that ports and terminals run on.

The cost sits in the ports

The most telling number in the note is about money. Citing a 2023 government study on the economic impact of GNSS disruption, the MCA estimates that a seven-day outage would cost the UK maritime economy £1.5bn. Port operations account for £1,309m of that. Shipping accounts for £183m. Fishing accounts for £8m.
In other words, close to nine pounds in every ten of the estimated damage falls on port operations, not on ships. The note calls the maritime sector “particularly financially vulnerable” to this kind of disruption.
That matches what forwarders would expect. Ports run on timing and position data. Berth plans, pilot bookings, crane schedules and gate systems all lean on knowing where ships are and when they will arrive. When that data goes bad, the queue forms on the quay and in the yard, which is where forwarders and their customers pay.

What the data shows at sea

The examples reported by Splash247 show how strange the data can get. In one week in September, 379 vessels in the Gulf of Oman logged 1,702 impossible position jumps. Four tankers in the Black Sea “had apparently broadcast positions placing them in Lima, Peru,” Splash reports.
A Royal Institute of Navigation survey, also cited by Splash, found that “14% of survey respondents had experienced an unsafe or unlawful situation resulting from GNSS interference”.
The Gulf has been the centre of this problem all year. After the US and Israeli attack on Iran on 28 February, Windward reported that “more than 1,100 ships across the Middle East experienced GPS and Automatic Identification System (AIS) interference” within 24 hours, OCCRP reported. Windward also found “at least 21 new AIS jamming clusters across the UAE, Qatari, Omani, and Iranian waters.”
The first quarter was the peak so far. Safety4Sea, reporting Windward data, put Q1 2026 at “approximately 978,000 events recorded globally, 98% concentrated in the Middle East Gulf”. That works out at roughly 10,900 events a day. The Q3 average of 5,131 a day is lower. But Windward’s measures may not be like-for-like across reports. Safety4Sea reports that “Across the second half of 2025, GPS jamming affected more than 18,300 vessels globally.”
There is also a precedent for jamming stopping traffic outright. Hellenic Shipping News, citing Windward, reports that Qatar’s transport ministry temporarily halted maritime navigation for two days in early October 2025.

Why forwarders should care about AIS

AIS (automatic identification system) is the radio transponder that ships use to broadcast their identity, position, course and speed. Most ship-tracking tools, and many predicted ETAs, are built on AIS. The AIS position usually comes from the ship’s own GNSS receiver. If that receiver is jammed or spoofed, AIS broadcasts the error to the world.
So a ship shown sitting in Peru, or jumping across the Gulf of Oman, is not a display glitch. It is the tracking system faithfully passing on bad data. Any ETA model that uses those positions will be wrong. It may not tell you it is wrong.
Our view is that forwarders should handle this the same way they handle any doubtful number. Treat AIS positions and AIS-based ETAs in the Gulf, the Black Sea and the Baltic as estimates. Confirm them with the carrier’s own schedule updates and the terminal’s berthing data before you give a customer a firm date. If a ship’s track looks odd, assume interference first, not a diversion.
This matters for more than customer service. Demurrage and detention clocks, delivery appointments, cut-offs for onward connections and insurance questions after an incident all depend on knowing where a ship was and when. A forwarder who can show it checked a second source is in a stronger position in any dispute.
In practice, that means a few simple habits for shipments through the named regions. Ask your visibility provider how it handles position jumps, and whether it filters or flags them. Keep the carrier’s schedule notices and terminal berth updates on file next to the tracking data. Build an extra day or two into promised delivery dates for Gulf and Black Sea calls when a customer’s production line depends on the box. And brief your customer service team, so that a ship apparently sitting off South America does not trigger a panicked call to the shipper.

What comes next

The fix is years away. The UK plans a ground-based backup called eLoran, a long-range radio navigation system that does not depend on satellites. The MCA says it has “initial capability planned for 2028 (timing) and full operational capability by 2030”. That is the UK alone. Ships in the Gulf or the Black Sea will not benefit from it.
Until then, the burden falls on crews, ports and the people who rely on their data. The note also points to work at the International Maritime Organization on other backups, such as VDES R-mode (a radio-based ranging method), inertial navigation and automatic visual and celestial fixing. None of these is ready to replace GPS at scale.
The hotspots the MCA names line up with the regions where conflict and military tension are running highest. This year’s record quarter for jamming, Q1, was the quarter in which Iran was attacked. In our view, as long as those tensions run, ships passing through will keep running into interference.
For forwarders, three things follow, in our view. First, visibility tools will need to admit uncertainty. A single ETA with no confidence level will look less credible as more customers learn that AIS can be spoofed. Second, carriers and terminals that publish their own reliable arrival data will gain value, because they become the check on AIS. Third, shippers with cargo through the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea approaches or the Black Sea should expect wider ETA ranges, and should plan inventory buffers with that in mind.

Our call

We expect GNSS interference in the Gulf, Black Sea and Baltic to stay at or near Q3 levels through the end of 2026. By the end of Q1 2027, we expect at least one major ocean visibility platform to add a jamming or confidence flag to AIS-based ETAs for calls in those regions. We also expect at least one more national maritime authority to issue guidance along the lines of MGN 719 within the same period.
Forwarders do not need to wait for either. The practical step is available today: in the named regions, do not quote a customer an arrival date from AIS alone.

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