U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates
(LifeSiteNews) — I penned an article in January about the multitude of commercial airline incidents that had occurred during just the first month of this year: Multiple runway incursions, near misses, ground equipment slamming into planes and tarmac accidents of planes clipping each other, ALL of which pointed back to the DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion) hiring of personnel that airlines were forced into by the Biden administration.
Little or nothing has been done to fix that situation and those same problems are still occurring.
But now the commercial aviation industry is facing a much more alarming situation, utilizing a tactic that could crash planes and kill hundreds of passengers and crew without hijacking.
It’s called “spoofing.”
Spoofing incidents have been on the airline industry’s radar since 2021 and are becoming troublingly more frequent.
A Forbes Magazine article in February, “The FAA has told Pilots To Go Analogue as GNSS ‘Spoofing’ Incidents Increase,” pointed to this growing concern for the aviation industry to the general public.
For the record, GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) attacks threaten defense, maritime, aviation, and other transport and critical infrastructure reliant on satellite global positioning data. In the skies, interference, jamming, and spoofing have affected military aircraft, commercial airlines, and private jet operators.
How ‘spoofing’ works
“Spoofing” disrupts an aircraft’s computer navigation system which can cause a pilot to fly dangerously off course or not at a true altitude based on the false data the autopilot navigation computer is receiving.
There have also been more frequent examples of aircraft endangered by radio signal navigation interference and jamming as well as spoofing! All pose risks but differ in the extent of the risk posed.
A prime example of jamming is a Qantas flight this past March when a Qantas A380 had its GPS jammed by Chinese warships.
GNSS is an umbrella term that encompasses all global satellite positioning systems. This includes several constellations of satellites orbiting over the earth’s surface and continuously transmitting signals providing an autonomous geo-spatial positioning with global coverage.
The GPS constellation — developed and controlled by the USA — is still the most widely used GNSS in the world but major countries have now developed their own constellation: Glonass (Russia), Beidou (China), and Galileo (Europe) with improved accuracy GNSS is used in collaboration with GPS systems where all GNSS receivers are compatible with most GPS devices.
Crews are losing trust in previously exceptionally reliable systems
A report by OPS.Group, a publication for professional pilots explains:
For flight crews, the workload and knock-on safety risk resulting from spoofing encounters is both changing and growing. Initially, the primary risk from a GPS spoof was navigational: autopilots began turning aircraft unexpectedly, aircraft position became uncertain, IRS was sometimes lost. With ATC (Air Traffic control) help, often through radar vectors, the situation could be resolved.
With both the increase in intensity and frequency of spoofing this year, a second, more concerning set of risks is emerging.
The list is long. GPS is interwoven into many, if not most, aircraft systems these days. The EGPWS (Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System) – our trusted friend to keep us away from terrain – is suffering heavily, and is becoming unreliable. False alerts – sometimes hours after the spoofing event – are now routine, and as a result, many are inhibiting the system. Crews are losing trust in what was until now an exceptionally reliable and critical device to eliminate CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) accidents.
Go-arounds directly caused by GPS spoofing effects are also being seen more regularly. False EGPWS alerts are the primary culprit, but in some cases, the indicated wind on the Navigation Display is false and leads to confusion. In others, autopilot behavior and unusual glideslope/localizer indications are causing missed approaches. Any go-around immediately increases crew workload and reduces the safety margin.
America could be brought to its knees
They laughed at Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” satellite protection concept and scoffed at Donald Trump’s “Space Force,” but both of these patriotic presidents were spot on with their concern about America’s satellite protection.
It’s rarely mentioned by today’s media, but America will come to its knees if our GPS, communication, and infrastructure-aided satellites are compromised or destroyed.
It’s a way to defeat a country without firing a single weapon.
Most importantly: You should know that all well trained professional pilots also use analog data from the plane’s instruments such as altitude, compass headings and other data that are not reliant on a computer.
As Captain of an Airbus A321 that is controlled by state of the art computer-aided systems, it is my job and that of my colleagues to check what our analog instruments are telling us against what our flight computer is saying.
We also make sure that what we see outside our cockpit window matches what we are being told by the computer.
The risk of “spoofing” is just one of the many reasons that the WOKE DEI insanity of proposed single or zero pilot cockpits is a fool’s errand pushed by the Biden administration. You can fool a computer but not what highly-trained pilots can observe in real time.
While jamming and spoofing of passenger aircraft may well be trial run attacks by those who hate the western world, you may rest assured that we professionals in the cockpit are fully aware they exist and are way ahead of the threat.
Bradley Reed is a commercial airline pilot who flies for an international carrier and is a Marine Corps veteran who did four extended tours in Afghanistan.
U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates