The US military’s GPS jamming exercises have been directly implicated in a fatal plane crash for the first time, after an air ambulance flew into a mountain range in New Mexico while its guidance system was scrambled.
Details of the crash, which took place in May, were revealed in a recent preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The report explains how the jamming exercises interfered with multiple aircraft, pushing air traffic controllers to the breaking point as they attempted to reroute flights using traditional means of navigation. Amid the confusion, a medevac flight with four people on board strayed miles off course, crashing into mountains at full speed on a moonless night.
Shortly after 11 PM on May 13, the crew of a Beechcraft King Air 90 air ambulance were given a straightforward mission: fly for roughly 20 minutes from Roswell to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport, pick up a patient, and transport them to Albuquerque for treatment. Two pilots and two nurses boarded the turboprop aircraft and took off, flying west.
Within minutes, controllers noticed that the plane was flying 1,000 feet above its assigned altitude. The plane’s captain informed controllers that he had lost GPS signal, and controllers responded by ordering him to correct his altitude, fly north, and await alternate directions to Sierra Blanca, where he would perform an instrument landing – using radio beacons to line up with the runway and descend at the correct angle.
Some 40 miles away, at the White Sands Missile Range, the US Air Force’s 746th Test Squadron was holding its annual NAVFEST drills. These exercises bring together electronic warfare (EW) units from multiple branches of the armed forces, engineers from the defense industry, and teams from other NATO states to practice GPS interference, navigation, and drone defense on a desert plain once used to test atomic bombs.
Prior to the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned aircraft operators that GPS could be affected up to 400 miles from the exercises between May 12 and May 18.