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As GPS disruptions escalate across the Middle East, affecting everything from flights to smartphones, the risks to national security and economic stability are mounting.
Gulf Business speaks with Luca Ferrara, GM of AQNav at SandboxAQ, about why GPS has become aviation’s single point of failure — and how their new quantum-based navigation system, recently tested with Airbus, could offer the Gulf a strategic edge in aviation resilience.
GPS disruptions have made headlines in the Middle East recently, with incidents affecting shipping, aviation, and even personal devices. How serious is this threat, and what risks does it pose to regional economies and safety?
It’s far more serious and taking place to a far greater degree than many people realise. Many commercial flights lose satellite signals mid-air, and when tensions in the region flared up recently, we even saw people in the UAE complain about their phones’ clocks and maps being impacted.
What makes this especially urgent for the Gulf is how much of the economy and infrastructure depends on GPS. Every oil shipment, every aircraft, every logistics hub, all of it depends today on the signals from GPS satellites. And when these signals are jammed or spoofed the ripple effects can jeopardise safety, national security, and public trust.
Why has GPS become such a critical vulnerability for aviation, and why is it often described as a single point of failure? Don’t reliable fallbacks already exist?
It’s not an exaggeration to say that presently, GPS is the single most important navigation tool globally, especially for aviation. But in case of failure, the fallbacks deployed at present are not built for the scale and complexity of modern air traffic.
If a plane loses GPS, pilots have to revert to radar and radio communication with control towers, which are already under strain. They also switch to inertial navigation which drifts over time, like a spinning top wobbling out of balance.
Beyond GPS jamming there is also GPS spoofing, where the pilot is not aware that they are navigating with a misdirected fake GPS signal. That’s even more dangerous because you don’t even know you’re off course.
SandboxAQ and Airbus recently announced the successful completion of comprehensive real-world trials of AQNav, a GPS-independent alternative. Can you explain how it works and why it offers greater resilience?
Absolutely. The system we’ve pioneered, AQNav, takes a radically different approach to positioning, inspired by nature. Birds and whales have been navigating vast distances for millennia by sensing the Earth’s magnetic field.
Today we have the technology to achieve biomimicry of this capability. At SandboxAQ, we are using ultra-sensitive quantum sensors to detect the changes in the magnetic field as a plane flies. Then we combined that with AI-powered software running on compact, low-power GPUs, to compare the detected magnetic field with the magnetic map of the Earth.
All this is done without reliance on any external sources such as satellites. It’s entirely self-contained, about the size of a toaster, passive (so it can’t be jammed or intercepted), and inherently resilient to spoofing. Everything happens inside the device. That’s the beauty of it — simple, elegant, and resilient.
Your testing shows AQNav met FAA standards across more than 100 flights. What do these results tell us about its commercial viability and reliability?
Those results give us enormous confidence in both the technology and its readiness for real-world use. Over more than 100 flights, across diverse geographies and conditions, AQNav consistently showed performance that could satisfy FAA standards known as RNP1 and RNP2.
In total, we logged over 44,000 kilometres, which is more than the circumference of the Earth. And we did all this without GPS. That’s proof not just of the science, but of the commercial viability. The system is already being tested with the biggest players in the industry — Airbus, Boeing, and the US Air Force.
Why are you inviting Middle East airlines and governments to participate in the next phase of testing? How can the region take a leading role in adopting this technology?
The Gulf is uniquely positioned to lead here. This region sits at the crossroads of global air travel, is home to some of the fastest growing airlines and logistics hubs in the world. At the same time, given ongoing geopolitical issues, it is also a region that faces some of the highest levels of GPS interference globally.
This combination of high stakes and strong growth makes the Gulf the perfect proving ground for resilient navigation. By partnering with us early, Gulf region airlines and governments can help shape the future of aviation safety, sovereignty, and resilience.
