A large tanker ship in the Strait of Hormuz transporting oil and petroleum products around the world.
Photographer: Clare Louise Jackson/Shutterstock
Electronic Warfare Crashes Global Shipping’s Navigation Systems
The Iran-Israel war highlighted a critical flaw in the satellite-based systems that makes the industry hauling 80% of global trade vulnerable to mass-jamming.
Konstantinos Tsotras was captaining his oil supertanker through the Persian Gulf at the height of Israel’s strikes on Iran when it disappeared from his own navigation screen. For the ship’s managers thousands of miles away, it appeared — impossibly — to be on a hilltop near an Iranian gas field.
The Greek captain knew immediately what was happening to the Nissos Nikouria, a 330-meter (1,083-foot) vessel that along with its cargo of Kuwaiti crude was worth about $260 million. His electronic navigation systems had been interfered with, something that happened thousands of times to vessels during the conflict.