'Everyone is doing it': The dark art of GPS jamming in the Iran war

More than a million GPS jamming incidents have been recorded since the start of the Iran war, with experts telling Sky News that "everyone is doing it".

Huge amounts of jamming and spoofing have been detected around the Strait of Hormuz, as militaries seek to fight off drones and shadowy oil tankers try to evade detection.

Multiple countries in the Gulf are carrying out GPS disruption, electronic warfare expert Dr Thomas Withington from the RUSI thinktank told Sky News, pointing not just to Iran but to the US and other Gulf states.

Iran, he says, has mastered the technology.

Analysis from Windward, a maritime intelligence company, shared with Sky News shows there have now been more than a million GPS jamming incidents in the Middle East Gulf since the start of the war - accounting for 98% of all incidents across the world.

It's not hard to find evidence of it either. A look at a ship tracking map of the Strait of Hormuz shows odd things: tankers appearing to zoom across dozens of miles at wild angles, or huge clusters of vessels apparently stacked on top of each other.

All evidence that GPS-reliant systems are being fooled.

The evolution of GPS disruption

The ability to mess with GPS - the system we use to navigate day in, day out - has now become a routine part of modern war. And it's not confined to the battlefield.

In September 2025, a plane carrying EU chief Ursula von der Leyen suffered suspected GPS jamming.

The EU said the plane was able to land safely, adding: "We have received information from Bulgarian authorities that they suspect this blatant interference was carried out by Russia."

Two pilots previously spoke to Sky News about their experiences with jamming, and the impact it has on the aviation industry.

The use of GPS disruption at sea is not new either - it's a well-known occurrence in the Black Sea around Russian-held ports - but the sheer scale of it has rocketed since the start of the Iran war.

A look at a map of jamming or spoofing in and around the Strait of Hormuz shows large areas where GPS is hugely degraded, affecting everything from drones to passenger jets.

The result is that despite the Strait of Hormuz crisis being confined to a relatively small geographic area, figuring out what is going on can be tricky.

Which countries are jamming in the Gulf?

To increase its capabilities, Iran has bought jamming equipment from Russia and developed its own systems, says Dr Withington.

"The sheer saturation of jamming [in the region] is very much a reflection of what has been anticipated in the event of any confrontation between Iran and anyone else," he told Sky News.

GPS jamming was seen in the build-up to the US operation to remove Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, and it would seem the Americans are also utilising GPS disruption in the Gulf, Dr Withington says.

Others in the Gulf "will absolutely be doing it", he added. "Probably more around airports, oil refineries, perhaps railway terminals, that kind of thing. The sort of critical national infrastructure that could be a target."

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel has long been accused of GPS jamming - to such an extent that Israeli and Lebanese civilians have reportedly matched on dating apps as the disruption messes with their device location.

RUSI security analyst Noah Sylvia previously told Sky News how Israel uses spoofing to impact the accuracy of cheaper munitions used by Hezbollah and Hamas that might navigate via GPS.

Using 'spoofing' to hide oil tankers?

One of the areas that Iran has used GPS disruption to increasing effect has been through its "deceptive shipping practices", senior maritime intelligence analyst Michelle Wiese Bockmann says.

Before the war, Iranian tankers would gather in international waters and then "spoof" their location to make it look like they are still there, she says.

But instead they will actually be sailing "dark" (with their AIS shipping trackers off) to Iran's Kharg Island where they can take on oil before returning to their original location.

There they may do a ship-to-ship transfer of cargo before a tanker sets off carrying its sanctioned cargo. It may be thousands of miles away before it reappears on public ship tracking, Ms Bockmann says.

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All this gives rise to questions over whether GPS can continue to be a reliable method of navigation.

"Absolutely," says Simon Cooper from QinetiQ, a defence company working in the UK on anti-GPS jamming technology.

"Global navigation and satellite constellations are hugely important to our everyday world and they'll continue to be in the future," he said.

"What's really important is to understand how they operate in different environments and to create the conditions whereby they can maintain their resiliency."

(c) Sky News 2026: 'Everyone is doing it': The dark art of GPS jamming in the Iran war