(Credit: Bruce Toal)
Starlink is best known for supplying high-speed satellite internet, but it turns out SpaceX’s technology can also counter a persistent problem in the Middle East: GPS spoofing and jamming.
“Those [Starlink] satellites are so much closer than the GPS satellites, and so their signal is maybe 100 to 1,000 times stronger,” says Bruce Toal, a Starlink subscriber from Texas who’s been sailing the world. “They can overcome all kinds of jamming.”
The ongoing electronic warfare in the Middle East has crippled GPS reliability for boats navigating the Red Sea, forcing mariners to contend with dangerous signal interference from surrounding military activities. Spoofing can override legitimate GPS signals, duping a navigation system into showing the boat as off course and even sailing over land, as the video below shows.
But in recent months, the maritime community has found a solution in their Starlink dishes, which can connect to SpaceX’s fleet of over 8,000 active satellites to receive fairly accurate positioning coordinates. The only problem? The company is preparing to shut down the positioning data on May 20, which is alarming boat owners, including Toal, who recently sailed up the Red Sea.
“Certainly my boat has GPS on it, but if it’s spoofed, then GPS becomes basically useless,” he says. “If you’re transiting around these areas, it’s a big problem.”
SpaceX notified users about the change last week. It involves shutting down a little-known location data feature via a software interface, the gRPC API, on the Starlink hardware. Users could manually activate the feature by going into the Starlink Mobile app and triggering it in the “Debug Data” section, enabling them to see the GPS coordinates for their dish.
Users who want to know their dishes' real-time location have been tapping the gRPC API. But the maritime community also realized that location data could be used as a spoofing-resistant backup to GPS, says Luis Soltero, a mobile satellite communications specialist.
Soltero is the lead developer of PredictWind’s Datahub, which supplies maritime GPS tracking data, including from a customer's Starlink dish, through the gRPC API. Last month, he also published a study about Starlink-equipped vessels traveling through the Red Sea, confirming that SpaceX’s satellite internet system, particularly the Mini dish, can resist GPS spoofing and jamming.
(Credit: Luis Soltero)The same study found that Starlink’s location data is fairly accurate; although traditional GPS seems to be more accurate overall, the two positioning systems were usually within 18 meters (60 feet) of each other, he says.
It’s why Soltero said he’s “distressed” that SpaceX is shutting down the function, citing the ongoing threat of GPS spoofing and jamming in the Red Sea. “Commercial ships have had to deal with this for years now,” he told PCMag from a cruise ship, where he's testing Starlink as a GPS-resistant backup. “I would really like a way to work around this [restriction].”
Soltero notes one reason Starlink can evade spoofing: it can transmit data over the higher radio bands in the 10 to 14.5GHz range, in contrast to GPS, which uses the 1.2 and 1.5GHz bands. The larger Starlink constellation also orbits at around 500km in altitude, while the US’s GPS system spans 31 operational satellites orbiting at a far more distant 20,000km.
Starlink dishes will still source positioning data from the GPS system, likely for beam steering, according to Soltero. But he also notes that the Starlink app’s Debug Data mode previously included a setting that could source location coordinates “exclusively” from Starlink satellites rather than GPS. In his study, Soltero found the portable Mini dish could use this “exclusive mode on” to resist sustained GPS spoofing, outperforming the other Starlink dishes.
Soltero suspects this is because the Mini dish was released in 2024 with newer hardware components and firmware capable of operating without a GPS signal.
(Credit: Luis Soltero)Although the maritime industry hasn’t widely adopted Starlink as a GPS backup, it’s clear that the technology has significant potential, especially when solar storms can interfere with GPS signals. “Now all that work is going down the tubes” with the shutdown, he says.
SpaceX hasn’t responded to a request for comment. But it’s not hard to see how the anti-GPS spoofing tech could be a double-edged sword. "I can imagine a Starlink lawyer saying, ‘What? We don’t want to be responsible for people relying on that to navigate boats,'" Toal says. "Because there’s a potential there, if something happens, people could sue them. I can see a lawyer saying, ‘’We should disable this so we don’t have this liability.'"
Countries have also been resorting to GPS spoofing and jamming to thwart missile and drone attacks by confusing their navigation systems. “A bad actor could use this system to drive their vehicle, drone, robot, or whatever to a location within 18 meters of accuracy. If you can do this with boats, why couldn’t you do this with something else?” Soltero asks.
Still, he’s urging SpaceX to consider the positives and create a way for the maritime industry to continue accessing the location function via the gRPC API, even though it was never an official feature. “This is already being used for maritime safety, it has some importance, and I’m really sorry to see it go,” he says.
Toal adds that members of his own boating group have been messaging Starlink’s customer support about reversing the coming restriction.