A military GPS jamming exercise is drawing renewed attention after new reporting suggested it may have contributed to the May accident of a Beechcraft King Air in New Mexico that killed four people. The accident remains under investigation, and no official probable cause has been determined.
According to the report, the twin-engine aircraft was flying from Roswell to Ruidoso when it encountered GPS interference during an electronic warfare exercise near White Sands Missile Range. The crew reportedly lost reliable satellite navigation while approaching mountainous terrain at night. Three other aircraft in the area also experienced GPS disruptions during the exercise, suggesting the interference extended beyond a single flight.
The report said the loss of GPS left the medevac crew with limited navigation capability during a critical phase of flight. The aircraft subsequently struck a mountainside, killing both pilots and two medical crewmembers aboard.
While investigators have linked the GPS outage to the sequence of events, officials have not concluded that military jamming caused the accident. The findings remain preliminary pending completion of the investigation.
The accident has also renewed concern over the increasing frequency of GPS interference. Figures cited from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association show reported GPS disruption events in the continental U.S. climbed from four in 2020 to 50 in 2024, with another 40 incidents recorded in 2025.
I genuinely don’t understand the point of GPS jamming exercises.
The avionics people, if they’re trying to test jamming-resistant equipment, can do that in a controlled environment.
For training, you need dedicated training aircraft with GPS equipment that can be switched, by the trainer, to simulate the effects of various types of jamming.
From the outside, interrupting the GPS system actually used by airliners and civil aircraft is essentially indistinguishable from an attack on our country. And no, NOTAMS that say “we may jam your GPS over 100,000 square miles of the western states at any time over the next 72 hours” don’t really distinguish from an attack. Folks back east may not realize that these NOTAMS are near-continuous in parts of the west (e.g. Arizona, Nevada, southern California).
That said, I’m also genuinely curious. It would be great if a journalist could get someone to explain the purpose and need for these simulated attacks on our country.
You’re forgetting the 3rd set.
It’s not the jammee.
Let’s not make the military the complete Boogeyman here. It’s not just the military that conducts denial of service testing and training, as the number of civil jamming/spoofing incidents overseas continues to increase and this testing benefits everyone in aviation.
May sound Boomer, but many have flown mountainous terrain for years, day and night, by pilotage and ground-based navigation aids. We have a whole community of pilots that believe an aircraft is not airworthy without a GPS. Maybe we in civil aviation are just as culpable in this accident as denial of service testing is.
Sometimes these GPS jamming exercises result in position errors that aren’t obvious to the pilot. If your GPS fails, then you usually get a message on the display. Military jamming can cause the displayed position to freeze and you might not notice it in time to switch to another nav aid, especially at night in low visibility in the mountains. The area covered in the NOTAMS is so large that you can’t reliably predict whether or not it will affect your flight.
Weak sauce to boost a rag “report” as authoritative. As frustrating as it is that they do this, the outage was NOTAM’d. It can happen at any time, intentionally or not, but you should always be ready for it.
That’s a sad accident that should’ve never happened -
I understand the pilots were highly experienced - Immediately after losing GPS, they should have notified ATC and climbed to avoid terrain they knew was coming -
Flying at night, in the mountains, they must’ve lost focus, which costs lives… Accidents don’t happen because of one thing, but several -
Incredibly sad -
Not to mention GPS jamming has been going on in this area and others for decades. Dealing with this would’ve been a very regular part of this crews flying in that area. It’s disgusting that so many are trying to blame this on the military and GPS jamming when it was simply a flight crew’s mistake. Also, don’t forget they were flying an approach not authorized without local altimeter which wasn’t available. Sounds more like this slots in under “gotta get there” than anything else.
This is nothing more that someone trying to find an excuse for the poor pilotage. They could have flown using a VOR or followed a road. Heading north when they needed to go westerly was a fatal mistake. They should have known about that mountainous area.