The True Cost of GPS Denial and the Case for A-PNT Resilience

GPS is so embedded in modern defense operations, commercial shipping, and aviation that it often fades into the background. It is assumed to be constant, accurate, and available, but GPS is not always guaranteed. It can be denied, degraded, jammed, or spoofed, and when that happens, the consequences are rarely limited to “navigation problems” – the expense can also be paramount.

Globally, over the last few years, there has been an alarming rise in deliberate GPS jamming and spoofing incidents. In 2024, over 1,000 commercial flights a day were affected by GPS spoofing, and in the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland, reports of jamming and spoofing incidents in 2025 increased by 127% in a three-month period.

In August 2025, the aircraft carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen experienced GPS jamming over Bulgaria and required backup navigation to land safely. Subsequently, a joint statement from the International Maritime Organization (IMO), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) warned about harmful interference, including jamming and spoofing and called for action by Member States to strengthen the resilience of navigation, positioning, and timing systems.

As GNSS and GPS jamming and spoofing become more accessible, organizations are increasingly operating blind and exposed to cascading costs relating to service disruption, safety hazards, regulatory non-compliance and reputational damage. The rise in deliberate GPS jamming and spoofing incidents has accelerated the case for Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (A-PNT) – a resilient approach via Iridium PNT that delivers global satellite-based timing and positioning independent of GPS. Without A-PNT, organizations don’t just lose a signal – they lose confidence, and when confidence disappears, operations slow, costs increase, schedules unravel, and risk rises.

This blog examines the impact of GPS denial and its associated financial implications, and why A-PNT is increasingly viewed as an essential tool for military and defense users, merchant fleets, and aviators who need to maintain safe and predictable movements even when GPS is unavailable.

Uncertainty Is a Cost Center

The business case for A-PNT becomes clear when you treat GPS denial as a cost center. Every minute spent slowing down, verifying, rerouting, holding, or diverting is money. Every missed slot, aborted mission, or extended transit is money. Every safety incident, near-miss, or compliance failure can be catastrophic in terms of money. If a military unit has to slow or hold position while verifying navigation integrity, it may be exposed longer than planned. If a merchant ship loses reliable position awareness, it may reroute unnecessarily, increasing transit time and risk. If an unmanned system can’t maintain navigation confidence, it may be pulled from the mission entirely. Every one of these outcomes has a financial expression, whether that’s wasted flight hours, increased maintenance burden, higher fuel usage, or the opportunity cost of assets not being where they need to be. A-PNT reduces these losses by keeping operations predictable under pressure.

Impact of GPS Degradation in Aviation

For aviators, GPS loss can translate into constraints and costs, within minutes, because GNSS feeds not just lateral navigation but also guidance modes, surveillance functions, and aircraft performance calculations across modern flight operations. When GNSS is degraded or unavailable, crews and operators typically shift to more conservative procedures and wider safety margins, which can mean less direct routings, reduced arrival/departure efficiencies, and a sharp increase in flight deck and ATC workload – an operational burden that EASA and IATA have flagged as increasingly relevant as GNSS interference rises.

The financial impacts then accumulate through multiple channels. Delay costs alone are material with EUROCONTROL’s standard economic inputs, estimating the average cost to airlines of delay at €17–€82 per minute (varying whether the delay is on the ground or airborne), meaning even a short disruption can quickly run into thousands of euros per flight before knock-on effects are considered.  Add to this the direct operating penalties and cost stack of GPS disruption – including diversions, additional fuel burn from holding or rerouting, schedule breakage, missed connections, and potential crew duty-time exceedances that can force cancellations and expensive aircraft/crew repositioning.

In cargo operations, the margin for error is even tighter. Small GNSS-driven schedule slips can invalidate time-sensitive shipments and degrade service-level agreements, creating contractual penalties and long-tail customer churn. And in defense aviation, the stakes widen beyond economics, where GNSS degradation becomes a mission-effectiveness and airspace deconfliction risk, complicating the safe execution of complex operations in contested or degraded conditions and thereby strengthening the case for layered A-PNT resilience across platforms.

The Price of Losing Positioning At Sea

For shipping and merchant fleets, predictable timing is often as valuable as speed. GPS loss can force route changes, speed adjustments, or increased watchkeeping, which might seem manageable until the schedule starts to slip. GNSS denial doesn’t just create unpredictable timing; it triggers a stacking cost implication across the entire maritime value chain.

When crews can’t trust position, course, or timing, ships are forced to slow-steam, revert to manual navigation procedures, and sometimes reroute for days – or even weeks – immediately driving up fuel burn, crew and consumables spend, and maintenance wear from extended running time. Major carriers Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd were forced to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope due to the risk of attack, adding 10 to 14 days to their journey. The detour added roughly 3,000–3,500 nautical miles to the trip, causing significant increases in fuel consumption, cited as in excess of 20% more per journey.

Operational disruptions like this cascade into schedule and port-side penalties of missed berth windows, re-booking fees, and late-delivery claims that ripple through charterparty obligations and cargo commitments. At the same time, GNSS interference elevates high-severity safety risk of groundings, collisions, and cargo damage, where a single incident can dwarf the costs of multiple disrupted voyages.

War risk insurance premiums have also skyrocketed in the past two years, reflecting heightened threats in key shipping corridors and merchant vessels navigating with degraded or denied GPS. These premiums, known as Additional War Risk Premiums (AWRPs), are applied on top of normal insurance cover whenever a vessel enters a high-risk “Listed Area” defined by the London insurance market’s Joint War Committee (JWC).

These surcharges can represent hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of dollars per voyage. One example is the Red Sea crisis caused by Houthi attacks in late 2023 and 2024. During this period, war risk premiums for a typical seven-day transit of the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait surged from a nominal 0.05 percent to between 0.4 and 1.0 percent of the vessel’s hull and machinery value. For a new high-value container ship valued at approximately $150 million, AWRPs could translate into an additional cost of roughly $665,000 per transit.

That’s why A-PNT isn’t just a technical upgrade; it’s a critical navigational tool. It is the difference between continuing operations in a degraded environment and being forced into delay, reroute, or paying out enhanced insurance premiums. A-PNT empowers organizations to retain a trusted position and timing even when GPS is denied, jammed, spoofed, or otherwise unavailable.

Reputation Cost

There’s also a reputational dimension that doesn’t often present itself as a cost center for the cost of GPS denial. Defense organizations are measured by readiness and reliability, commercial fleets are measured by service performance and operational professionalism and aviation operators are measured by safety and predictability. When GPS denial causes repeated disruptions, customers, partners, and leadership can begin to ask harder questions. The organizations that can demonstrate resilience, the ones that can say “GPS went down and we continued safely and predictably,” are the ones that win trust and contracts.

Resilience Through an Alternative Satellite Network

Iridium PNT introduces a critical advantage in degraded GPS environments by delivering resilient timing and position through a satellite network that is fundamentally different from GPS. Where GPS is a one-way broadcast from medium Earth orbit (MEO), Iridium operates a low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation with a distinct signal environment. That difference matters because when GPS is compromised, Iridium PNT provides an alternative, secure and jamming-resistant source of position and timing that helps restore operational confidence.

For organizations that require positioning, navigation and timing solutions that can be deployed quickly, the RockBLOCK APNT and RockFLEET Assured devices provide a path to delivering a resilient solution by encapsulating Iridium PNT, without redesigning an entire platform. The devices are built around the reality that fleets and squadrons don’t have the luxury of multi-year integration timelines when the threat – and cost – of GPS jamming, spoofing and denial is already here.

Protecting Time, Revenue, and Reputation

Organizations often underestimate the financial impact of GPS denial because it is rarely captured as a single line item or cost center. Instead, it appears as scattered costs that add up rapidly – additional fuel consumption, extra days at sea, schedule recovery actions, personnel overtime, unplanned port charges, and operational inefficiencies that ripple through multiple departments.

A-PNT is the difference between navigating uncertainty and being governed by it. It reduces the financial impact of delays caused by GPS denial, protects schedules from such cascading disruption, and strengthens safety margins in environments where navigation integrity cannot be assumed.

RockBLOCK APNT and RockFLEET Assured are rugged, reliable, and deployable A-PNT solutions that support continuity of operations by enabling resilient PNT in the field and at sea. For commercial shipping operators, this means more stable ETAs, reduced exposure to costly port and network disruptions and lower AWRP’s. For defense operators, it means maintaining tempo, reducing mission risk, and preserving synchronization across assets and units. For aviators and air operators, it means improved navigation integrity in degraded environments and fewer operational compromises when GPS is unreliable. RockBLOCK APNT and RockFLEET Assured exist for the moments when GPS goes dark and the mission, schedule, or flight still has to continue.