GPS Interference Snarls Venezuela as US Warns of Hazardous Skies

[Zorro]

An invisible wall of electromagnetic noise has descended over the Caribbean, forcing commercial flights to divert and cancel routes over Venezuela since late last week. For a smartphone user on the ground in Caracas, this interference might just mean a slow map load or a jumping blue dot. For an aircraft cruising at 30,000 feet, the implications are far more severe.

The disruptions are increasing amid a US military buildup in the Caribbean that’s included attacks on alleged drug-running boats, killing more than 80 people. The arrival this month of the world’s largest aircraft carrier deepened uncertainty about US President Donald Trump’s ultimate goal. And the threat of potential land strikes has prompted socialist leader Nicolás Maduro to put Venezuela’s military on high alert.

As a result, the skies over the country have become more and more of a no-go zone for commercial aircraft. The US Federal Aviation Administration issued a critical warning to pilots on Nov. 20, citing “heightened interference.” But data analyzed by Bloomberg show the electronic disruption began surging weeks earlier, coinciding with Trump’s naval buildup. The interference has rendered the airspace effectively impassable to standard satellite navigation that countless systems rely upon.

Most navigation relies on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), colloquially known as the global positioning system. This overarching term covers American GPS, Europe’s Galileo and Russia’s GLONASS — the invisible tethers that guide everything from modern airliners to the smartphone in your pocket.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-venezuela-gps-jamming/?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2NDIwNTA3MiwiZXhwIjoxNzY0ODA5ODcyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNkM5T1hLSVVQVUwwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.onEjllRBzo-xlov3CEh_VREGxJ1OlWb0mL_Ld5foJlg

[travelingthrulife]

1. Monsters.

[NJCher]

2. I couldn't get the graphic to load

Last edited Wed Nov 26, 2025, 11:57 PM - Edit history (1)

so I checked archive and found this, which shows it:

https://archive.ph/CQVs2

It also provides the entire story, so if you read it, at the end you will see examples of other situations like this:

snip

Reports of jamming have proliferated in eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Planes carrying top officials have faced navigational outages, including the UK defense chief last year and the European Commission president at the end of August.

snip

and here's another pertinent paragraph:

snip

While it’s impossible to identify the source of jamming, experts tie it to military action. Since the beginning of September, the Trump administration has been destroying small vessels in the Caribbean it says are carrying illicit narcotics to the US. And in mid-November, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group arrived in the region, a deployment visible in the interference patterns offshore near Trinidad and Tobago.

snip

It could also be Venezuela:

Similarly, the Venezuelan military has a long history of viewing GNSS interference as a necessary shield. After a drone assassination attempt on Maduro in 2018, the country ramped up its electronic warfare capabilities, reportedly with the assistance from Russian advisors who have long employed similar spoofing tactics to protect the Kremlin in Moscow.

snip

[uponit7771]

3. This is so fucked up