In the night of June 15, an oil tanker near the street of Hormuz, the Liberian Flags Frontadler, exceeded several impossible positioning signals and seemed to jump dozens of miles again and again.
The next morning it collided with another tanker who opened on fire.
The cause of the crash remains unclear, but the obvious bizarre movements of the frontAdler near the Irang -taxed street were experts a sign of global positioning system disorders, a tool of modern warfare, which increases the risk of greatly Accidents.
The frontadler was not the only ship affected by the disorder that started afterwards Israel attacked Iran Last week. Ship and aircraft enforcement data have shown that hundreds of ships seem to travel across land or turn in the streets in the seas.
The Joint Maritime Information Center, a multinational initiative to advise ships in the Middle East, said that the “extreme” interventions came from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and recommended ships navigated with radar or visuals.
The British maritime trade operations stated that they received several reports of interference with navigation signals in the Gulf because they warn that it had “significant effects” on ships.
Ollie Ballinger, a researcher at the University of College London, who studies the geolocalization of ships, said: “Ships that appear at airports, go to perfect circles and hundreds of ships are directly on top of each other (and) on land are all treacherous signs of navigation.
A financial time analysis of the registered locations of the ships shows that at least 170 were affected by interference during a single two -hour window on Tuesday morning.
Since Israel launched his large -scale offensive against Iranian goals last week, Energy analysts have made concerns that the conflict could influence traffic through the street through which about a third of the global oil supplies travel every day.
The front eagle belongs to Frontline, the world’s largest publicly listed oil anchor company. The managing director of Frontline told The FT on Friday that it would no longer accept new contracts to enter the Golf through the Hormuz street due to the increased risks.
The Iranian regime has historically threatened to block Hormuz’s street if the country is attacked, but does not seem to have taken measures beyond the alleged Jamming.
Tehran aimed at ships in the street during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and was recently accused of attacks on tankers near the street in 2019. It was never able to completely block the traffic.
After the collision on Monday, the Coast Guard of the United Arab Emirates saved 24 people from Frontadler, while the frontline said that its crew was unharmed and the “navigation incident” was not to do with the “current regional conflict”.
A spokesman for Frontline said: “There is nothing that suggests any outside interference”.
GPS jamming is carried out by transmitting a strong radio signal that blocks signals that are sent by global navigation satellite systems. Alternatively, so -called “spoofers” imitate real signals, but are misleading.
Experts such as Sal Mercliano, a maritime historian at Campbell University in North Carolina and a former Merchant Mariner, said that it was a possible GPS interference in the crash, especially in view of the front Eagle, with which it was turning towards the ship at the last moment, with which it then collided, a raw oil tank called Adalynn.
The GPS interference could have influenced the ship’s autopilot navigation, Mercliano suggested.
“Someone plays with GPS and AIS in the region and ships really cannot rely on their GPS,” he said, referring to the automatic identification system, a GPS-based ship tracking system.
Todd Humphreys, an expert for GPS interferences at the University of Texas in Austin, said: “In a narrow street like Hormuz, it only takes a slight impetus of GPS to delay ships dangerously from course. Nevertheless, radar and visual appearance should have prevented one or both ships.”
Bridget Diakun, analyst at the list of shipping data providers Lloyd, said it was possible that navigation systems “not really normally” return after it has been fake or jammed, and can continue to display incorrect data, which complements the risk of accidents.
GPS interference has become a widespread tactic in modern conflicts, in which hotspots such as Ukraine, the Baltic States, Israel and the Indian border between Pakistan, although it is often difficult to pursue the exact origin of a Jamming episode.
Thomas Withington, an expert in electronic warfare at the Royal United Services, said that the interference in Hormuz’s street was probably due to Iran, who probably aimed to protect his facilities and infrastructures from attacks and monitoring by drones and rockets.
However, the signals involved are so strong that civilian GPS recipients in ships, aircraft and even mobile phones are caught “without exception”, Mitsington added.
“It is a very irresponsible thing … In this way, accidents will happen. If people on GNSS rely solely for navigation and this service is either jammed or it provides false information, the situation becomes quite dangerous.”
Additional reporting from Chris Cook
