The silent dependency: GNSS vulnerabilities, quantum PNT and the future of small wars

On December 25, 2024, Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was reportedly shot down by a Russian air defense system after experiencing GPS jamming – likely also originating from Russia. Thirty-eight passengers and crew were killed. As documented in the peer-reviewed journal GPS Solutions in March 2026, this would be the first instance of civilian fatalities directly attributable to Global Positioning System (GPS) radio-frequency interference. The incident did not become a global watershed because the wider strategic community has yet to absorb a simple but consequential fact: the positioning, navigation, and timing services on which modern military and civilian operations depend have become one of the most exploitable vulnerabilities in the contemporary battlespace. Small wars and irregular warfare practitioners, whose operations depend entirely on these services, have not yet developed the doctrine, training, or technology choices that this reality demands.

Positioning, navigation, and timing services delivered by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have become the invisible substrate of modern operations. Drone navigation, artillery accuracy, convoy routing, communications synchronization, targeting, intelligence fusion, and command-and-control architectures all depend on GNSS signals originating from approximately 20,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface. What is true for state militaries is even more true for the small wars practitioner. The special operations team that infiltrates contested terrain, the counter-insurgent unit conducting patrols in remote provinces, and the intelligence officer fusing signals across multiple sensor types all rely on PNT services whose vulnerability most operators have never had to consider.

The dependency runs deeper than navigation. As the Center for a New American Security documented in its May 2025 “Atomic Advantage” report, PNT services underwrite submarine operations, drone targeting, munitions guidance, financial transaction systems, energy grid synchronization, and communications network timing. Approximately forty percent of European air traffic is currently affected by GNSS interference, with a five to tenfold increase in Russian jamming and spoofing operations recorded in the Nordic, Baltic, and Arctic regions between 2023 and 2025. The dependency exists. The exploitation has begun. The question is no longer whether PNT vulnerability will shape future operations, but whether doctrine, training, and force design will adapt before the next conflict demonstrates the consequences.

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