The Coast Guard issued Marine Safety Alert 01-16 to warn mariners of the potential detrimental impact to navigation caused by GPS interference or jamming and the importance of understanding how vessel or facility equipment could be impacted by the loss of a GPS signal.

This past summer, multiple outbound vessels from a non-U.S. port suddenly lost GPS signal reception. The net effect was various alarms and a loss of GPS input to the ship’s surface search radar, gyro units and Electronic Chart Display & Information System, resulting in no GPS data for position fixing, radar over ground speed inputs, gyro speed input and loss of collision avoidance capabilities on the radar display.

View the safety alert for full details on jamming, GPS signal loss and reporting a disruption.

This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.