• Airspace closures linked to security operations are no longer confined to conflict zones. Increasingly, they are emerging in ordinary commercial corridors — exposing a growing tension between national security responses and the uninterrupted flow of civil aviation.
• For air cargo operators operating on tight schedules and thin margins, even short disruptions can ripple quickly across supply chains.

The temporary closure of airspace around El Paso earlier this year offered a stark example of how counter-drone measures can collide with aviation safety systems that modern logistics now depends upon.

When security measures collide with aviation systems

Drone activity along the United States–Mexico border has been monitored for more than a decade, yet the El Paso incident brought a deeper structural issue into public view: governments are still struggling to counter emerging threats without undermining the very technologies aviation relies on to operate safely.

Lisa Dyer of the GPS Innovation Alliance argues the episode exposed a policy contradiction that extends well beyond a single airport closure. Aviation regulators require airlines and operators to adopt increasingly sophisticated safety systems built around satellite navigation and communications reliability. At the same time, certain tools authorised for national security operations, to include against drones, rely on electromagnetic disruption.

“Put simply, the El Paso incidents highlight how one hand of the government requires the aviation industry to install safety-of-life systems, and the other hand have developed and may under certain circumstances use systems that could disable them,” she said.

That contradiction matters particularly for cargo aviation, where operational predictability underpins everything from aircraft routing to warehouse planning.

Directed energy tools, jamming technologies or spoofing techniques may neutralise hostile drones, but they can also interfere with positioning signals used by aircraft, emergency communications networks and airport systems operating far beyond the intended target area.

The concern is not theoretical. Aviation authorities already manage increasingly frequent interference warnings across multiple regions, suggesting the industry is entering a period where navigation reliability can no longer be taken for granted.

GPS disruption and the hidden cost to freight operations

Modern freighter operations depend heavily on uninterrupted positioning and timing signals. GPS enables aircraft to follow fuel-efficient routes, maintain separation standards and coordinate communications systems across increasingly congested airspace. When interference occurs, crews can continue operating safely using redundancy procedures — but efficiency quickly deteriorates. According to Dyer, disruptions extend beyond the cockpit. Ground operations and airport coordination are equally exposed when signals degrade or disappear.

“Harmful and illegal interference to GPS and other systems are entirely preventable,” she said, warning that delays triggered by interference quickly cascade through logistics networks.

Cargo operators face immediate operational consequences: rerouting, additional fuel burn and congestion within already constrained airport systems. Those effects multiply when time-critical shipments are involved. Pharmaceutical cargo, express freight and humanitarian consignments are particularly vulnerable because delivery windows are often tied directly to patient treatment schedules or production timelines.

International aviation bodies have increasingly acknowledged the risk. Reports compiled through industry data programmes show interference affecting flights across Latin America, while regulators have raised concerns about disruption across parts of Eastern Europe and the Baltic region. Notices warning pilots of GPS or GNSS interference are becoming more common — an indicator that what was once episodic may now be systemic.

For logistics planners, the implications extend beyond individual flights. Reliability assumptions built into global supply chains increasingly depend on technologies vulnerable to disruption outside airline control.

Cargo hubs and supply chains under growing exposure

Large cargo gateways face particular exposure because interference affecting a single airport can quickly spread across networks. Major hubs operate as synchronisation points linking aircraft rotations, trucking schedules and warehouse throughput.

Recent history already offers examples. GPS disruption around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport forced flight rerouting for several days in 2022, generating significant operational costs for both passenger and cargo carriers. Similar warnings have been issued around major international airports elsewhere, including repeated alerts concerning interference near Delhi’s primary gateway. The operational challenge lies in scale. Even limited signal disruption increases communication workloads between pilots and air traffic control while slowing arrivals and departures. For cargo operators managing connecting freight flows, those delays can quickly translate into missed onward transport or storage congestion.

Alternative navigation technologies are under development, but integration into certified aviation systems remains slow. New satellite constellations operating in different spectrum bands may eventually strengthen resilience, yet certification requirements mean deployment timelines measured in years rather than months. In the meantime, aviation continues to rely overwhelmingly on GPS infrastructure designed for near-continuous availability. While system

uptime remains extremely high overall, localised interference events — the type increasingly linked to security operations — fall outside traditional reliability statistics.

A policy gap with global supply chain consequences

The El Paso closure ultimately raises a broader question confronting policymakers worldwide: how to counter evolving drone threats without destabilising critical infrastructure.

Dyer argues that blunt technological responses risk creating unintended vulnerabilities while offering limited long-term effectiveness against adaptable adversaries.

“Blunt-force techniques like jamming and spoofing are not the solution for countering drones,” she said, noting that adversaries rapidly adjust tactics when interference becomes predictable.

For cargo aviation, the issue extends beyond operational inconvenience. Satellite navigation systems underpin not only aircraft routing but also emergency response coordination, communications timing and airport safety technologies. Disrupting them risks consequences felt far beyond aviation itself.

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