CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 2 KATELYN ROASCIO
Wyoming Army National Guard
Cheyenne, Wyoming

The course deviation indicator is perfectly centered. You are following a route from Point A to Point B, entered into the GPS during run-up. Your ground speed is a steady 110 knots, and there are no obstacles at 1,000 feet. It is a beautiful day, and the other pilot points out a lake below, where people are water-skiing. You check the map, and your stomach drops. There is no lake. In fact, according to the moving map, you should be over a dense forest 10 miles to the east.

This scenario highlights a growing vulnerability in modern rotary-wing operations. Our aircraft feature sophisticated suites that make navigation easier and more efficient, but we have moved beyond simply using these systems. We have begun to trust them implicitly. That trust creates a mental blind spot that can be exploited by clever and patient near-peer adversaries.

We already know our adversaries are capable of gaining access to critical infrastructure and remaining undetected. In the cockpit, this threat is less likely to present as a total system failure, which would be obvious and immediately addressed. Instead, the greater risk is a system that continues to provide information that is just mostly accurate enough to remain plausible.

The Insidious Nature of Spoofing

The technical term for this threat is “spoofing,” and it is far more sinister than simple jamming. Spoofing provides a false signal that the aircraft receiver accepts as legitimate. By the time the discrepancy is large enough to be caught visually, the aircraft may have already drifted into a restricted fire area, a known threat ring or toward an obstacle that the display claims is miles away.

Similar to unrecognized spatial disorientation, a manipulated navigation solution allows the aircraft to appear stable and the instruments to look normal. Without an independent reference, a subtle drift in course or a small shift in position can go entirely unnoticed. This risk is compounded by automation bias, which is the human tendency to favor suggestions from automated systems even when contradictory evidence is staring us in the face. We see the lake, but because the GPS says we are over a forest, our brains experience a momentary lag as we try to reconcile the digital “truth” with the physical reality.

Mission Planning and Cognitive Habits

This vulnerability is influenced heavily by how we plan and execute our missions. Air assault planning is typically terrain-driven, built around identifiable checkpoints and deliberate routing designed to mask our movement. Conversely, MEDEVAC or administrative transit is often direct and speed driven. Neither approach is inherently wrong, but they create different cognitive habits.

Over time, these habits dictate whether a crew is actively monitoring their position or merely following the line. On a direct route, the lack of planned waypoints often leads to a relaxed posture where the moving map becomes the main source of truth. Even on a standard Point A to Point B route, lakes, roads and terrain features remain available for visual confirmation. However, as reliance on glass cockpits increases, aircrews frequently ignore these physical checkpoints. If a checkpoint does not appear where and when it is expected, then that discrepancy must be the immediate trigger to question the system.

Reintegrating Basic Air-to-Ground Navigation

To counter this passivity, crews must reintegrate pilotage and dead reckoning into their continuous cross-checks. These are not archaic skills relegated to the primary flight training environment; they are modern survival skills. Pilotage requires asking, “What should I be seeing right now?” while dead reckoning asks, “Does my timing and heading still make sense?” These are the primary tools for verifying system integrity in a contested electromagnetic environment. They require very little additional effort, but they demand that the crew stay mentally engaged with the environment outside the aircraft. By verbalizing what they expect to see and comparing groundspeed against timing, crews can build a layer of verification into every flight. This makes the crew significantly harder to mislead.

Lessons Learned

Adversaries do not need to shut down our systems to create risk; they only need to influence them. Our navigation systems are highly reliable, but they are not infallible. The terrain has not changed, and the physical checkpoints are still there. What matters is whether crews actually use them. Crews that verify their position against the physical environment will recognize spoofing attempts early, while crews that rely solely on the digital display may fly directly into a threat. Ultimately, at any point in a flight, every crew member must be able to answer one simple question: If the display is wrong, where am I?