A Maritime Business Case for eLoran

Is the Shipping Industry Missing the Boat on Resilient PNT?

The Suez Canal is one of the world’s most strategically important maritime choke points. Approximately 12% of global trade passes through a waterway that, in some locations, narrows to only a few hundred meters across.

At the same time, the region has experienced repeated and well-documented Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) disruption events.

Examples include:

In 2019, the U.S. Maritime Administration issued warnings regarding significant GPS interference affecting vessels near Port Said and the Suez Canal approaches.
In April 2024, more than 100 vessels simultaneously reported false positions due to spoofing activity.
Since 2023, maritime and aviation operators across the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt have reported persistent GNSS degradation and interference.

Importantly, these events are not necessarily criminal in origin. In many cases, they are the byproduct of state-level electronic warfare activity associated with air defense operations, counter-unmanned aircraft system systems (UAS), and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)-denial capabilities.

The result is an increasingly contested navigation environment where positioning data can be degraded, denied, or — perhaps most dangerously — silently corrupted.

The operational implications for the Suez Canal are significant.

The Canal is a highly constrained transit environment characterized by:

dense vessel traffic,
limited maneuvering space,
strict traffic management,
and extremely low tolerance for navigation error.

In this context, even small positioning inaccuracies can become operationally consequential.

Between 2013 and 2016, UrsaNav worked with the General Lighthouse Authorities of the UK and Ireland (GLAs) to implement and trial differential Loran capabilities at seven locations along the eastern coasts of England and Scotland.

Differential Loran is a critical component of modern eLoran systems supporting harbor entrance and approach (HEA) operations.

Published GLA trial results documented measured horizontal positioning accuracy of approximately seven meters (95%), well within the International Maritime Organization’s 10-meter HEA requirement. These performance levels were maintained at distances of at least 40 kilometers from the differential reference stations.

The implications for maritime choke points such as the Suez Canal are substantial.

Historically, Loran systems have already been successfully deployed in similar environments. In the early 1980s, Loran service was implemented along the Suez Canal and became an integral component of the Canal’s Vessel Traffic Management System (VTMS) before eventually being displaced by GPS adoption.

Modern eLoran could once again provide a terrestrial layer of resilient, co-primary positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) architecture capable of maintaining continuity of operations during GNSS disruption events.

This concept is not new.

In 2003, the Royal Institute of Navigation’s Journal of Navigation proposed the Suez Canal Integrated Navigation System (SCINS), envisioning a resilient navigation architecture combining terrestrial and satellite-based capabilities.

A modernized implementation could provide:

assured positioning during GNSS disruption,
increased operational resilience,
improved vessel traffic continuity,
and, potentially, greater flexibility than today’s convoy-based transit model.

The broader implications extend well beyond the Suez Canal.

Resilient terrestrial PNT capabilities would strengthen navigation assurance across:

major shipping lanes,
ports and harbors,
offshore energy operations,
narrow straits,
and heavily congested maritime corridors such as the English Channel.

The maritime industry has already seen how deeply bridge systems depend on GNSS availability.

During GPS jamming trials conducted by the GLAs in 2008 and 2009 aboard the NLV Pole Star and THV Galatea, disruption effects were observed across numerous shipboard systems, including:

automatic identification system (AIS),
radar,
gyrocompass systems,
electronic chart display and information system (ECDIS),
digital selective calling (DSC),
voyage data recorders,
and dynamic positioning systems.

Modern maritime trade has been built on the assumption that GNSS is continuously available and inherently trustworthy.

That assumption no longer holds — particularly in contested regions and strategic maritime corridors.

As Captains Matt Shirley and Dana A. Goward recently noted in When GPS Fails: Why Maritime Needs Resilient Navigation, published by Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, GNSS disruption is no longer hypothetical. It is an operational reality affecting shipping activity in regions that include the Persian Gulf, Baltic Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean.

Resilient PNT is therefore no longer optional.

Multi-constellation GNSS improves capability, but it does not eliminate systemic vulnerability. Interference awareness must become operational rather than theoretical, and independent PNT sources must be integrated into both shipboard bridge systems and shore-based traffic management architectures.

Because when GNSS degrades, the industry does not simply lose precision.

It loses trust, operational continuity, efficiency, and, ultimately, money.

And those costs are carried by shipowners, operators, insurers, ports, supply chains, and consumers worldwide.