Ten days on from running into difficulty off Jeddah, the 304 m long, 7,000 teu MSC Antonia remains listed aground by various vessel tracking services, albeit very hard aground in the desert on another continent, a visual example of the increased GPS spoofing ship operators are having to contend with when transiting the Red Sea.
Analysis from Windward, a maritime analytics firm, highlighted the spoofing patterns that ended up with the ship aground on May 10 near the Eliza Shoals west of Jeddah, with vessel tracking from MarineTraffic supporting this theory, and satellite images from Pole Star Global showing the vessel resting on a reef, as well as a host of videos on social media.
Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) has yet to reply to questions sent repeatedly by Splash on the state of the ship and how it came to run aground.
Ten days on, however, despite being listed as grounded, the ship appears today on various vessel tracking sites, not just on the opposite side of the Red Sea but often far inland, along with other ships. VesselFinder has the ship on Airport Road, south of Port Sudan, myShipTracking has it a few km further inland, while MarineTraffic’s location of the stricken ship places it – and a host of other vessels – some 250 km from the nearest shoreline in the Nubian Desert, the eastern region of the Sahara Desert.
Maritime security specialist Ambrey has observed growing GPS interference in conflict zones. These manifest themselves in a constant disruption of the signal over an area, increasing navigational risk to shipping.
“These are assessed to be defensive measures by state actors – as seen in the Black Sea, offshore Haifa, or offshore Port Sudan – in response to the increased use of unmanned systems in warfare,” commented Dan Mueller, Ambrey’s senior Middle East analyst.
Mueller said the extent of the GPS disruptions offshore war-torn Sudan is particularly concerning, given the volume of traffic and shallow waters south of Port Sudan. Limited optical references for safe navigation constitute an added challenge for mariners sailing the Red Sea without accurate position data.
“A continuation of such disruptions in future conflicts is highly likely and will increase the navigational risks to commercial shipping,” Mueller warned.
The 2009-built MSC Antonia made headlines last August when it lost a number of containers in bad weather while sailing off South Africa.
With additional reporting by Bojan Lepic.
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