Civil Aviation and its Dependence on Electronic Systems

The present report comprises a summary of the now concluded project "The Dependence on Electronic Systems of Civil Aviation as seen from a Terrorist Perspective". Funded by The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), this project ran from January 1st 2007 until June 30th 2011. The aim was to identify and assess the most important wireless-related vulnerabilities in civil aviation and to suggest effective protective measures, all in order for society to be able to maintain safe and secure civil aviation despite existence of electronic terrorism. An important prerequisite for the project has been to utilize already existing long term experience from military electronic warfare at FOI. The technical and operative analysis focuses primarily on the approach and landing phases plus the flight control function. This analysis is based on extensive flight simulations under electronic attack with professional pilots and flight controllers in the loop. These simulations were executed in cooperation with Lund University Flight Academy (TFHS) and LFV, the main provider of air navigation services in Sweden. Also computer based simulations of general air traffic flow disturbances under electronic attack have been performed. These simulations were based on real data from Arlanda TMA in Sweden and the results are therefore relevant for a major national airport. In all, many wireless-related vulnerabilities have been identified and assessed, both at the cockpit and flight control levels, and also on the more general air traffic handling capacity level. Increasing air traffic in the future, reduced aircraft separations, plus commercially driven optimization presuming regular (non-jammed) operating conditions, is feared to aggravate these vulnerabilities if not countered. Despite civil aviation being strictly regulated in international standards, the now concluded project highlights many possibilities to conspicuously improve the resilience against wireless-related aviation terrorism, especially electronic attacks on the landing phase and the flight control function including its prime situation awareness asset the secondary radar. The suggested protective measures include extended and improved training of pilots and flight controllers, comprising correct identification and understanding of, plus safe coping with, a suddenly encountered unexpected electronic attack. The benefits of these suggested measures were confirmed during the performed simulations and these measures are therefore suggested to be included in future proficiency checks. The advantage of retaining certain older electronic assets for redundancy and back-up procedures is also stressed. Such assets include NDB beacons, VDF radio direction finders and primary radar displays.