TEST FLIGHT DEMONSTRATES NAVIGATION BY CELLPHONE SIGNALS

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

There are many natural and man-made threats that could knock out Earth's global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). There were numerous aviation-related incidents from the Baltic to the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea in 2024. The US Air Force has a novel backup system that uses cellphone towers to calculate a plane's position. The system is able to track planes for horizontal distances of more than a hundred kilometers at altitudes up to 23,000 feet with precision in single-digit meters.