# The history of meaconing

Source: https://meaconing.com/history-of-meaconing/ · Last reviewed: 7 October 2026 · By the meaconing.com editorial team
Site: https://meaconing.com/ · Sister site: https://gnssdenial.com/

Meaconing began in the Second World War. In 1940-41 the Royal Air Force's No. 80 (Signals) Wing used "masking beacons", or **meacons**, to pick up German navigation beacon signals and re-radiate them from British soil, so bombers took bearings on the wrong place.

## An old trick from the Second World War

In 1940 and 1941, German bombers found their way over Britain at night using radio beacons. Britain's No. 80 (Signals) Wing of the Royal Air Force answered with "masking beacons", or **meacons**. Stations in England picked up the German beacon signals and re-radiated them from British soil.

A navigator taking a bearing on what sounded like his own beacon was pointed somewhere else. Accounts from the period describe German aircraft getting lost, and some landing at British airfields by mistake.

## Where the word comes from

"Meacon" is short for "masking beacon". "Meaconing" is the activity of using one. It is pronounced MEE-kuh-ning.

## The same principle, eighty years later

The principle has not changed. The beacons are now satellites, and the navigator is often a computer with no window to look out of.

A modern meaconer captures real GNSS signals (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS or BeiDou) and plays them back from somewhere else. The receiver trusts what it hears and computes the position of the attacker's antenna.

## Three modern forms

- **Live relay.** One antenna receives the sky, another re-transmits it a few microseconds later. Cheap repeaters sold to bring GPS indoors work exactly this way, which is why using them without authorisation is restricted.
- **Record and replay.** The attacker records raw signals at one place and time, then plays them back later. If the recording was made on a moving vehicle, the replay produces a smooth, believable path.
- **Long-distance relay.** Signals captured in one city are streamed over the internet and re-broadcast in another. Research shows this can even re-create authenticated messages at the far end.

## How big is GNSS interference today?

These figures cover GNSS interference in general (jamming and spoofing together), not meaconing alone. They show the scale of the problem meaconing belongs to.

| Figure | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| About 1,500 flights a day | Commercial flights fed fake GPS signals by August 2024 | OPSGROUP, 2024 |
| 41,000 flights | Flights spoofed in a single month, mid-July to mid-August 2024 | OPSGROUP, 2024 |
| 970 ships a day | Ships with GPS jammed in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, June 2025 | Windward, 2025 |
| About 10,000 drones a month | Drones lost by Ukraine in 2023, mostly to electronic warfare | RUSI, 2023 |

## Quick answers

### Where does the word meaconing come from?

From the Second World War. In 1940-41 the Royal Air Force's No. 80 (Signals) Wing used "masking beacons" that picked up German navigation beacon signals and re-radiated them from Britain to mislead Luftwaffe bombers.

### What is a meacon?

A meacon is a "masking beacon": a station that picks up another navigation beacon's signal and re-radiates it so that navigators take a bearing on the wrong place.

### Is meaconing still used today?

The same principle applies to satellite navigation. Industry reports describe GNSS interference on a very large scale, and most large-scale interference today is attributed to military electronic warfare. Those figures count interference in general, not meaconing alone.

## Keep reading

- [What is meaconing?](https://meaconing.com/what-is-meaconing/)
- [Meaconing vs GPS spoofing](https://meaconing.com/meaconing-vs-spoofing/)
- [Meaconing and drones](https://meaconing.com/meaconing-and-drones/)
- [The full explainer](https://meaconing.com/)

## Sources

1. [SBG Systems, Meaconing glossary](https://www.sbg-systems.com/glossary/meaconing/)
2. [OPSGROUP, GPS Spoofing Workgroup Final Report (2024)](https://ops.group/dashboard/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/GPS-Spoofing-Final-Report-OPSGROUP-WG-OG24.pdf)
3. [Windward, 970 ships daily (June 2025)](https://windward.ai/blog/middle-east-on-the-precipice-gps-jamming-in-the-arabian-gulf-and-strait-of-hormuz-disrupts-970-ships-daily/)
4. [Forbes on RUSI "Meatgrinder" report: 10,000 drones a month (2023)](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/05/22/ukraine-drones-losses-are-10000-per-month/)
5. [Unmanned Airspace, Ukrainian drone losses (RUSI)](https://www.unmannedairspace.info/counter-uas-systems-and-policies/ukrainian-drone-losses-at-10000-a-month-new-research-from-rusi/)
6. [arXiv, Distributed and mobile message-level relaying of GNSS signals](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.11341)

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