Military GPS jamming linked to fatal New Mexico medevac crash — a US first

In the early hours of May 14, a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air air-ambulance flying a routine 60-mile hop from Roswell to Ruidoso, New Mexico, slammed into a mountainside, killing all four aboard — two pilots and two nurses. According to the NTSB’s preliminary report, the crew lost GPS eight minutes after takeoff, forced to fall back on older radio-beacon and inertial navigation techniques they rarely practice. On a nearly moonless night over sparsely populated terrain — what one pilot calls a ‘black hole’ — they overshot the approach, opted for a visual landing toward distant runway lights, and crashed. It is the first US civilian aviation fatality attributed to GPS jamming.

The source of the interference was a military electronic-warfare exercise. Roughly 100 miles west, the Air Force’s 746th Test Squadron was running its annual NAVFEST event at the White Sands Missile Range, where units test GPS-disruption technology. The FAA had warned that navigation could be degraded up to 400 miles out between May 12 and 18. The effect rippled well beyond the crash: three other aircraft reported losing GPS the same night, leaving an overtaxed Albuquerque air traffic controller unable to give the inexperienced King Air crew — a 30-year-old captain promoted a month earlier and a 23-year-old first officer with two months on the job — the timely vectors they needed.

The crash sits at the intersection of two compounding risks. Medevac flying already carries an accident rate closer to combat aviation than to normal civil operations, thanks to short-notice dispatch, unfamiliar airstrips, and pressure to fly in marginal conditions. Layered on top is a rapidly expanding electronic-warfare landscape: the US military appears to have issued notices for at least 10 similar exercises in the past year, and industry figures warn that airliners worldwide are increasingly hitting navigation disruptions hundreds of miles from any actual conflict. The Ruidoso accident is unlikely to be the last of its kind.