Medical Flight Lost GPS During U.S. Military Jamming — Then Flew Into A Mountain

It’s being reported that the U.S. military was testing an experimental GPS jammer in New Mexico, knocked out the navigation system of a civilian medical aircraft and caused it to crash into the side of a mountain on May 14, killing everyone on board.

There’s a lot of blame to go around. We’ll await the final NTSB report, but it looks pilot error may be mostly to blame, while the military contributed to the crash.

• The medevac crew lost GPS, along with at least three other aircraft.
  
• Air traffic control had the military stop the test, then told them they could resume once the crew reported that their destination was in sight.
• Five minutes later the plane flew into a 10,000-foot mountain, killing two pilots and two flight nurses and starting a 31,860-acre wildfire.

The GPS outage didn’t freeze the aircraft’s controls! The crew accepted a visual approach from 31 miles away on a completely moonless night, turned toward high terrain and descended below the mountain’s elevation.

Its post-impact fire became the Seven Cabins Fire, burning 31,860 acres in the Capitan Mountain Wilderness. On May 26, 1,073 personnel were assigned, along with 41 crews, 49 engines, seven helicopters and dozens of other vehicles to fight the fire and it took until June 12 to fully contain.

There’s a real scandal over how military electronic-warfare testing interacts with civilian aviation. There’s a broader scandal over how the military runs roughshod over civilian aviation, that plays into last year’s tragedy of American flight 5342 over the Potomac. But in this case, the pilot’s decisions seem to have been the primary cause.

Holy shit… Wired reports that back in May, the U.S. Military was testing an experimental GPS jammer and and caused a civilian plane to crash into the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board. https://t.co/QZOu5YYeAt pic.twitter.com/zp4bJesp9Y

— Bryce Greene (@TheGreeneBJ) August 4, 2026

What Happened To The Medical Flight

The aircraft was a 1979 Beechcraft King Air C90 (N249CP) based at Roswell Air Center. They were flying 50 nautical miles to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport to pick up a patient and carry them to Albuquerque. The four people onboard were the two pilots and two flight nurses.

They were flying in visual conditions but with no moon illumination over dark mountain terrain. According to the NTSB’s preliminary report, the plane’s recorded ADS-B position slowed its updates significantly. Due to GPS jamming, the aircraft’s navigation and position reporting begin losing information.

Just after midnight air traffic control told the pilots they were at 13,000 feet, 1,000 feet above their clearance. The crew said they were correcting, and needed a heading. They initially requested the a GPS approach to Runway 24, which they could no longer fly without GPS.

At 12:01 a.m. the controller asked a supervisor to get the military to stop jamming. The supervisor made the request around 12:05, while the controller handled three other aircraft reporting GPS failures.

By 12:07 a.m. the recorded ADS-B updates had returned to normal intervals. They were still 31 miles northeast of Sierra Blanca. The pilots reported “a visual on Ruidoso” and said they could “go visual.” ATC cleared the visual approach. The pilots left toward the airport, and toward the mountain range between them and the runway.

Three minutes later the air traffic control supervisor told the military that the airplane was on a visual approach and jamming could resume. The plane descended from around 12,000 feet. It hit terrain at roughly 9,950 feet.

There May Not Have Been Any Safe Route

The FAA had published a GPS interference advisory for White Sands Missile Range, and the NOTAM was included in the pilots’ ForeFlight briefing.

The advisory warned that GPS, WAAS, GBAS and ADS-B could be unavailable within 240 nautical miles at 10,000 feet and 210 nautical miles even near ground level. The accident site was only about 60 miles from the center of the test which was scheduled for the time of the flight. It was up to the pilots to determine how to operate safely without satellite navigation. However, and several readers are going to be more familiar than I am:

• Sierra Blanca’s automated weather station was out of service. Its two instrument approaches were an RNAV/GPS approach and an ILS/LOC approach.

• The GPS approach was unusable because of the jamming.

• The ILS couldn’t be flown without the airport’s altimeter setting. It wasn’t functioning.

The operation dispatched the medevac flight at night toward mountain terrain, during a known GPS jamming window, with the destination weather equipment out and no available instrument approach.

The military was engaged in NAVFEST, an annual Air Force warfare navigation exercise at the Army’s White Sands Missile Range. The event has been held for more than 20 years. Testing experimental systems has been part of the exercise, though the military hasn’t said what was being used here.

Who Was At Fault?

The military didn’t take control of the aircraft and fly it into a mountain. The pilots made a decision to proceed toward Sierra Blance, and not to turn back. GPS loss is an abnormal condition pilots train for. They accepted a visual approach at night from 31 miles away, with 10,000-foot terrain between the plane and the airport, and descending before the path was known to be clear.

But the government intentionally removed an important safety tool used for navigation. It affected multiple flights and increased the controller’s workload. The FAA-military safety process then allowed jamming to resume before the plane had cancelled N249CP had landed or even cancelled instrument flight rules.

So it seems like the final report will focus the probably cause on the crew’s failure to maintain terrain clearance, with GPS jamming, dark night conditions and possibly procedures (aircraft operator and even military) as contributing factors. But there have been years of warnings over White Sands GPS jamming. This appears to be the first fatal U.S. civilian aviation accident involving deliberate GPS interference.