Aircraft flying over the Baltic Sea region are reporting a mysterious increase in the number of missing or false Global Positioning System (GPS) signals, raising concerns that Russia may be responsible.
More than 1,600 aircraft, including commercial aircraft, experienced interference known as GPS jamming within two days earlier this week, according to an open-source intelligence account that regularly tracks GPS interference.
The jamming appears to be concentrated around Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave, an important military area for Moscow. Located between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, it serves as a base for one of Russia’s main naval fleets. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, GPS jamming has occurred regularly.
A plane taxis over Gdansk, Poland, March 17, 2024. (Michal Fludra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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The EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) told Politico that it is investigating the issue, but the regulator has so far said the GPS issue does not pose a risk to aircraft.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (Eurocontrol) told the publication that interference incidents reported by pilots have been “steadily increasing since January 2022.” The Travel Safety Administration received a report from the pilot through the voluntary accident reporting system EVAIR.
According to the organization, there were 985 GPS outages in January and February this year, compared to 1,371 in all of 2023.
Russia is believed to have significant electronic warfare (EW) resources in Kaliningrad.
Air traffic control at Chopin Airport in Warsaw, Poland, April 22, 2022 (Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto, Getty Images)
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“The Russian military has a wide range of military equipment dedicated to GNSS interference, including jamming and spoofing at different distances, durations and intensities,” a Lithuanian defense official told Barron’s earlier this month.
Dana Goward, president of the U.S.-based Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, told Politico that Russia regularly targets aircraft using this technology.
“This is a real threat,” he said, citing an incident reported by NASA in 2019. “We know of one case of accidental sabotage where a passenger plane almost crashed into a mountain. There are cases,” he said.
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Ukrainian soldiers patrol in a Bradley combat vehicle as the Russo-Ukrainian war continues in Avdiivka, Donbas, Ukraine, December 4, 2023. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, GPS jamming has occurred regularly. (Marek M. Berezowski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
In mid-March, a military plane carrying British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps experienced GPS jamming while returning from Poland, but EASA has not been able to confirm whether the interference was caused by Russia or whether the interference was intentional. No, Politico reported.
According to the Wall Street Journal, EASA has warned of an increase in reports of GPS spoofing and jamming incidents in Russia, including Finland, the Black Sea region, and the Baltic Sea region in 2022 and 2023. EASA said in a bulletin that pilots were forced to reroute or change the destination of their planes mid-flight.
Experts say aircraft can fly safely without GPS and can switch to other sources of information if GPS is inaccurate.
