A government jet carrying the British defence minister back from a NATO military exercise was subjected to signal jamming leaving the aircraft’s GPS navigation system and cell phones onboard non-operational, with the finger of blame pointed at Russia.
The Dassault 900LX Falcon jet returning Grant Shapps, the British Defence Secretary from observing part of Operation Steadfast Defender, the largest NATO military exercise in decades passed by Russian territory in northern Europe and found itself experiencing without satellite navigation for around 30 minutes, it is claimed. The apparent jamming by Russian forces took place close to Kaliningrad, an isolated remnant of Russia’s old European empire stuck between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic.
The territorial exclave is notorious for the GPS jamming which has appeared to emanate from the area for years. It is not clear whether the aircraft was deliberately targeted, given it was not flying dark and had its transponder on, or if it flew through typical Russian interference.
A report in The Times of London states mobile phones could not access mobile data and the aircraft’s GPS system did not function during the period of alleged jamming. An unnamed defence source speaking to the paper said that while military flights can deal with interference, it nevertheless “puts an unnecessary risk on civilian aircraft and could potentially endanger people’s lives”. The spokesman called Russia’s attacks on the radio spectrum “wildly irresponsible”.
Shapps had been in Poland to observe NATO exercises and while in the country had announced the United Kingdom was extended the deployment of a contingent of soldiers it has in the country operating an air defence missile system, which the minister sais is keeping Poland “safe from growing threats and aggressive forces”. He also called for a considerable increase in UK defence spending, but shrugged off responsibility for actually doing so, saying it would be a question for after the election.
GPSJAM, which uses publicly available data from commercial aircraft automatically reporting navigational issues to ground stations to track regions of the world where satellite navigation is less reliable than would otherwise be expected, shows there was a “high” level of interference to the service across Poland and the Baltic sea on Wednesday. The service also shows interference has increased recently, and is now more widely spread than levels thought of only earlier this year as unusually bad.
As reported in Januart, civilian aircraft flying over Poland and the Baltic were reporting major GPS discrepancies. As reported then:
Half of Poland and much of the Baltic Sea pinged as suffering from interference with the U.S. military-backed Global Positioning System (GPS), a satellite-based navigation aid made available to the public in the 1980s and now present in everything from cell phones and cars to enormous oil tanker ships and passenger jets… Polish news magazine Wprost reports the phenomenon has been experienced several times in recent months, but recently the interference has been more widespread. Other recent periods of interference have been described as “massive” and theorised the source of the issue was Russian jamming equipment in the Kaliningrad Oblast — a small, separate piece of territorial Russia surrounded by European Union member states.
Sweden has been proactive on the issue, calling the jamming “hybrid warfare activity” by Russia. Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service chief Major General Thomas Nilsson said the consequences of the interference were potentially massive and: “We can note that this has happened and it is serious because large parts of civil society, not least civil aviation and shipping, are dependent on the GPS system.”
The issue goes further back than the most recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, with a 2018 report noting GPS jamming taking place on a large scale during a major NATO exercise, the same circumstances under which this week’s jamming is taking place. Finnish prime minister Juha Sipilä blamed Russia at the time, and said: “Disrupting radio signals in open space is technically relatively easy and yes, it is possible that Russia is involved in the disruption in this case… Russia is known to possess such capabilities. This is not a joke, it threatened the air security of ordinary people.”
Russia denied responsibility.
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