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| Europe |
| GPS Jamming in the Baltic |
| 2024-05-12 |
| [ElPais] GPS is no longer reliable around the Baltic Sea and northern Norway. Interference in the Global Positioning System (GPS), which has affected all NATO members bordering Russia for two years, has worsened in recent months. Alternative systems to GPS have had to be activated on tens of thousands of flights and the main Finnish airline has suspended one of its routes due to the problem, which is also disrupting maritime navigation. Several of the affected countries accuse Moscow of intentionally jamming signals with its electronic warfare systems. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, GPS interference has been recurring in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These types of disruptions are common in and around conflict zones. Even so, in the last half year, the airspace of the three Baltic countries — in addition to that of Finland, Sweden and Poland — has been much more affected than at the beginning of the war. What’s more, thousands of ships have been navigating the Baltic without GPS since December, when the Russian army’s electronic warfare began in the Kaliningrad enclave. And in remote northeastern Norway, near Russia’s Northern Fleet base — which has eight of the 11 Russian submarines capable of launching long-range nuclear missiles — outages are almost daily. Last week, two Finnair planes had to turn around and return to Helsinki after failing to reach Estonia’s Tartu airport. The airline suspended the route between the Finnish capital and the second most populous city in Estonia. Unlike the vast majority of European airports, planes can only land at Tartu with a GPS signal. Lauri Soini, chair of the Finnish Pilots Association, told Reuters that for the past six months, GPS jamming has been affecting an “area extending from Poland across the Baltic states to the Swedish and Finnish coasts, also affecting lower altitudes and maritime traffic.” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna reacted to the decision to pause flights to Tartu with a post on the social network X, in which he accused Russia of jamming GPS navigation devices. Tsakhna said he had spoken with his Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish and Swedish counterparts and insisted that the matter to be discussed among all NATO allies and EU members. In an interview with the Financial Times, the minister said the interferences were part of “Russia’s hostile activities” and “a hybrid attack.” Losing the GPS signal mid-flight does not, in principle, pose a serious risk. Commercial airliners have several older alternative systems. However, Dana Goward, director of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation and a member of an advisory council to U.S. President Joe Biden, tells EL PAÍS by phone that interference “inevitably reduces the safety and efficiency of aviation.” Goward points out that in recent months “the risk of an accident occurring has increased” and that Russia has several types of electronic warfare systems that can disrupt GPS signals at different altitudes and distances. In addition to interference, cases of spoofing — when a device broadcasts a false GPS system to trick the receiver into believing fake location or time variables — have also risen significantly. Todd Walter, director of the GPS Laboratory at Stanford University, explains that trying to locate exactly where the interference is coming from is a complex process. “Our estimates will never be completely precise, but everything indicates that the focus of the disruptions in the Baltic is located in Kaliningrad,” the researcher tells EL PAÍS in a video call. |
| Posted by:Gloluns Turkeyneck4904 |
#1 planes can only land at Tartu with a GPS signal That was a horrid idea at its inception. |
| Posted by: Elmaper+McGurque1612 2024-05-12 12:53 |