Commercial aircraft across Europe encounter GPS jamming and spoofing: report

One pilot said this could impair some of their visual situational awareness.

Commercial aircraft are regularly “jammed” or “spoofed” in the airspace around the Baltic Sea, according to a report. Weekly newspaper. The outlet said 1,614 aircraft have been affected by continued interference with state signals over the past two days. The report is based on open source analysis by the X Account, which regularly tracks GPS interference. A map posted on the handle showed widespread congestion in Poland and southern Sweden. Updated maps shared later appeared to show disruption limited to much of northern Poland.

Interference with Global Positioning System (GPS) and wider Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals could confuse manned or unmanned aircraft or cause their navigation systems to think they are in different locations.

The increase in interference has been blamed on jammers in Russia’s Kaliningrad region, which is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, which is home to one of Russia’s main naval fleets.

Weekly newspaper Talked to Lithuanian defense officials who pointed to Russia. “The Russian Armed Forces possess a variety of military equipment specifically designed for GNSS jamming, including jamming and spoofing, which vary in range, duration and intensity,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

Earlier this month, a pilot told telegraph The problem becomes “more prevalent” in airspace and areas where military operations or border tensions are heightened.

“Every flight I fly over northern Turkey and on to Iraq (mainly along the Russian-Iranian border) now has GPS interference. When something goes wrong, the aircraft system alerts us. We often get it within hours. to a lot of alerts. This has been going on for about a year,” said the pilot, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“GPS jamming leaves the aircraft unaware of its location. Thankfully, we have other systems in place to mitigate this problem.”

The pilot also said the issue could affect some of the pilot’s visual situational awareness.

“Obviously it’s important to know what’s going on below us in case we have rapid decompression, which is a rare but possible event,” the pilot said, adding that airlines have now adapted to this new world.

telegraph The report also said that some commercial airlines have sent memos to their employees stating that the problem is “especially prevalent” in the skies over Ankara, Turkey, and Baghdad, Iraq. It has also been described as becoming “more common” in the eastern Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt, and Amman, Jordan.