Russia is suspected of being behind an unprecedented attack that for 63 hours blocked GPS signals in the Baltic region's airspace.
The incident, which last week affected hundreds of passenger aircraft, came at a time of growing tensions between Russia and the NATO military alliance, more than two years after the start of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"We have seen an increase in GPS jamming since the start of Russia's war against Ukraine, and allies have publicly warned that Russia was behind the GPS jamming... affecting aviation and navigation," a NATO official told New Scientist.
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"Russia has a history of jamming GPS signals and has a wide range of electronic warfare capabilities," he added.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Europe has experienced an increase in the number of significant disruptions to GPS systems and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).
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The disruptions have been particularly felt near the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and in the vicinity of the Baltic and Arctic Seas. The Baltic region, for example, has seen a consistent blockage of GPS systems since December 2023.
This period coincides with reports in the Russian media that the Russian navy's Baltic Fleet, based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave located between Lithuania and Poland, was carrying out electronic warfare exercises.
These interferences include the jamming of satellite signals and signal spoofing attacks, a technique used to make aircraft GPS receivers "think" they are in completely different locations, analyst Zach Clements, a researcher at the University of Texas, told New Scientist.
A recent study by Clements showed that the GPS interference recorded over the last Christmas period in Europe included multiple incidents of GPS jamming, along with a spoofing attack originating in Russia.
"It's clear that we're seeing an unprecedented number of GNSS jamming attacks in Europe," says Zach Clements.
According to an intelligence analyst on X-Twitter, the most recent GPS jamming marathon began on the evening of March 22 and ended on the afternoon of March 25, lasting 63 hours and 40 minutes.
The attack included 24 hours of interference spread across parts of Sweden, Germany and Poland, before switching to more focused interference, mainly covering Poland, for 40 hours. According to another analyst, more than 1600 civilian aircraft were affected during this period.
In a previous incident, on March 13, a Royal Air Force aircraft carrying Grant Shapps, UK Defense Secretary, recorded GPS signal interference on both legs of a journey between the UK and Poland while flying near Kaliningrad.
"One of the positive aspects of these attacks is that the Russians are helping us realize that we rely too much on GPS for many things," says Dana Goward, head of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a Virginia-based NGO focused on protecting and strengthening GPS signals.
In 2019, an incident report submitted to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System described how GPS jamming led a passenger jet to almost crash into a mountain in the state of Idaho.
"Someone is going to get hurt eventually," says Goward.
