Russia leaves thousands of planes without GPS in northern Europe

GPS is no longer reliable around the Baltic Sea and northern Norway. Interference in the global positioning system, 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 a problem that also disrupts maritime navigation. Several of the affected countries accuse Moscow of intentionally altering 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. In addition, thousands of ships have navigated the Baltic without a GPS signal since December, the month in which electronic warfare maneuvers by the Russian Armed Forces began in the Kaliningrad enclave. And in remote northeastern Norway, close to the Northern Fleet base — which hosts 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 approach 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, you can only land at Tartu with a GPS signal. Lauri Soini, president of the Finnish Pilots Association, told Reuters that for six months, the interference “has affected larger areas, and even at lower altitudes.”

Margus Tsakhna, the Estonian Foreign Minister, reacted to the cancellation of the flights with a post on social network in which he accused Russia. Tsakhna added that she had just spoken with her Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish and Swedish counterparts and urged the issue to be discussed among all NATO allies and EU members. In an interview with Financial Timesthe minister defined the interferences as “hostile actions by Russia” and “hybrid attacks.”

The loss of the GPS signal in mid-flight does not, in principle, pose a serious risk. Commercial airliners have several older alternative systems. However, Dana Goward, director of the Foundation for Resilient Navigation and Timing and a member of an advisory council to President Joe Biden, maintains by phone that interference “inevitably reduces the safety and efficiency of aviation.” Goward emphasizes that in recent months “the risk of an accident occurring has increased” and that Russia has several types of electronic warfare systems that allow the GPS signal to be disrupted from different altitudes or distances.

In addition to interference, cases of spoofingin which a device transmits a signal analogous to that of the satellite, but of greater power, with which it deceives the receiver, which receives erroneous position or time variables.

Todd Walter, director of the GPS Laboratory at Stanford University, describes in a video call the complex process of trying to locate the exact points from which interference is generated. “Our estimates will never be completely precise, but everything indicates that the focus of the disruptions in the Baltic is located in Kaliningrad,” says the researcher.

“Human lives may be lost”

In northeast Norway, thousands of miles from the war front, authorities are trying to adapt to life without GPS. Since January 2023, interference has been recorded more than 95% of the days. On specific occasions, at sea level, some citizens have lost the signal on their mobile phones, or have received one that marked the wrong position. The Norwegian Communications Authority assures that at more than 1,500 meters altitude the interference is intermittent, and that above 3,000 meters it is practically continuous. In addition to thousands of internal flights, ambulance helicopters, which provide an essential service in one of the least densely populated areas in Europe, are also affected.

Although the war in Ukraine has dynamited relations between Norway and Russia, regular meetings are still held to discuss border issues. In one of them, Ellen Katrine Haetta, police chief in the Finnmark region, detailed the risks that interference poses to search and rescue operations. “It’s very serious. Human lives may be lost,” Haetta told local media. “The FSB [Servicio Federal de Seguridad] “He told me that he will investigate the matter,” he revealed.

In the Baltic, GPS maritime navigation is increasingly rare and, given the risks involved, insurers have raised their prices. Lieutenant Colonel Joakim Paasikivi, a member of the Swedish Defense University, stated on public television that the alterations to maritime navigation were the product of “Russia’s hybrid war against NATO members.”

A spokesman for the German Ministry of Defense stated in late April that “the persistent disruptions” of the GPS signal “are most likely of Russian origin,” and pointed specifically to Kaliningrad, the Russian territory wedged between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. . In March, a plane carrying Grant Shapps, the British Defense Minister, had to activate alternative global positioning systems while passing through an area near the Russian enclave. In Poland, on December 25 and 26, interference was recorded that lasted more than 30 hours and spread across a large part of the country.

Electronic warfare systems

Russia has powerful electronic warfare systems. Several reports from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies detail the extensive campaigns of spoofing that the Russian army has carried out from different bases it controls in Syria. The Washington-based analysis center also indicates that, when President Vladimir Putin has traveled to occupied areas of Ukraine, such as the Crimean peninsula or the city of Mariupol, he has done so flanked by mobile electronic warfare systems. In 2018, during NATO maneuvers in northern Norway in which soldiers from Sweden and Finland also participated – although they were not yet members of the Alliance – Oslo and Helsinki accused Moscow of disturbing the GPS signal in part of their territory.

Russian electronic warfare systems are used daily in Ukraine to inhibit enemy drone communications, and even divert the trajectory of American Himars missiles. The Russian military also repeatedly cancels the GPS signal around Moscow and St. Petersburg, or in regions far from the border where there are refineries that have been attacked by Ukrainian drones. Disturbances are also common around the Black Sea, where Ukrainian water drones have repeatedly hit Russian Navy ships.

At the end of January, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) held a meeting in the German city of Cologne to address the growing cases of interference and spoofing. In a joint statement, EASA and IATA noted that the problems with GPS “pose serious challenges to aviation safety” and, in the absence of viable technical solutions in the short term, urged to improve pilot training to resolve the problems. setbacks.

Martin Herem, commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, said in a recent interview with a local media that “Russia is testing its powerf
ul electronic warfare systems” to “test NATO against the risk of a future war” with The alliance. Both Goward and Walter consider Herem’s hypothesis reasonable and both claim to have no doubt that at least part of the interference in the Baltic is clearly intentional.

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