Russia is suspected of obstructing the operation of civil aviation in the airspace over the Baltic states.
Why does Russia jam the GPS signals of aircraft in the airspace over the Baltic region?
According to the publication's journalists, planes flying in the airspace over the Baltic states complain of a large number of disappearing and false GPS signals, which are associated with Russia's deliberate activity.
Journalists of the publication note that the most significant number of obstacles is recorded around the Kaliningrad region, which is currently cut off from the rest of the land part of Russia.
It is emphasized that after the beginning of the large-scale invasion of the occupation army of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, Russia began to jam signals regularly, and the number of similar cases has been increasing rapidly since January 2022.
At the same time, the publication's material notes that in recent months, the problem has acquired truly threatening proportions.
During the first two months of 2024, EVAIR recorded a significant increase in the number of reports of GPS malfunctions. In absolute numbers, we received 985 GPS outages compared to 1,371 for the entire year 2023, Eurocontrol representatives emphasize.
According to them, in a comment to the publication's journalists, there were almost seven times more incidents in the first two months of this year than in the first two months of 2023.
Are the actions of the Russian Federation a danger to air transport?
At the same time, regulators say that GPS problems do not pose a danger to flights for now.
Signal jamming is said to be very easy because even a feeble signal is enough to cause the GPS receiver to go out, and jamming tools can be bought online.
Another method, the so-called spoofing, displays a false position of the aircraft.
Experts emphasize that this method is slightly more complicated than jamming, but a reasonably competent hobbyist can do it with the right tools.
Problems with GPS jamming were reported, in particular, by Finnair airline, many of whose flights go south from Helsinki across the Baltic Sea and pass near Kaliningrad and Latvia's airBaltic.
