Persistent interference with navigational signals in eastern Europe impacted more than 1,600 airplanes—including civilian aircraft—in less than two days, according to open-source analysis, as jamming plagues the airspace around the Baltic Sea.
Jamming lasting just under 48 hours affected 1,614 airplanes, many of which were civilian aircraft flying around the Baltic region in eastern Europe, according to an open-source intelligence account that regularly tracks GPS interference.
An initial map, posted by the account, shows extensive jamming across Poland and southern Sweden early on Saturday. A later map appears to show interference limited to swathes of northern Poland.
Aircraft flying close to the Baltic region, and several NATO nations in eastern Europe, have reported interference with their GPS signals. Interfering with or spoofing Global Positioning System (GPS) and broader Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals can confuse manned or unmanned aircraft, or make their navigation systems believe they are in a different location.
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An uptick in GPS interference in eastern Europe in recent months has been blamed on jammers in Russia’s Kaliningrad region, the exclave sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania that serves as a base for one of Russia’s major naval fleets.
Publicly available GPS jamming and interference tracking data high levels of interference concentrated almost exclusively across northeastern and northwestern Poland on Monday.
Russia is believed to have significant electronic warfare (EW) resources in Kaliningrad. “Russian armed forces have a wide spectrum of military equipment dedicated for GNSS interference, including jamming and spoofing, at varying distances, duration and intensity,” a Lithuanian defense official told Newsweek earlier this month.
Russia’s skill at using electronic warfare is “quite…
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