Putin behind GPS attacks on passenger flights over Europe: Baltic states and aviation experts point to ‘black hole’ caused by secret electronic weapon

Russia is responsible for a GPS jam that has disrupted thousands of European flights and caused a Finnish airline to suspend travel to Estonia, Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has said.

Finnair announced on Monday it would suspend daily flights to Tartu after two of its planes were forced to return to Helsinki when their GPS signals were disrupted.

The European Aviation Safety Agency warned in January that authorities had seen a “sharp increase” in disruptions in recent months, especially over the Baltic states, but did not specify where the disruptions were coming from.

In March, an RAF plane carrying British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps had its signal jammed as it flew near the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad while returning to Britain from Poland.

At the time, military chiefs warned that a secret Russian system known as Tobol, based in Kaliningrad, could disrupt signals on planes and boats, causing them to exhibit “jammings.”

But now Estonian officials believe that the most prominent source of the interference around the Baltics is on the Russian mainland, near St. Petersburg.

“We have evidence that it comes from Russia, and Russia is violating all international agreements,” Tsahkna said.

“I’m really sure they know exactly what they’re doing,” he added.

Tsahkna told the BBC his country had pinpointed three locations where the GPS jamming came from: one near St. Petersburg, one in Kaliningrad and another in Pskov, near the border with Estonia.

Although the minister did not provide details, open source researchers also agreed with his assessment, mapping out a map of the flight paths of planes that had suffered from jamming and were working to find the intersection where the disruption to the signals was the most intense.

This method was confirmed by other analysts who conducted dozens of drone flights and recorded the positions at which they jammed.

The data collected from this study appears to show a GPS ‘black hole’ at a position southwest of St. Petersburg, where a number of Russian military bases are located, indicating that one or more of these bases is likely the main source of the jamming attacks. .

Jamming systems, such as the ‘Tobol’ platform believed to be used in Kaliningrad, typically work by generating a signal and then transmitting it on the same frequency used by aircraft or ships.

This modified frequency overwhelms the GPS receiver on board these vessels and confuses the navigation system.

The number of cases of this type of jamming in Europe has increased dramatically since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Jamming GPS signals reduces the accuracy of several missiles and drones used by Ukraine – including Western-supplied GMLRS missiles – allowing Russian troops, military and civilian assets to evade Kiev’s attacks.

Dr. Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank told the Telegraph earlier this year that this jamming equipment is likely to be used by Russia as a defensive tool.

But this has caused significant disruption to civilian aircraft and seagoing vessels.

The sun recently reported that between August last year and March, some 46,000 flights recorded satellite navigation problems over the Baltic region.

This included 2,309 Ryanair flights, 1,368 Wizz Air flights, 82 British Airways flights and four EasyJet flights.

Estonia’s military chief Martin Harem said the outage did not apply exclusively to air traffic, as ships around Finland, the Baltic states and Poland were also affected.

“What we have seen is a malfunctioning GPS for ships and air traffic,” General Harem, commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, told the Telegraph.

The extent to which civilian transport has been disrupted by Russian jams around the Baltic states has led some to question whether Moscow is deliberately targeting civil aviation in Europe.

“We really don’t know if they (Russia) want to achieve anything or just practice and test their equipment,” Harem said.

Dr. Jack Watling, a war expert at RUSI, told The Sun that Russia has “long used GPS jamming as a tool of intimidation” and that the country is “projecting it beyond NATO’s borders.”

“Wherever there is a large Russian garrison you see GPS denial and there is one in Kaliningrad,” he said.

“They just turned that stuff on because there are standing orders.”

GPS disruption to civil aircraft is not seen as a major threat as most aircraft and airports have alternative navigation methods and are not dependent on the technology.

However, Finnair was forced to cut back its flights to Helsinki because Tartu airport only uses GPS to land planes.

And the practice could still prove extremely disruptive.

Justin Bronk, an air power and air warfare expert at RUSI, said continued jamming attacks could force airlines to dramatically change their flight plans.

“Given the busy airspace within which (civilian aircraft) operate, the lack of reliable GPS will significantly increase the separation distances necessary for safety,” he said – a move that would ‘hugely disruptive’.

Other experts warned that widespread ship GPS disruptions also increase the risk of collisions at sea.

Dana Goward, president of the US-based Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, told the BBC: ‘If we take the GPS out, the efficiency and safety of the aviation system will clearly decrease to some extent.

‘People have to fall back on old procedures that they are not yet very familiar with. There will be some damage, and we just hope it all stops before something bad happens.”