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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was en route to Bulgaria when her plane's GPS system was disrupted by a suspected Russian operation, forcing the pilots to rely on backup navigation and traditional maps to land safely.
This was the latest case of a growing and disturbing tactic in modern conflict zones of jamming Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.
As von der Leyen's plane approached Plovdiv Airport, the GPS signals guiding the plane suddenly disappeared, leaving the pilots "in the dark" regarding satellite navigation for almost an hour.
Despite the obstacles, they quickly switched to backup systems and landed safely without incident.
Moscow has denied any role in obstructing von der Leyen's flight.
According to Bulgarian officials, disruptions and jamming of GPS signals have become so frequent that individual cases, like von der Leyen's, are no longer investigated separately.
But former Defense Minister Todor Tagarev disagrees. “If there was a disruption, it couldn’t have come from abroad,” Tagarev said. He added that, in such circumstances, “the security services should find out what happened.”
Cases of GPS signal disruption and manipulation are increasing, according to aviation analysts, particularly in the aviation and maritime sectors, especially near conflict zones such as Ukraine, the Black Sea and Eastern Europe.
In March, the United Nations agencies for telecommunications, aviation and maritime transport called for “immediate protection” for the radio navigation satellite service (RNSS), which supports global navigation and precise time measurement.
How are GPS signals interrupted?
GPS signals can be lost due to natural phenomena, such as solar storms, or due to equipment failures. However, these events are usually brief and predictable in commercial aviation, so the risk to commercial flights is minimal.
GPS signal jamming involves transmitting radio signals on the same frequencies as GPS satellites to overwhelm and block legitimate navigation signals.
The principle works like this: GPS satellites transmit weak radio signals at specific frequencies. A receiver picks up the signals from at least four satellites and uses the time data to calculate coordinates.
So how does jamming happen? Simply put, jamming occurs when someone transmits a stronger signal on the same or nearby frequencies, completely “dampening out” the signals from the satellites.
As a result, the receiver cannot connect to the satellites and thus loses the signal.
In some cases, if instead of interrupting the system is manipulated, then the receiver may show false coordinates.
Although signal-interruption devices can be cheap to buy and technically simple, they usually only work over short distances; a few hundred meters for small switches or a few kilometers for more powerful military systems.
The switches involved in the von der Leyen incident were not located thousands of kilometers away in Russia, but close to European airspace.
In fact, experts said that the source of the interfering signal was located near the airport.
GPS spoofing is done a little differently: it's a method of placing an aircraft where it's not. This is done by creating a copy of the aircraft's signal and broadcasting it to make it appear that an aircraft is somewhere else or to change the time it appears to be operating.
The deception can only be done intentionally through special devices that decode and reproduce an aircraft's GPS transmitter.
If it's so easy, why isn't it more common?
Signal jamming is illegal in most countries and easy to detect and locate, so perpetrators risk being caught.
Furthermore, since GPS is so widely used by cars, ships, and smartphones, signal disruption causes significant disruption outside of aviation, making this method a risky choice outside of military or conflict contexts.
However, military disruption and signal deception are becoming increasingly common in conflict zones. Incidents have increased since Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and have become even more frequent since then.
Signal jamming can sometimes be used for defensive purposes, but experts argue that Russia is increasingly targeting European countries in this way to cause confusion and fear.
Following the von der Leyen incident, the European Commission directly blamed Russia and imposed sanctions on several companies linked to the GPS signal disruption. It also said it was developing a specific plan for aviation to prevent such signal disruptions in the future./ REL
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