Thousands of planes may have run into issues with jammed GPS signals, according to a report by British tabloid The Sun which suggests that Russia may be to blame.
Planes reported about 46,000 instances of problems with their satellite navigation over the Baltics between August 2023 and the end of March 2024, The Sun reported, using flight-log data from GPSJAM.org. Many of these were likely to have been jamming and spoofing attacks, The Sun reported.
Jamming is an intentional radio frequency interference with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that prevents planes from accessing satellite signals and makes the GNSS system “ineffective or degraded,” the European Union Aviation Safety Agency says.
Spoofing, on the other hand, occurs when false satellite signals are sent to “deceive” GNSS receivers and cause them to compute incorrect position, navigation, and timing data, the EASA says. The Sun reported that in some cases planes swerved around objects that weren’t actually there.
Both The Sun and The Guardianreported that Russia …