ICYMI: Unprecedented GPS jamming attack affects 1600 aircraft over Europe

In case you missed it, on March 29, NewScientist reported, "Russia is suspected of launching a record-breaking 63-hour-long attack on GPS signals in the Baltic region. The incident, which affected hundreds of passenger jets earlier this month, occurred amid rising tensions between Russia and the NATO military alliance more than two years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We have seen an increase in GPS jamming since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and allies have publicly warned that Russia has been behind GPS jamming…"'

Fox News also reported on the story: 

"More than 1,600 aircraft, including civilian aircraft, experienced the interference in the space of two days earlier this week.

Aircraft flying over the Baltic region have reported a mysterious increase in the number of missing or fake Global Positioning System (GPS) signals with concerns being raised that Russia is to blame. 

More than 1,600 aircraft, including civilian aircraft, experienced the interference — known as GPS jamming — in less than two days earlier this week, according to an open-source intelligence account that regularly tracks GPS interference.

The jamming seems to be concentrated around Russia's Kaliningrad exclave — a key military area for Moscow. It is situated between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and serves as a base for one of Russia's major naval fleets. GPS jamming has been occurring regularly since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.

The EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) tells Politico that it is looking into the issue, but so far regulators say that the GPS problems are not a danger to flights.

Interference cases reported by pilots "have been increasing steadily since January 2022," the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) tells the publication.

The travel safety agency received reports from pilots through its voluntary incident reporting system EVAIR.

The organization says it received 985 GPS outages during January and February this year compared to 1,371 for all of 2023.

Russia is understood 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.

Dana Goward, president of the U.S.-based Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, tells Politico that Russia regularly targets aircraft with the technology. 
"It is a real threat. There is one instance of accidentally jamming we know of that almost resulted in a passenger aircraft impacting a mountain," he said, referring to a case reported by NASA in 2019.

For both full stories, visit NewScientist and FoxNews.com.