Russia jams GPS system in Baltic skies, Finland suspends air links

This is one of the consequences of the “hybrid war” led by Russia: a Finnish airline must interrupt certain flights to Estonia due to GPS interference.

It all started last week, when two Finnair planes, two ATR-72s which were carrying around 80 passengers and were to connect Helsinki to Tartu, Estonia, found themselves unable to land on the tarmac. There are too many GPS disturbances: the navigation instruments are panicking, the safety conditions for landing are not met. Two days in a row, Thursday April 25 and Friday April 26, the planes turn around and return to Helsinki, a 45-minute flight away.

Finnair is the only airline operating international flights to Tartu. This Monday, April 29, it announces that it is suspending the connection for one month (reopening of reservations on June 1), while it finds a solution to land its planes without GPS. Tartu, 100,000 inhabitants, is the second largest city in Estonia. And important clarification, it is much closer to the Russian border than the capital is.

Geolocation, more present but more fragile

Airplanes are equipped with other navigation systems, which can be used when GPS is out of service. But this must also be the case for the airport. However, Tartu only uses geolocation to manage landings. It is more efficient than radio beams. But it is also more fragile in the face of cyberattacks.

Especially since this type of interference has increased very significantly since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Finnair pilots have reported it over the Caspian Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and of course of the Black Sea (which borders Ukraine), where cases of “spoofing”, electronic attacks consisting of deceiving a GPS receiver by sending false signals, are regularly reported.

The Baltic Sea, the most targeted

The Baltic Sea, where Russian fighter planes and bombers fly, has become the main theater of this invisible but fierce electronic warfare: since August 2023, 46,000 planes have experienced GPS problems there, according to a website which publishes daily maps of these attacks.

According to experts, GPS jamming is easy to accomplish with relatively inexpensive hardware. Ships are also victims, to the point that the Swedish navy has issued warnings regarding navigation safety. “If someone turns off your headlights while you are driving at night, it becomes dangerous. The situation in the Baltic region near Russian borders is becoming too dangerous to ignore“, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told the Financial Times.

Where do these attacks come from? Earlier this month, Germany said the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, nestled between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, was most likely “originally” of a series of disruptions, with the Ministry of Defense refusing to give further details for “military security reasons“In March, the British government confirmed that a Royal Air Force plane returning the Defense Secretary from a trip to Poland had had its GPS signal jammed while flying near Kaliningrad. one of the theories put forward is that Russia is trying to protect its enclave against possible attacks by Ukrainian drones.

Precedents in Israel and Cyprus

We also saw this technique at work in 2019 in Israel. This time it is a Russian base located in Syria which is being singled out. The site seeks both to protect itself from drone attacks and to demonstrate its electronic warfare capabilities against the anti-jihadist coalition led by the United States.

In 2021, another hostile action targets the skies of Akrotiri, on the island of Cyprus. Akrotiri is the hub of UK operations against Islamic State. Eurofighters or F-35s taking off from the Royal Air Force base to strike Daesh are experiencing interference in their communications. Here again those responsible are probably the Russian forces deployed in Syria in support of Bashar el Assad.

Discussions within the EU and NATO

A summit meeting already took place in January between the International Air Transport Association and the European Aviation Safety Agency. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna discussed the matter with his counterparts from Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden. He says it very explicitly (via a spokesperson): “It is a fact, Russia affects GPS devices in the airspace of our region. This is part of Russia’s hostile activities“.”Such actions constitute a hybrid attack and a threat to our people and our security, and we will not tolerate them“.

Tallinn now wants to put the subject back on the table to formally discuss it with its partners in the European Union and NATO. Moscow has not yet commented on these accusations.