Who is jamming airliners’ GPS in the Baltic?
Russia seems to be the culprit, but it may be inadvertent
ON APRIL 29TH Finnair, Finland’s national airline, said that it would suspend flights to the eastern Estonian city of Tartu for a month. Last week two planes were forced to turn around after their GPS signals were disrupted. GPS jamming has increased sharply in the Baltic region over the past two years. Who is behind it and how dangerous could it be?
Previously open-source analysts studied the positions of planes experiencing jamming to work out where the source was likely to be. They concluded that it was in Kaliningrad, a heavily militarised Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland. In March a Royal Air Force plane carrying Grant Shapps, Britain’s defence secretary, was subjected to jamming for around 30 minutes as it flew near Kaliningrad.
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