Images: GPSJam.org
What’s New: A dramatic increase in apparent interference with GPS signals over northern Poland and southern Sweden (not including Stockholm) seen on Christmas day. And it seems to have increased yesterday.
Why It’s Important: All manner of infrastructure and applications rely on GPS signals. This kind of wide-spread interference can have a significant impact, including threatening life. At a minimum, it certainly must have slowed down aviation.
What Else to Know:
- The data displayed reflects poor navigation quality experienced by commercial aircraft. It is possible the source of interference was terrestrial, pointed up, and mostly impacted aircraft.
- We put a blue arrow on the images from GPSJam.org to indicate the location of Kaliningrad. For those of you rusty on your Baltic geography, Kaliningrad is a tiny part of Russia in between Poland and Lithuania that is separated from the rest of the country.
- Our friends in academia have been analyzing such incidents and figuring out the source of the interference. We are hoping they can find this one.
- Russian Navy ships have been known to interfere with GPS signals as they sail through the Baltic. Here is an instance in 2017 when cell phone service was disrupted.
- Just after President Biden met with the Prime Minister of Finland in 2022 there was another significant jamming incident in the area.
- Interestingly, there was a big increase in jamming inside of Russia this time last year.
Post
John Wiseman @lemonodor
Massive new region affected by GPS interference in the past 24 hours, including Poland and the Baltic. Compare to the 24 hours before, on the right. gpsjam.org/?lat=54.24595&
