Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia against Ukraine, cases of GPS jamming in EU countries have become a mass phenomenon. Currently, about 40% of flights in Europe face interference or signal distortion, reported EU Commissioner for Defense and Space Andrews Kubilyus.
“In my country, Lithuania, during August alone, our authorities registered about 1,000 cases when planes were jammed. This is the reality. When we were traveling with the head of the European Commission, our plane became a target for jamming,” Kubilius said.
The European Commissioner emphasized that in order to reduce the number of threats, the EU is working on the publicly regulated Galileo service, a satellite navigation system of the European Union and the European Space Agency, which is being created as an alternative to the American GPS. This will make encrypted Galileo signals available to government users.
“In addition, we are developing space-based jamming and spoofing capabilities to warn our pilots and other users of positioning services about entering an area where jamming is very active,” Kubilius added.
We will remind you that on September 1, the plane carrying the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was forced to land at the Bulgarian Plovdiv airport, using paper maps due to failures in the GPS system. The European Commission confirmed the fact of this incident.
