It is a hunt for the Russian stations that obscure satellite signals for navigation, from hunting to ships, from commercial planes to mobile phones. Russian departments in Kaliningra equipped with electronic war devices, while updating Loran technology.
All in search of the Russian radio stations that disturb the signals of the GPS satellite navigation system, whose transmissions are fundamental for the war actions, in this case relating to the Russian-Ukraine and Israeli-Palestinian crises. Jamming, so it is called, is not new: the European community suffers it on the Galileo constellation and NATO also does the same thing by contrasting the signals of the Russian (Glonass) and Chinese (Beidu) constellations. The news, however, is that Polish researchers collected detailed information on the Jamming operations of Russia in the Baltic Sea, a “mysterious” drying for aviators and sailors, especially civilians, which began when Russia attacked Ukraine. Ships and commercial planes use GPS, we all use it through the applications of our phones, it is now necessary for any type of localization at very low cost. But from February 2022 things have changed: the radio signals above the Baltic Sea have been compromised since the beginning of the war and in recent years thousands of planes and ships have seen their compromised navigation systems, with episodes that of deviated routes and even of canceled travel, precisely because of mysterious anomalies which are then radio signals from secret structures managed by the Russian army. The interference of the GPS system is manifested by blocking the signal or with spoofing, or the manipulation of position surveys, and has now become a daily event in north-eastern Europe as in the southern Mediterranean. From Danzica airport, passing through the busy maritime routes of the Baltic Sea, up to the airspace of Estonia and Finland, these interferences have been recorded almost daily by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and have even caused cancellations of flights, airports and deviations of commercial ships. The authorities of the Baltic states have attributed the fault directly to Russia. In March, eight European countries, including Finland, Poland, France, the Netherlands and Ukraine, presented a complaint to the UN on this practice. Several United Nations agencies have dealt with the issue, including the international maritime organization, the authority for civil aviation ICAO and the international telecommunication union (ITU). For its part, Russia, itself a country of the Baltic Sea and with a part of its territory strongly affected by interference, has maintained silence on the subject. But where do these interference come from? Apparently by Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave donated between Poland and Lithuania, and by the St. Petersburg area, both known areas for the massive Russian military presence, with divisions specialized in electronic war and radio stations that transmit on each band of the spectrum, including the BVR radar (beyond the horizon). Jaroslaw Cydejko, associate professor at the Maritime University of GDYNIA, who studied Spoofing, said: “People have now become accustomed to satellite navigation, sailors should be able to navigate even without, but has become a fact and the same happens to people who use mobile phones to orient themselves. Russia is using both the jamming and the spoofing, 2025 interference has gone from blocking signals to their falsification, “explains Cydejko,
“Spoofing is the most advanced technique and is generally more difficult to detect and consequently to be defended”. It is true that interfering with GPS signals (or if integrated with geostationary satellites, GNSS) is unfortunately very easy. The disturbance signal overlooks the weak signals from satellites that transmit 20,000 kilometers above the earth’s surface, with radio signals emitted from closest and therefore very powerful. Spoofing takes a further step forward, replacing the real signals with false signals that make it seem that the receiver is in a place other than the one in which it is located, and therefore they can induce automatic pilots or captains to deviate from the correct route.
Eyes and antennas on the Kaliningrad enclave
The Poles are particularly sensitive to this electronic war since they are geographically closer to the signals stations. By carrying out several triangulations, that is, determining the origin of the signals from several points, according to the Defense news newspaper, two coastal places in the Russian Encyclve of Kaliningrad would have been precisely identified near the units of electronic war units and sites in which military antennas are installed. A spoofing attack in May and a Jamming attack in April both originated near the Okunevo antenna website, on the central coast of Kaliningrad. In addition to the permanent installations of antennas present, it is an area that is known for having hosted the electronic war units and GT-01 Mumansk-BN systems in the past, truck with antennas up to 32 meters high designed to disturb communication systems in a radius between 5,000 and 8,000. The site is also located near an important Russian electronic war unit, the 218th regiment. But Jammer systems and GPS spoofer can also be very small, even those with a large range of action, therefore easily overlooked in the satellite images. And since the radio signals of the band used by the GPS travel in a straight line, the flights are interested at a higher distance from the transmitter than a ship at sea level. A possible solution is to return to using less technological navigation systems, but this requires a preparation of the crews that are now almost lost and less precision, therefore more costs. It is no coincidence that in Poland you are returning to an old technology, the R-Mode Baltic, a system that instead of using satellite signs works with terrestrial radiophares. Ships equipped with special receivers in distance mode can calculate their position as happened until the nineties with Loran, that is, by measuring distances from multiple terrestrial stations. The current project, financed by the EU, is being developed by Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Estonia and with the participation of Denmark. The United Kingdom was the first to reintroduce terrestrial technology, the Eloran system (Enhanced Long Range Navigation), which operates at low frequencies, from 90 to 100 KHz, and is operational since 2014. South Korea, often affected by Jamming attacks by North Korea, is actively developing an Eloran equivalent, while Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Arabia. India and the United States are all found in different stages of development of their terrestrial navigation systems.
