This map is great,very interesting. curious that GPS is jammed over Gdansk, Helsinki and Tallinn.
Even worse than jamming is spoofing, which Russia also does. With jamming, you and the aircraft's systems both know what's happening. Spoofing isn't as easy to detect, as the GPS system can report the wrong location but think it's highly accurate. Spoofing (and to some extent jamming) can have a persistent effect on aircraft systems even after they move out of range of the jammer/spoofer, which can lead to degraded navigation accuracy for the rest of the flight.
It's a whole deal. Russia is messing with strategically important systems of many European countries, and decreasing civilian aviation safety, and they rarely get called on it. For a long time there was reluctance to even name Russia as the culprit.
1. https://www.heise.de/en/news/GPS-jamming-no-more-flights-to-...
I feel like we had airports before we had GPS. If this is a regular thing, shouldn't we have ways of using the airport without hoping that the jamming is having an off day?
This post has several comments along the lines of "We used to fly without GPS and it was fine!" The fact is that aviation is so much safer than it used to be, and GPS is part of that. GPS helps aircraft navigate accurately even when they're not near an airport. It helps give situational awareness and avoid mid-air collisions (almost every aircraft these days has a traffic display that shows ADS-B positions of other nearby aircraft, and those positions come from accurate GPS).
Loss or spoofing of GPS isn't usually a critical safety issue on an aircraft, but it definitely removes layers of safety and adds additional risk. Pilots can lose that situational awareness of nearby traffic. They may have increased workload and distraction due to having to use a less familiar & less accurate means of navigation, trying to figure out why their systems aren't working correctly, and even getting bogus ground proximity warning system alerts. ATC may now have increased workload and distraction because some approaches or even runways are no longer usable.
We drove cars for a long time without seat belts and air bags, too.
And if we were having problems with seatbelt jammers, everyone would instantly respond by just not using seatbelts in those areas. There would be no road closures and no trip cancellations. What are we supposed to learn from this analogy?
The more apt analogy is what would our roads look like if all traffic signals stopped working? People would still drive, but it would have to be at lower speeds, with more congestion, etc.
This happens pretty frequently with single signals, so we know what that looks like.
An unattended broken signal gets treated like a stop sign (by law), and this immediately blocks traffic. It's a total disaster.
If it happens anywhere near a population center, a human will be dispatched to cover for the broken signal and dysfunctional law by manually directing traffic, and this gets you almost all the way back to normal.
If every signal failed at once, that would cause much bigger problems, but in the event that we know we're unable to repair the signals, which is the case here, we wouldn't just try to muddle through using the existing roads and systems. We'd define new systems that worked better in the absence of traffic lights.
"If this is a regular thing, shouldn't we have ways of using the airport without hoping that the jamming is having an off day?" Yes. But it takes time and money. This level of GPS interference is relatively new, and for about the past 30 years you could basically assume GPS would be available.
How about we treat enemies as actual enemies, rather than rolling over and letting them make our lives more difficult?
In comparison to the US's power, Russia is an annoying pipsqueak, but instead we are letting Russia boss around on everything. It's shameful and embarrassing.
Why in the world should we have to rely on inferior methods?
Treating someone as an actual enemy means accepting that sometimes they're going to do things that are inconvenient for you.
> Why in the world should we have to rely on inferior methods?
Well...
treating someone as an actual enemy means accepting that sometimes they're going to do things that are inconvenient for you.
Ignoring what a bully does has predictable consequences.
And other, far more wise people, might realize that appeasement of bullies throughout history has resulted in some of our very worst wars and the most horrific atrocities that humanity has ever committed. Weakness invites conflict and destruction from the bullies of the world, and when it comes to war, the bullies gain materials and conscripts when they are allowed to conquer.
(I think we are very much on the same page, thank you for the comment.)
They are nobles arguing about who has to take time away from the dinner party to shoo away a miscreant throwing tomatoes. Except for the Baltic States, who take it more seriously at the moment, but that will change as soon as the Vatniks on the political extremes are finally removed.
Additionally, good luck finding young men who want to fight for their country in the west of Europe. New arrivals will not lay down their lives as they often hate their host countries and people. Heritage Europeans are massively discriminated against by their own governments for speech crimes, on top of race and sex-based discrimination. A very small amount of men will fight to continue that state of affairs.
Second, Ukraine is invading Russian territory, occupies it, and no nukes yet! The supposed nuclear threat is empty and stupid.
Third, if you think for a fucking microsecond that 90% of Polish men are not ready to go to war and kill Russians you have never talked to a Polish person. They know what is at stake.
Fourth, even the UK is talking about boots on the ground and planes in the air over Ukraine, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/03/amid-us-rift-with-ukrain...
Fifth, fighting these completely made up narratives that have no basis in reality is exhausting. It's almost as if an entire population has decided that they misread the commandment to be "Though SHALL bear false witness."
UK is talking about boots on the ground. Wake me up when they actually have a sustained, large-scale presence.
Europe has paid Russia more (for their natural gas) than they have given aid to Ukraine during the duration of this war. Europe is totally cooked.
one of the things that made GPS available for civilian use was the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 incident.
However, they were not in use a few years ago. Some airports never had the ground based equipment installed, others still had the beacons functional but the procedures (STAR, SID) had been phased out in favor of the easier and cheaper satellite based GNSS RNAV procedures.
Some airports had brand new VHF equipment installed, others had the old procedures reinstated.
But aviation is a slow moving, risk averse, cost sensitive business so several airports were inaccessible (apart from visual approach) for a few months.