Origins of Mysterious GPS Attack Against NATO Revealed

Disturbances in Global Positioning System (GPS) signals reported in NATO's newest member, Finland, are likely to have come from Russia, it has been reported, with one theory suggesting it came from the country's western-most territory.

The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) detected disturbances in the navigation system used by pilots, as well as motorists, in the east and southeast of the Nordic country last weekend, although it said that they posed no danger to air traffic.

Speculation rather than proof was reported in Finnish media about whether Moscow was the cause of the disturbances, which follow increasing tensions between the countries after Helsinki joined the alliance in April.

Moscow has condemned Helsinki joining the bloc and its closer military cooperation with the U.S., while Finland has accused Russia of stoking a migrant crisis by sending refugees to its borders, which the Kremlin has denied.

Jukka Savolainen, network director of the Hybrid Competence Center, which examines hybrid warfare, told Finnish news outlet YLE that the disturbances may have been "intentionally caused or by-products" of Russia's activities.

"I consider it very likely that it comes from the systems on the Russian side," he said, according to a translation.

Meanwhile, Markus Jonsson, an X user who writes about open-source intelligence, shared a map that purportedly shows the origin of the disturbances.

"I think I found the location of the Baltic Jammer," Jonsson posted to over 10,000 followers, "in Kaliningrad, Russia," referring to the Russian exclave.

Since December 15, aircraft have suffered from navigational errors over the south Baltic Sea, the post said: "By plotting an assumed max jamming-range for each bad position there is one area standing out: Kaliningrad."

"The aircraft jammed on average have Kaliningrad in common spatially," a follow-up post added.

The disruptions over Finland were spotted on the GPSjam website, with administrator John Wiseman describing "unprecedented" regarding the number of aircraft and size of the region affected.

Wiseman told Newsweek that while Russia will be blamed for the incident, as yet there is no hard evidence that Moscow was involved.

He said it may be significant that the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on December 22 an exercise with the "electronic warfare (EW) unit of the Baltic Fleet" in the Kaliningrad region, days before jamming around the Baltic increased greatly.

"Another source of GPS interference is military testing and training, but it would be unusual for such a large region to be affected by significant interference without notice if it was Finland or Poland or NATO," Wiseman said.

"It's also in an area that's plausibly within reach of Russian jammers, either in Kaliningrad or on ships in the Baltic Sea."

Traficom previously told Newsweek that the data it received regarding interruptions in GPS signals "does not enable us to analyze an explanation" for them.

French air safety official Benoît Roturier told Bloomberg in April 2022 that Moscow was behind GPS jamming incidents affecting aircraft over Finland, likely a side-effect of military equipment protecting troops from GPS-guided missiles.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.