US Reaper Drone in Emergency Landing Amid Russia GPS Attacks

A U.S. military Reaper drone made an emergency landing during a flight in Polish airspace on Tuesday, according to U.S. and Polish authorities, as spikes in GPS jamming across NATO's eastern flank deepen concerns over the airspace around the Baltic Sea.

A U.S. airborne drone made an emergency landing near the town of Mirosławiec in northwestern Poland at an unspecified time after 11 p.m. local time (6 p.m. ET), the Polish General Command of the Armed Forces said in a post to social media. Warsaw's military shared an image of an MQ-9 Reaper in the post, but Polish military officials did not offer an explanation for why the drone made the emergency landing.

The Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that a remotely piloted MQ-9 used by U.S. Air Forces in Europe had made an emergency landing at the site, adding the drone was "conducting routine training operations when it lost connection with the command station, affecting their ability to operate the aircraft."

"Preparations for recovery are currently underway and investigation of the incident is in progress," the U.S. Defense Department added in a statement to Newsweek. "We are thankful to our Polish partners for their assistance."

The emergency landing has raised questions over whether the U.S. military's drone activity could be linked to the jamming or spoofing of Global Positioning System (GPS) and broader Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals that has plagued eastern Europe and the Baltic region. Interfering with these signals can confuse manned or unmanned aircraft, or make their navigation systems believe they are in a different location.

Officials and experts have pointed to Russian activity, particularly around the Baltic region of Kaliningrad. This is a Russian territory sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania and serves as a base for one of Russia's major naval fleets.

A senior Estonian military commander pointed the finger at Moscow earlier this year for upticks in GPS jamming across eastern Europe. Russia's skill at using electronic warfare is "quite strong," General Martin Herem, who heads up Estonia's Defense Forces, told Bloomberg in late January. Sweden's Lieutenant Colonel Joakim Paasikivi told Swedish media in the same month that he considered the GPS interference the result of "Russian influence activities or so-called hybrid warfare."

GPS interference can have military purposes, and Russia is believed to have significant electronic warfare (EW) resources based at Kaliningrad. "Russian armed forces have a wide spectrum of military equipment dedicated for GNSS interference, including jamming and spoofing, at varying distances, duration and intensity," a Lithuanian defense official told Newsweek earlier this month.

"Building an atmosphere of threat and a sense of helplessness in society is undoubtedly one of the goals that Russia is pursuing" with jamming and spoofing, a Polish Defense Ministry official added at the time.

Aircraft flying close to the Baltic region, and several NATO nations, have reported interference with their GPS signals. Unnamed pilots told Forbes earlier this year that they had started to switch off GPS navigation when passing close to the Baltic Sea and its surrounding countries in favor of other systems, such as inertial navigation.

In theory, Reapers should be impervious to such interference because they can use inertial navigation and other sources when GPS is impacted, weapons and military expert David Hambling told Newsweek on Tuesday. However, if the loss of drones like the Reaper can be tied to GPS interference, "then we may see a lot of issues with other drones and systems which rely on GPS," he said.

Publicly available GPS jamming and interference tracking shows high levels of interference in northeastern Poland on Monday, and spots of interference in the northwest of the country close to the drone's landing site.

The drone touched down in a "secured, uninhabited area," and an investigation is underway, the Polish military said.

The MQ-9 Reaper is designed for gathering intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data, as well as zeroing in on possible targets. It can also be used for precision strikes, and is one of the U.S. military's most-used drones.

However, the drone has a "very poor safety record and crashes are much more common than with other aircraft types," Hambling said, adding that the once-cost-effective uncrewed system now costs in excess of $20 million.

Update 3/19/2024, 8:00 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a response from the Pentagon.