On Sunday afternoon, a suspected Russian jamming attack disabled GPS navigation systems at a Bulgarian airport , forcing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's plane to land using paper maps. The Financial Times reported the news.
Three officials briefed on the incident characterized it as a Russian interference operation. "The entire airport's GPS system went offline," one of them said. According to their reconstruction, after flying over the airport for an hour, the pilot decided to land manually using analog maps, they added. "It was undeniable interference."
So-called GPS jamming and spoofing , which distorts or blocks access to satellite navigation systems, has traditionally been used by military and intelligence services to defend sensitive sites , but has increasingly been used by countries like Russia as a means of disrupting civilian life. As the newspaper notes, incidents related to GPS signal jamming have increased significantly in recent years in the Baltic Sea and in Eastern European states neighboring Russia, affecting aircraft, vessels, and civilians who use the service for daily navigation. After her visit, von der Leyen left Plovdiv on the same plane without incident.
(Unioneonline)
