Finland Reports GPS Malfunctions Due to Russian Jamming

Finnish authorities confirmed to a local news outlet that there had been a surge of GPS malfunctions in the area in recent weeks due to Russian jamming while commenting on a report of radar malfunction on social media.

The reports were brought to attention when a Finnish maritime pilot reported the incident and shared a video depicting radar malfunctions on Thursday, July 11, on social media.

“On the night between Wednesday and Thursday in the Eastern Gulf of Finland, there was really massive GPS and radar interference. Between Orrengrund pilot station and Hamina harbor, GPS [was] off 90 percent of the time. Occasionally also radar interference,” the pilot said in an earlier posting on Thursday morning.

Traficom, Finland’s federal transport and communications agency, told local news outlet iltalehti that there had been a noticeable increase in GPS malfunctions in recent weeks, though it detected no interference with radar frequencies in the Gulf of Finland.

“Radars can use GPS time synchronization to function correctly, i.e., if there is a disturbance in the GPS reception, this can cause a disturbance to the radar’s operation as a consequence,” Traficom told iltalehti, adding that it might not affect all radar systems.

GPS functions by using satellites that transmit signals to receivers on Earth. The location is triangulated by determining the time it takes for the signals to travel from the different satellites to the receiver. Therefore, any factors – including electronic warfare (EW) jamming – can affect GPS functions by disrupting the transmissions.

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Traficom said most interference affecting the aviation and maritime sector is caused by Russian jamming.

As the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted in its daily report on Thursday, there have been multiple incidents where EW jamming originating from Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad disrupted GPS functionalities and flights in the Baltics.

In March, a military plane carrying former UK defense secretary Grant Shapps had its GPS signal jammed on flights between the UK and Poland; In May, Finnair suspended its flight to Tartu, Estonia for a month while attempting to establish “an approach solution that doesn’t require a GPS signal” due to Russian jamming.

A report in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, June 29, said that of more than 500 UK military flights over Eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic Sea, in the first four months of 2024 almost 150 suffered GPS interference while in 60 of those there were repeated attempts to jam the satellite navigation signals.

The ISW said the Russian jamming campaign is “likely part of Russia's intensifying hybrid campaign directly targeting NATO states likely aimed at undermining support for Ukraine and NATO unity.”