The Dassault Falcon 900LX plane transported Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, took off from Warsaw and was directed to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The jet, however, had to land with many problems by relying exclusively on offline maps and alternative navigation systems, after its GPS tools, global navigation satellite systems, have stopped working. The accident has highlighted a phenomenon of growing relevance in the skies of Eastern Europe since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022: the GPS JAMAMING, i.e. intentional interference with satellite navigation systems, a practice that creates operational inconveniences to aircraft but that (fortunately) hardly threatens the safety of flights. The landing of the plane left at 14:37 on August 31st requested about twenty minutes under the guidance of flight controllers. The local authorities attributed the disorder to a possible Russian deliberate intervention, even if the Kremlin denied all his involvement.
What happened to Von der Leyen’s plane: what is Jamming GPS
The plane of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, suffered an interference via Jaming GPS while in flight on Eastern Europe, forcing the drivers to land in Bulgaria using alternative navigation systems. This practice consists in sending radio waves on the same frequency used by satellites to allow aircraft to determine their position. GPS satellites orbit about 20,000 km in height, therefore transmit relatively weak signals to the earth. The devices jammer They exploit the low intensity of these radio waves to issue a more powerful signal in a specific portion of the sky, “suffocating” the satellite one. It’s a bit like someone went to scream while we are trying to listen to a distant noise. When a aircraft ends up in the jammer emission cone, he loses the ability to “listen” to the GPS satellites with easily imaginable consequences. This is a tactic used in the war, for example to disorient enemy drones.
Of course there is no jammer capable of affecting satellites directly: they are simply too far away to be damaged from the ground. In fact, the Jammer create interference in specific airspace. These systems do not distinguish between civil and military aircraft, because they act more “upstream” by disturbing the GPS signals, to take from those who use it: any radar or navigation device present in their range can therefore be influenced. Consequently, a scheduled plane that flies a area subject to Radar Jamming can see its on -board tools compromised, even if in fact it does not participate in military operations. Here the satellite navigation systems can therefore undergo interference or, in some cases, provide incorrect data because of these disorders.
This type of interference has become increasingly frequent since the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, especially in the countries of Eastern Europe, and seems to be linked to the use of Jammer by Russian forces to hinder Ukrainian drones. Similar phenomena have also been reported in the Middle East, testifying to how vulnerable satellite navigation in military contexts. The attack may vary from small power portable devices to more complex systems transported on trucks or ships, capable of disturbing relatively large areas, always without interfering directly with the satellites themselves.
Aircraft have several backup tools. In the event of the loss of the GPS, as happened at the Falcon 900LX, the pilots can make use of the inertial systems (IS) that estimate the position by directly measuring the movement through various sensors on board. These tools remain accurate only for short periods and must be calibrated through satellite signals when available. Further supports include instrumental landing systems (ILS), present both on the ground and on board the aircraft, designed to assist the pilots during the last phase of instrumental approach of precision to the landing track. This therefore means that, even in the case of Jammer GPS attack, the plane is able to land safely.
Alternatives to the GPS system
The story that has affected the Falcon 900LX that hosted the Von der Leyen has again rekindled the spotlight on our dependence on satellite signals and could push the European Union to consider alternative systems such as Galileo, the European network parallel to the American GPS, also equipped with functions that detect spoofing, that is, the transmission of fake signals that can induce receivers to calculate incorrect positions (and which can have potentially catastrophic consequences unlike the Jamming GPS). Galileo’s integration with other systems such as Russian Glonass or Chinese Beidou would allow you to have a greater safety margin, while not completely eliminating operational difficulties in areas subject to the phenomenon of Jamming GPS.
