A Royal Air Force jet carrying UK Defence Secretary John Healey flew for three hours with GPS disabled after departing southeast Estonia. The jamming disrupted cockpit instrumentation and blocked onboard internet access, forcing pilots to rely on inertial navigation using motion and rotation sensors. Healey was visiting British Army personnel training alongside Estonian forces during Spring Storm 2026 near Võru. Similar GPS-related problems occurred in March 2024 during a flight involving Grant Shapps near Kaliningrad. Romanian fighters shot down a drone that drifted into Estonian airspace, with Estonian forces blaming Russian GPS interference for navigation failure. GPS disruption data shows the most affected areas in Europe concentrated around Russia, suggesting a distributed network of smaller jammers possibly colocated with mobile network towers.
"On May 21, a Royal Air Force jet carrying John Healey flew for three hours with its GPS disabled after departing southeast Estonia, according to a Times reporter on board. The jamming disrupted some of the Dassault Falcon 900LX's cockpit instrumentation and blocked onboard internet access, forcing pilots to rely on inertial navigation using motion and rotation sensors to track position."
"The incident is not isolated. In March 2024, an RAF aircraft carrying Healey's predecessor, Grant Shapps, experienced similar technical problems near the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Last week, Romanian Air Force fighters shot down an unmanned aerial system - likely Ukrainian in origin - that had drifted into Estonian airspace from Russia, with the Estonian forces blaming Russian GPS interference for the navigation failure."
"GPS disruption data shows the worst affected areas in Europe are concentrated in and around Russia. Ivo Mürsepp, a senior lecturer at Estonia's Tallinn University of Technology, told state broadcaster ERR that this pattern suggests Russia is running a distributed network of smaller jammers, possibly colocated with mobile network towers, capable of operating both as a base station and a GPS jammer across a comparable range."
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