COMMISSION - GPS jamming during a flight of EC President von der Leyen visiting frontline Member States: Q&A
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I'm not 100% sure if this is a question for you, Anita, so apologies if it's not, but on the GPS scrambling from yesterday, there have been a couple of posts online suggesting that
the flight that President von der Leyen was traveling on was not actually delayed and that It
suggests that there are no there were was no sign of GPS scrambling on that, on that flight.
I wonder if you could just react to that and explain, you know, how do,
how do we know and do we have any further details on GPS interference during that flight?
I think that's not necessarily for Anita.
I will take this one and then we'll see if there's more for Anita.
Now what we said yesterday, and we can confirm today is that there was a GPS jamming, but fortunately the plane landed safely,
and this information we had got from the Bulgarian air traffic control authorities,
and there was also a statement that had been issued by the Bulgarian.
Traffic control authorities in this sense and that you should be able to find.
Now independently of what has happened in that particular flight, what we can also say is that
since the beginning of the war of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, so since February 2022.
There has been a considerable and very notable increase in GNSS jamming and recently spoofing
occurrences in Bulgaria and in the eastern flank from Finland to Cyprus,
impacting EU aircraft.
And vessels, and this is particularly the case in regions surrounding conflict zones, encompassing large areas, as said, from the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea,
and it is for this reason that we see the need to,
on the one hand, continue in investing in defense, but also in our readiness.
That's why we are also looking into how best to be prepared for such a situation,
and you may have seen that Commissioner Kubilius yesterday announced plans for low Earth orbit satellites,
which are aimed at strengthening. The resilience against GPS disruption.
So we are preparing for this situation.
We have noted that this is an increasing phenomenon and are
putting in place instruments that will allow us to counter such incidents.
And now we can go back to Follow up, yes.
Yes, thank you, Paula, thank you for this follow up.
I think that the question is quite important, the issue of the president playing because this morning, the Kremlin or the,
the, the, the president of the sovereign Fund of Russia,
let's say has used the the records.
To try to debunk some messages, so I, I don't know, in any case,
the point is that we have read in the Financial Times.
That the plane of the President was forced to land. With paper maps, OK?
Which sounds quite strange because there are other systems apart of GPS.
So my first question is, Is it correct?
The plane was forced to land with paper maps.
When the Bulgarian authorities communicate to you the jamming.
And where in the sense was it against the airport,
against the plane, against the airspace, and so on.
And basically, could we have the details, because otherwise someone else,
the enemies of the European Union, will try to use.
Information against the European Union,
even if the European Union is a victim of an attack. Thank you.
Yes, David, and here we can only refer to those who have really first hand this information and,
as I mentioned, these are notably the Bulgarian.
Air traffic controllers who issued a statement according to which, during the European Commission President's flight to Plovdiv,
the satellite signal providing data to the aircraft's GPS navigation system. It was disrupted.
While approaching Plovdiv Airport, the GPS signal disappeared to ensure flight safety,
air traffic control immediately proposed an alternative lending approach using ground based navigation systems,
it's the instrument lending system.
So this is what we can refer to it's those who see on the spot what happened exactly. Yeah, hands good. A quick follow up question.
Can you please give us the flight time for the flight?
I, I can say that the flight did take longer than it was expected, having been there myself.
I can't remember exactly what was foreseen time, flight, but it took, it took considerably longer. Roundabout?
I think the flight took around 1.5 hour.
I think I have to double check how exactly. Yes, please.