EU chief flight hit by GNSS jamming – How will Europe respond?

opinion

by Yves Le Marquand

September 8, 2025

The commission president was on a four-day trip visiting member states along the EU's eastern border. (credit: Shutterstock)

“We are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Tuesday.

He was responding to the news that a charter aircraft carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was the target of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) jamming in mid-air above Bulgaria over the weekend. GNSS is the umbrella term for all satellite-based positioning systems, of which GPS is a single system.

The aircraft, a Dassault Falcon 900LX, is operated by a large European operator.

“Jamming and spoofing have become the ‘bread-and-butter’ of electronic warfare,” Zak Kassas, head of Autonomous Systems Perception, Intelligence and Navigation (ASPIN) Laboratory at Ohio State University tells CJI. “What is concerning is the spillover of jamming and spoofing into civilian systems from the downing of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 in December 2024, to the collision of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf in June 2025.”

On Thursday, Bulgarian officials denied claims they suspected Moscow of jamming the GNSS on von der Leyen’s aircraft. But just days earlier the European Commission cited Bulgarian authorities as suggesting the incident was “due to blatant interference by Russia”.

Russia denies any involvement. The Kremlin has not responded to our request for comment.

According to an initial statement from Bulgarian transport authorities, the aircraft lost its GNSS signal on approach to Plovdiv Airport. Air traffic control then proposed an alternative approach via ground-based navigation systems.

However, to add to the confusion, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov told parliament on Thursday that von der Leyen’s aircraft had not experienced “prolonged interference or jamming.”

In a statement made later the same day, Zhelyazkov said that despite no jamming had been detected by “ground instruments”, it didn’t exclude the possibility of “onboard devices” detecting jamming.

EASA told CJI that, alongside safety organisation Eurocontrol, it is looking into the facts of the incident. “In cases such as this, we depend on the competent authorities responsible for Bulgarian airspace and the aircraft operator to provide official reporting,” said a spokesperson.

GNSS disruption, especially in eastern Europe, has risen sharply since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. The region has been described by the commission as the global epicentre for these modes of electronic warfare known largely as jamming and spoofing – a tactic which misleads a GNSS receiver into believing it is located somewhere it is not.

Some member states along the eastern flank of the EU have reported incident levels more than doubling over that period. According to ICAO data, nations like Poland have sometimes exceeded 2,500 monthly incidents.

ASPIN’s Kassas says society has evolved from “if a catastrophe will happen due to GNSS disruption” to “when will a catastrophe happen and how will it look like”.

In the wake of the news, the European Commission confirmed it was working on an “aviation-specific plan” with EASA and Eurocontrol to mitigate GNSS disruptions.

Matt Borie, head of analysis at Osprey Flight Solutions recommends any plan should include an evaluation on the use of IATA Inflight Broadcasting Procedure (IFBP) and ICAO’s Traffic Information by Aircraft (TIBA) procedures.

“If your GPS is being jammed then your ADSB transponder won’t accurately broadcast your position as a civilian aircraft,” Borie explains. “Using the IFPB or TIBA in areas where significant GPS interference is occurring works as a backup to transponding if you lose ASDB broadcasting due to lack of GPS.”

Steve Wright, chief compliance officer at special missions operator Gama Aviation says the ability to cause disruption to GNSS signals is nothing new.

“The concern has always been the ability to disrupt airspace more widely,” he tells CJI. “We have been monitoring the threat and the areas where it is likely to exist, allowing us to assess the risk prior to dispatch and brief on any sector where jamming has, or is, likely to occur.”

GNSS is not the only way to land aircraft and it is possible von der Leyen’s flight used an instrument landing system which is present on Runway 30 at Plovdiv Airport. Other techniques include navigating via VHF radio, compasses and even maps.

Since 2018, some pilots flying over the Eastern Mediterranean, near Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Cyprus, have resorted to compass and map, switching off the satellite-based system entirely.

In the very short-term, Kassas says action needs to be taken to protect the GNSS frequency bands from interference and improve resiliency of legacy receivers. That includes installing jamming-resistant controlled reception pattern antennas and receivers capable of detecting and mitigating spoofing.

“Next, and very importantly, we need to start adopting complements and alternatives to GNSS. We need to take a closer look at how we can dual-purpose our existing infrastructure to support aviation. This reduces time to rollout; saves valuable resources to build, operate and maintain; and preserves the scarce spectrum,” says Kassas.

In a flight campaign with the US Air Force, the ASPIN team showed that cellular signals can yield nearly GNSS-like navigation accuracy. ASPIN has also found that Starlink Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite signals can generate similar navigation accuracy on ground vehicles and a very high-altitude balloon.

Regardless of any plan drawn up by authorities, barring any technological leap or a sharp decrease in the rate and spread of incidents, it is the operational awareness of pilots that will largely keep aircraft safe.

James Hardie, founder of Course Correction Consulting, says pilots have an old adage: “The trouble with situational awareness is that you don’t realise you lost it until you get it back.”

Although satellite systems are a good way to sustain situational awareness, even experienced pilots can be seduced by the information they have, as well as their own mental model errors, he says.

“Often the main defence against spoofing is to cross-check gross errors. That means having good knowledge of the plan, monitoring it effectively and accounting for any possible reasonable change. Some may still be using paper maps in some situations,” Hardie explains.

In further comments on Tuesday, NATO chief Rutte said GNSS jamming was one part of a hybrid warfare campaign by Russia that includes cutting undersea power and communications cables and cyber attacks.

“With the latest Russian missile technology for example, the difference now between Lithuania on the front line and Luxembourg, The Hague or Madrid is five to 10 minutes,” he said.