The signal that has drone jammer satellite navigation of aircraft flying in Israeli airspace in recent weeks comes from a Russian air base in Syria, according to data collected by a US researcher.
This interference caused by the reception of the Global Positioning System (GPS) does not seem to specifically target Israel, the Jewish state would rather be a collateral damage to Moscow’s attempts to both protect its troops from drone attacks and to assert his dominance in the field of electronic warfare, said Todd Humphreys, a professor at the University of Texas at the Times of Israel this week.
Since last spring, pilots flying over the Middle East, especially Syria, have noticed that their GPS system displays the wrong position or that it no longer works at all. This happened shortly after a major suicide drone attack against Russian forces in Syria.
Using a series of sensors aboard the International Space Station, Humphreys and his team have been following the phenomenon for several months. They were able to identify the geographical source of the signal: the Khmeimim air base, built by Russia in 2015 along the west coast of Syria as one of the permanent facilities of Moscow as part of its support to the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad during the country’s civil war.
“The signal is so strong that I can see it from space,” said Todd Humphreys, an aerospace engineer specializing in satellite navigation.
Similar disturbances of the GPS system have been reported in recent years around the Black Sea, along Russia’s borders with Norway and Finland, and near the Kremlin and the palace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The problem did not affect Israeli airspace until a few weeks ago, when pilots began to report navigation problems during take-off and landing at Ben Gurion International Airport, as well as around Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus.
According to the Israeli Airports Authority, the interference did not cause any security problems, as there are several methods that can be used for take-offs and landings, but it has had a significant, but not too dangerous, impact on the aircraft. pilots ability to fly their planes because modern planes rely heavily on GPS navigation.
“It’s a nuisance that pilots get used to,” said Humphreys.
The question only concerns planes flying over Israel; there is no interruption of GPS ground service. Humphreys explained that this is because the technology used works on line of sight. Due to the curvature of the earth, the signal can not reach the GPS receivers beyond the horizon.