Inside the air traffic control tower at Tallinn Airport in Estonia’s capital, a team tracks pilots in training as they fly above the Tartu airport, which lies about 200 kilometres south of Tallinn, and about 45 kilometres west of Russia.
As the screen displays the location of the flights underway, a voice comes over the radio asking for permission to descend from the 1,800 metres she is currently flying at, because the GPS signal used for navigation has suddenly disappeared.
“Jammers are working pretty much 24/7,” said Mihkel Haug, head of the air traffic control department with Estonian Air Navigation Services.
“We get incident reports every day from pilots. In April, it was more than 600.”
Cases of GPS jamming, which is when strong radio signals drown out or interfere with satellite navigation systems, have surged since 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Incidents have increased in Estonia, which resulted in Finnair temporarily cancelling flights to the city of Tartu because they lost access to GPS before landing.
Reports have also spiked around the Black Sea, which is bordered by six countries, including Ukraine, Turkey and Russia.
While aviation and security experts tell CBC News the jamming is concerning, they say it alone doesn’t automatically create dangerous situations, as pilots are able to rely on other navigation aids.
However, there is more worry about the increase in GPS spoofing, which is being seen in Europe and in the Middle East. Spoofing is when fake signals can trick navigation systems into thinking they are somewhere else, potentially directing a plane off course.
Aviation groups say the significant rise in GPS disturbance can pose a safety risk, and the industry is grappling with how to mitigate the challenges that have spiked as result of global conflicts.
Finnair flights cancelled
In Estonia, Haug says that wherever a pilot reports the GPS navigation system is down, air traffic controllers stay on high alert, tracking the flight closely to make sure it doesn’t deviate from its planned route.
In late April, over the course of two evenings, two Finnair flights had to return to Helsinki after their GPS navigation system stopped working and there wasn’t a certified alternative navigation system in place for landing. They lost access to their navigation system when they were flying at around 3,600 metres.
Haug says usually when planes descend, the GPS system resumes working, but in this case it didn’t happen. At the time, Tartu airport, which is small and has its air traffic control handled remotely by Tallinn, solely relied on GPS navigation for landing approaches.
In both cases, Finnair decided to divert the planes back to Helsinki and shelve the route until additional navigation tools could be put in place.
After Estonian Air Navigation Services confirmed that a ground based beacon — part of what is known as Distance Measuring Equipment — would work as a secondary navigation at lower altitudes, Finnair made the decision to resume flights.
Pointing the blame at Russia
Estonian officials blame Russia for interfering with the GPS navigation systems and summoned the head of the Russian embassy in Tallinn earlier this month.
While Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has accused Russia of violating international regulations as part of its “hybrid” warfare, Marek Kohv, a Tallinn based security expert, says the jamming is likely “collateral damage.”
“Russia is trying to avoid Ukrainian drones attacking their critical infrastructure and military facilities,” said Kohv, who is head of the security and resilience programme at Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security.
Marek Kohv, a security expert at Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security, explains how GPS jamming in Russia is impacting flights in Estonia.
In recent months, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil refineries, and sites on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
According to reporting by Reuters, Russian jamming has been able to fend off strikes from glide bombs, which Ukraine acquired from the U.S.
Sources told Reuters that the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSD) has a navigation system that allows it to steer around obstacles, but it has been targeted by Russian jamming.
Online, the website GPSJAM aggregates daily reports of GPS interference, and colour codes geographic areas that are seeing a high rate of jamming.
Dark red and purple sections cover parts of Estonia, while a large area around St. Petersburg, Russia, is shaded, along with the Russian city of Pskov, which lies further south.
Kohv says he thinks that the jamming affecting Tartu comes from Pskov, which lies about 110 kilometres away, and is home to an elite Russian military unit — the 76th Air Assault Division.
In recent months, Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil refineries, and sites on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Online mapping shows there is currently a high rate of jamming around the city of Sevastopol in Crimea.
“Although it’s not an attack toward us per say, it still shows you how Russia operates,” said Kohv.
“It doesn’t care about international agreements and collateral damage.”
Jamming and spoofing in the Middle East
But Russia’s war on Ukraine isn’t the only conflict that has led to an increase of GPS jamming and spoofing.
In the fall of last year, OPSGROUP, an aviation advisory body, highlighted a surge in GPS spoofing around the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Israel and the Black Sea.
In one case, the group reported that a plane flying in Iraq nearly entered Iranian airspace without clearance after its navigation systems were “targeted with fake GPS signals.”
In another instance, a large business jet had what OPSGROUP called critical navigation failure upon taking off from Tel Aviv at the end of October.
The aircraft temporarily went off course as the GPS system thought it was more than 400 kilometres south of its actual position� on departure from Tel Aviv, leading the aircraft toward Lebanon.
“Starting from September, we started to receive a lot of reports of spoofing. That was very new to us,” said Cyrille Rosay, a senior cybersecurity expert at the European Union Aviation Safety Agency who spoke to CBC News from Cologne, Germany.
He said in one case, a crew got a fake alert that they needed to pull up because the plane was close to the ground, even though they were in fact very high in altitude.
In January, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), along with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) organized a meeting in Germany that included airlines, manufacturers and regulatory bodies to try and address the growing problem.
In a statement issued after the meeting, the IATA and the EASA said that GPS interference can “pose significant challenges to aviation safety.”
In the short term, officials say that the aviation industry needs to ensure that pilots and crews know the risks and how to respond to them using alternative navigation systems. They add that there needs to be more work to adapt the certification requirements for navigation and landing systems, and more input from the aviation industry when it comes to designing them.
“We are looking at a big list of possible solutions,” said Rasay, who adds that while GPS interference may have an impact on safety in certain circumstances, he doesn’t think it has made it unsafe overall.
He compares it to flying in stormy weather.
“You can fly in stormy conditions … but for any stormy condition there’s an increase of risk to safety.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s unsafe to fly.”
Published at Sat, 25 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000
International Court of Justice orders Israel to end military operation in Rafah
The International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire for the enclave.
While Israel is unlikely to comply with the order, which resulted from an appeal from South Africa, the order could ratchet up pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
ICJ president Nawaf Salam, describing the humanitarian situation in Rafah as “exceptionally grave,” read the ruling as a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside the court in The Hague.
Although the court has broad powers to order an end to the Israeli military campaign and any such ruling would be a blow to Israel’s international standing, it does not have a police force to enforce its orders. Russia, for example, has ignored a ruling from the same court to halt its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
As the ruling came down Friday, Palestinians watched the proceedings on TV from the makeshift Abu el Ezz Cafe in Khan Younis. Several said they welcomed the decision, but weren’t hopeful it make an immediate difference.
“This court is an established court and it represents humanity and international law, so to us, we are honoured that there is an international body in the picture,” Abdel Malik Al-Madhoun, 45, told CBC News in Khan Younis.
“But if there’s no obligation to [Israel to comply], nothing will change.”
Shadi Al-Hourani, 35, said he was “fed up” of symbolic rulings.
“These decisions are not fruitful at all unless we see actions on the ground,” he said in an interview. “We hear about decisions but we don’t see any action on the ground.”
Some residents in Tel Aviv, Israel, feel the International Court of Justice’s order for Israel to cease its offensive in Rafah was not good sense. Others, however, were in full agreement that it is time to ‘let Gaza rest, stop the violence.’
In Israel’s second-largest city, the reaction was mixed.
“We need to go into Rafah, we need to solve these issues, we need to get Hamas out of there. Calling for a one-sided ceasefire is not going to give any hope for a long-term solution,” Uri Goodman said in an interview from Tel Aviv.
Another resident, Jonathan Green, said Israel’s attack on Rafah was not serving “the greater good.”
“I think it might be a good time to [start a] ceasefire, return the hostages, let Gaza rest, stop the violence,” he said.
Israel should not escalate in Rafah, Trudeau says
Attacks on Oct. 7 in southern Israel led by Hamas, considered a terrorist group by several Western nations including Canada, killed around 1,200 people. Several of the dead were Canadian citizens.
Israel has said the operation in Rafah is necessary to continue to degrade the capabilities of Hamas and free dozens of hostages still believed to be held there. Ahead of the ruling, an Israeli government spokesperson said that “no power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza.”
“Israel has not and will not carry out a military campaign in the Rafah area that creates living conditions that could lead to the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” the Israeli government said in a statement.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he agreed Israel should not continue its assault on Rafah.
“Canada’s position has been clear for many many weeks now: We need an immediate ceasefire. Hamas needs to lay down its arms [and] release all hostages, but there also must be no more military operations in Rafah by Israel and certainly no escalation of military operations in Rafah,” he said Friday.
Speaking after the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel should halt military operations in the southern Gaza community of Rafah, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there should be no escalation in the area by Israel and called for immediate access to more aid.
Opening of Rafah crossing urged
Israel’s offensive since the war began has killed more than 35,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian crisis and a near-famine.
Fears the court expressed earlier this year about an operation in Rafah have “materialized,” the ruling said, and Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive” in the city and anything else that might result in conditions that could cause the “physical destruction in whole or in part” of Palestinians there.
ICJ president Nawaf Salam issued a ruling on Friday calling on Israel to stop military operations in the southern Gaza community of Rafah. The court, which issues legally binding decisions but doesn’t have police to enforce them, also called for the Rafah border crossing to be reopened to aid.
Rafah is in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt. More than one million people sought refuge there in recent months after fleeing fighting elsewhere, with many of them are living in teeming tent camps.
Israel has been vowing for months to invade Rafah, saying it was Hamas’s last major stronghold, even as several allies warned an all-out assault would spell disaster.
Israel started issuing evacuation orders about two weeks ago as it began operations on the edge of the city, but the court said it found evacuation and humanitarian plans were not sufficient.
Since then, the army says an estimated one million people have left as forces press deeper inside. Rafah is also home to a critical crossing for aid, and the UN says the flow of aid reaching it has plunged since the incursion began, though commercial trucking has continued to enter Gaza.
Order ‘underlines the gravity of the situation’
The UN court on Friday ordered Israel to keep the Rafah crossing into Egypt open “for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.”
The court’s order “underlines the gravity of the situation facing Palestinians in Gaza, who have for months endured the blocking of basic services and humanitarian aid amid continued fighting,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch.
“The ICJ’s decision opens up the possibility for relief, but only if governments use their leverage, including through arms embargoes and targeted sanctions, to press Israel to urgently enforce the court’s measures.”
The ceasefire request is part of a case filed by South Africa late last year, accusing Israel of committing genocide during its Gaza campaign. Israel vehemently denies the allegations. The case will take years to resolve, but South Africa wants interim orders to protect Palestinians while the legal wrangling continues.
In January, ICJ judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive. In a second order in March, the court said Israel must take measures to improve the humanitarian situation.
The court also ruled Friday that Israel must ensure access for any fact-finding or investigative mission sent by the UN to assess the genocide allegations.
In its statement, Israel characterized the allegations regarding genocide as “false, outrageous and disgusting.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa welcomed the World Court’s order but said he remained concerned the United Nations Security Council had not succeeded in reducing human suffering in Gaza.
The ICJ rules in disputes between nations. A few kilometres away, the International Criminal Court files charges against individuals it considers most responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
On Monday, the ICC’s chief prosecutors asked its judges to approve arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three top Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Published at Tue, 21 May 2024 08:01:50 +0000
