A study by Polish researchers claims that moving vessels on the Baltic Sea are responsible for an escalation in GPS disruptions in the region.
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If correct, the study would back previous reports claiming that Russia’s “shadow fleet” have high-power radio equipment aboard.
The study observed GPS interruption at a ground level with a sensor installed at the Gdynia Maritime University in the north of Poland and about 120 kilometers from Kaliningrad.
The sensor monitored activity over a period of six months starting from June last year but could only cover the Gulf of Gdańsk, not the main east-west sea lanes of the central Baltic, where the vast majority of the region's traffic occurs.
Nonetheless, the sensor picked up 84 hours of interference, including 29 hours in October alone.
Some disruptions lasted up to seven hours at a time, which is sometimes enough to affect navigation in confined waterways.
"Given the system's radio horizon, which primarily covers a portion of the Baltic Sea, and assuming that the interference source was not located within Poland’s borders, the most plausible explanation is that the jamming originated from a vessel in international waters,” the researchers concluded.
