'Pull up! Pull up!' Who is messing with GPS signals used by passenger planes and why?

18 March 2025, 11:56

"Pull up! Pull up!"

Pilot Akseli Meskanen's cockpit is warning him that his Airbus A330 passenger plane is about to crash into the ground... But he's 33,000ft in the air.

So what's happening? Why could his aircraft be telling him things that aren't true?

It's because his GPS - Global Positioning System - is being interfered with.

GPS, a system we rely upon every day to navigate by plane, car or at sea, is vulnerable.

During the war in Ukraine, both sides have sought to interfere with GPS signals to protect themselves from the thousands of killer drones that now fill the skies. Any British troops deployed as peacekeepers would be likely to face GPS jamming, and the UK government is spending millions on anti-jamming tech.

But it's not just war zones where GPS is being interfered with - passenger planes flying all over the world are experiencing disruption too.

If you've flown over Eastern Europe or jetted off for a sunny getaway in Cyprus recently, it's possible your aircraft experienced GPS jamming without you knowing.

Suspicions in particular have fallen on Kaliningrad, the small piece of Russian territory near Poland.

GPS interference adds a layer of risk but pilots can manage it using alternative navigation systems, pilot Akseli says. But others in the aviation community believe it's a more serious issue which degrades aircraft and whose impacts could worsen as it becomes more sophisticated.

With around 1,500 flights a day reportedly having their GPS disrupted, and with experts pointing the finger at countries including Russia and Israel, Sky News has looked into the shadowy practice to see what's going on and what it means for passengers.

So how does GPS interference work?

There are two main types of GPS interference - "jamming" and "spoofing".

Jamming overwhelms navigation systems and stops them working properly, while spoofing is more serious and involves sending false GPS signals that can fool planes into thinking they're hundreds of miles away from where they actually are.
Reports of spoofing increased 500% last year, according to an industry group.

"It starts when you get to 5,000ft above the ground," says pilot Akseli.

As the airplane climbs higher, the status display tells pilots that the GPS signal is lost, he says, but if spoofing is occurring then there can be false reports too:

"You might get false ground proximity warnings like 'Terrain ahead, terrain ahead, pull up, pull up'."

Akseli flies passenger planes - generally Airbus A320s and A330s - for Finnair out of Helsinki Airport.

"In general it's not dangerous… but when you are acting - intentionally or unintentionally - against a commercial flight it builds up some risks."

Spoofing is more dangerous than jamming, says Sean Fitzpatrick, an experienced pilot, because the plane is receiving false information. "And that can corrupt certain systems."

"When it first started you had aircraft warning systems going off at 33,000ft... saying you're going to fly on the side of a hill and they're like, what the hell's going on here?"

Nowadays there are protocols in place to deal with it, he says, and pilots can turn off navigation systems to minimise disruption. Sean says flying remains safe.

Recently he experienced GPS interference while flying a Boeing 747 in Saudi Arabian airspace, just south of the border with Jordan.

"All of a sudden, the GPS got corrupted signals because of spoofing and it thought I was 200 miles to the north - in Syria," Sean says. "So then [the autopilot] started correcting to the left. The plane started turning and it's like, what are you doing?"

According to Sean, there are some places where the airways are "pretty tight" - "If you're not on top of it the aircraft starts turning towards areas you don't want to be going in."

A report released in September 2024 by OPS Group, an organisation of pilots, flight dispatchers, schedulers and controllers, found that the impact of spoofing on flight safety, aircraft operation and handling, and air traffic control operations is "extremely significant".

The group claimed that with "few exceptions", spoofing is being used by "state actors" as a result of regional conflict.

"To date, no aircraft has been directly targeted. However... were this to change, the impacts could be even more severe," the report said.

It pointed to the Ground Proximity Warning System, which is designed to detect if a plane is too close to the ground, as the "greatest safety concern". "The number of false alerts is astounding. There is an increasing normalisation of risk," the report said.

Is something happening around Kaliningrad?

It's not lost on Akseli and his fellow pilots in northern Europe how close they are to Russia.

He says they are experiencing GPS interference over a 100-200km (60-120 mile) area, which he says indicates "heavy organisation behind the operation".

Research analyst Noah Sylvia, who specialises in emerging technologies at the RUSI thinktank, says it has been "definitively proven" that GPS interference is coming from Kaliningrad, the small piece of Russian territory north of Poland.

There is also GPS interference over mainland Russia, he says.

He argues that GPS jamming over mainland Russia is likely intended to disrupt long-range Ukrainian drones that have been targeting airfields and oil refineries. But the situation around Kaliningrad is different, he says.

"There is no defensive purpose because Kaliningrad is not under attack," says Noah.

"You can have some surveillance planes but there's no targeting in the same way, it doesn't apply," Noah says.

"Instead, it's an easy way for Russia to show their displeasure at the region. It really affects the Baltics, Finland and Poland."

He says such widespread GPS interference requires "massive power sources".

The war in Ukraine has seen increased focus on Kaliningrad, and in particular the Suwalki Gap - the name given to the 40 miles or so that separates the enclave from Russia's ally, Belarus. This area is often blanketed by high levels of GPS interference.

Noah added: "Russia has invested massively in electronic warfare over the past decades. The West does not have those types of capabilities in the same amount, so I would honestly question whether the West would be able to do something like this."

In March 2024, then UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, was returning from Poland when GPS signals on his flight were jammed while it flew near Kaliningrad.

Mobile phones reportedly could not connect to the internet and the aircraft had to use alternative methods to determine its location.

A Number 10 spokesperson said it didn't threaten the safety of the airplane and added: "It is not unusual for aircraft to experience GPS jamming near Kaliningrad, which is of course Russian territory".

The next month, Estonia accused Russia of violating international airspace regulations by interfering with GPS signals. It came after Finnair was forced to suspend flights to Estonia's Tartu airport because the disruption was so bad that two planes were prevented from landing.

Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said GPS interference was part of Russia's "hostile activities" and was intensifying, and claimed that jamming had been observed as far away as Britain.

"It's Russia testing their capabilities," Noah added. "They're protesting a little bit about Western involvement in this or that thing."

A Sky News request for comment to the Russian embassy went unanswered. Russia has denied instances of GPS jamming in the past.

Efforts to interfere with GPS signals have become routine during the war in Ukraine, as Kyiv's drone operators continue to target Russian oil refineries and even its vaunted Black Sea fleet, sinking a number of warships with unmanned vessels.

"Russia knows that drones are causing havoc to its energy infrastructure and the only way it can do a one-size-fits-all approach is to put out massive GPS jamming," says military analyst and former RAF pilot Sean Bell.

Ukraine has also admitted to carrying out GPS interference to try and disrupt Russian air attacks, warning citizens that smartphones using automatic time zones can be fooled by spoofing and that navigation systems may not work properly during air raid alerts.

Sean says an American withdrawal from Europe could change the whole landscape of NATO, and the emergence of drone warfare has raised the potential for the UK to be attacked at home.

The British Ministry of Defence has invested at least £30m on projects exploring how to counter GPS interference, including calling for private companies to present ideas on anti-jamming tech last month as part of Project Wayfind.

The UK is also building a new 'silent hangar' facility large enough to hold some of its biggest military aircraft so it can test anti-GPS jamming technology.

An MoD spokesperson said: "GPS jamming to disorientate equipment has become increasingly common. It is indiscriminate and can affect all civil and military aircraft.

"Our aircraft are fitted with a range of capabilities to ensure they can operate in a variety of environments, including where GPS jamming could take place. Such jamming does not prevent us conducting air operations.

"Through Project Wayfind, we are also working to improve drone operations in environments where GPS jamming occurs."

Outside Russia's Novorossiysk port there's something odd going on…

In the Black Sea, where Russian warships have been increasingly targeted and damaged by Ukrainian drones, there is also evidence of GPS interference.

Tracking signals from vessels sailing outside the port appear to be being scrambled.

When Sky News looked at Vesselfinder location data for six ships over a period of 24 hours, at first glance it seems they are going back and forth over the same spot - in an oddly similar pattern. This strange occurrence was previously reported by analyst H I Sutton on X.

So, what's happening?

On closer inspection, and after Sky News spoke to security expert Dr Thomas Withington, it appears something is messing with the GPS. But it's not entirely clear what, or why.

He suggests it could be one of a number of things, including GPS jamming hardware being mounted on a marker buoy believed to be floating in that area.

Another option, he said, could be that the ships themselves are sending out false information to conceal their exact location.

"What's interesting is, if it's not the buoy, why is the garbled signal happening in that area specifically?"

He also suggested that ships in the area could be carrying counter-drone systems as part of Russia's efforts to protect against Ukraine's increasingly sophisticated drone attacks that have hurt their warships.

A map of reported GPS interference shows large amounts of reported spoofing over the Middle East as well.

Security analyst Noah says Israel is using spoofing to impact the accuracy of cheaper munitions used by Hezbollah and Hamas that might navigate via GPS.

"It basically tells a GPS receiver that it's somewhere that it's not, which will affect its behaviour. So if it's a drone it might dive towards a target - when the target isn't there."

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) declined to comment on questions about whether it carries out GPS interference when approached by Sky News.

South Korea's military says that one of its drones crashed into the ground in November following jamming by North Korea.

According to local media, the drone had been flying 600 metres above the ground, but an error made it think it was at 3,000 metres, and it then crashed as it descended for landing.

It is a mark of how warfare is changing. The ability - and will - to disrupt a system that millions of people rely on every day for navigation is a concern to governments around the world.

For civilian flights, Sean Fitzpatrick says that spoofing isn't as big a deal nowadays because airlines know to expect it and can use non-GPS systems to mitigate the problem.

But complaints about GPS interference affecting civilian planes are only growing louder. The OPS Group report on GPS spoofing said that the entire future of the use of GPS in aviation is unclear.

"We are already seeing a major increase in both spoofing, and impact to aircraft. Locations could widen further, and impacts could worsen."

Akseli says pilots are getting too used to GPS interference and false warnings, following procedures in areas of GPS jamming.

"That's the biggest threat for pilots... what about when the warning is real?"

(c) Sky News 2025: 'Pull up! Pull up!' Who is messing with GPS signals used by passenger planes and why?