Jamming and spoofing in the arsenal of electronic warfare: what the case of von der Leyen's aircraft shows

The arsenal of electronic warfare includes both jamming (the ability to disrupt the signals of satellite navigators) and spoofing (the alteration of signals to replace them with bogus coordinates), but while Moscow continues to insist that these actions are aimed exclusively at countering the Ukrainian army, the EGIPRON maps and the alarms raised by the Baltic republicstell a different truth: the target of the disruptive actions is increasingly the EU.

On the afternoon of Sunday 31 August, a airplane that was transporting President Von der Leyen and her staff to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, was forced to fly over the airport for about an hour and finally land based solely on paper maps.

According to the Financial Times, which first reported the incident, the Bulgarian government suspects direct action by Russia (obviously denied by the Kremlin), while the Bulgarian air traffic authority records 'a significant increase in these activities from February 2022', the date of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The other aircraft in the area, reports the Financial Times, were able to report their position without any problems, 'increasing suspicions that the jamming of Von der Leyen's plane was a targeted activity'.

The open data analysed by an expert like Benoit Figuet, moreover, suggest even more sophisticated, and more massive, activity: Von der Leyen's flight to Bulgaria did not record any direct interference in the GPS system; it was Plovdiv airport that was affected, which suffered a systems blackout of over an hour. The day before, however, the same flight of the President of the European Commission had been directly targeted with jamming attacks in the skies above the Baltic Sea, an indication perhaps that jamming had already been launched at the beginning of the journey on the eastern flank of the EU, and was only completed in Bulgaria, when circumstances made it possible.

German Armed Forces Chief Carsten Breuer said on Monday that he himself experienced GPS system interference on two occasions last year, the first while on board a military flight over the Baltic Sea and the second during an exercise in Lithuania.

Also last year, a similar incident had occurred on the military plane carrying British Defence Minister Grant Schnapps, flying near the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on his return to the UK after a visit to Poland.

The European Union has already included individuals and companies involved in electronic warfare activities in its various sanctions packages against Russia, but the countermeasures to be taken are mainly technological in nature and require investment.

Last June, a letter sent to the European Commission by 13 member states - including Italy - called for a stronger response against this kind of interference.

In July, the Union announced the launch of OSNMA (Open Service Navigation Message Authentication), a protocol that will allow signals distributed by the European Galileo satellite system to be recognised and identified as authentic.

The protocol, however, will come into force in the second half of 2026, and is of particular urgency, given that - according to a Reuters exclusive - last May the Trump administration suspended some information sharing on Russian hybrid warfare activities that Joe Biden had established with European intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, the danger of new interference could intensify in the coming weeks: according to a Polish government spokesperson told the website DefenseNews, Warsaw believes that 'the risks of provocations by Moscow and Minsk will increase during the joint exercises between Russia and Belarus Zapad 2025, and could include cyber attacks, jamming activities against NATO facilities and small-scale military incidents to test the Alliance's reaction capabilities'.