site.btaPM: GPS Disruption of EC President’s Plane Not a Cyber or Hybrid Threat, No Investigation Needed

There is no reason to investigate the incident involving the aircraft of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, as the jamming of a GPS signal is not considered a hybrid or cyber threat, said Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov on Tuesday in Burgas.

His statement followed Bulgaria's Government Information Service report on Monday about an incident on Sunday when the GPS system aboard European Commission President’s plane lost the satellite GPS signal to its navigation system while approaching Plovdiv Airport in South Central Bulgaria. In order to ensure the safety of the flight, the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority immediately proposed an alternative landing method using ground-based navigation aids (instrument landing).

At a press conference on Monday, Commission Deputy Chief Spokesperson Arianna Podesta said that the Bulgarian authorities suspect that the GPS incident during President Ursula von der Leyen’s trip to Bulgaria was due to blatant interference by Russia.

Zhelyazkov said that since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, modern warfare has increasingly involved so-called electronic warfare, which includes intentional disruptions in the radio frequency spectrum. According to him, such disruptions have been observed in recent years across a wide geographic area, including Helsinki, the Black Sea region, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Cyprus, Syria, and Tripoli. “These are all examples of interference affecting the radio frequency spectrum used by GPS signals transmitted from satellites orbiting at altitudes of around 20 km above the Earth,” Zhelyazkov said.

The Prime Minister pointed out that the disruption was not specifically targeted at any particular aircraft, and the incident was identified by the flight crew. 

“Such events occur on a daily basis, and aircraft have been taking off and landing long before GPS systems existed,” Zhelyazkov said. He explained that there are established international protocols for such situations, which are applied in all countries monitored by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. These protocols stipulate that in the event of GPS disruption, conventional navigation methods using instruments are employed.

The Prime Minister emphasized that Bulgaria’s air traffic control followed all required procedures and that the incident does not differ from similar occurrences linked to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the use of electronic warfare techniques. “Unfortunately, this is one of the side effects, though not a minor one, of such conflicts,” Zhelyazkov concluded.