Brief GPS outages over Europe were caused by Russian satellites, a Texas study showed. Daily jamming near the Baltics, however, remains ground-based

09.06.2026 10:30 HotInfo

A new study by the University of Texas at Austin has identified an unexpected source of brief, yet continent-wide, outages of satellite navigation over Europe: a group of Russian military satellites in orbit. The report was covered by both The New York Times and Sky News and was picked up by Lithuania's LRT — but in all cases, an important caveat applies: the satellites are a new, separate phenomenon, not an explanation for the daily jamming that pilots over the Baltics have been reporting for years. According to Lithuanian authorities, that jamming is caused mainly by ground-based electronic warfare systems near Kaliningrad. For a Slovak reader, this is an important distinction: headlines about "jamming from space" can easily overshadow a much more concrete and closer threat.

What exactly the study found

The paper, titled Chasing Lightning (authors Clements, Kriezis, and Humphreys), was published as a preprint on June 2, 2026 — it has not yet undergone peer review by an academic journal. The New York Times opened up the topic three days later. Based on data from a network of ground reference stations covering 2019 to 2026, the researchers documented dozens of brief outages (ranging from seconds to roughly ten seconds) that occurred simultaneously across continental Europe, Greenland, and Canada. They identified the source as a group of Russian EKS early-warning satellites, designed to detect ballistic missile launches, on an elliptical Molniya orbit (Russian for "lightning," hence the study's name). It is precisely this enormous geographic reach that, according to the authors, makes the space-based source a "qualitative escalation" compared to ordinary jamming. arXiv: Chasing Lightning ↗ GPS World ↗

How the Baltic perspective differs

For Lithuania's LRT and part of the Polish media, this is not an abstract piece of news but another layer of a problem the region has been living with for years. And it is precisely from there that a key piece of context emerges — one that gets lost in sensational headlines: the daily jamming reported by pilots does not come from space but from ground-based electronic warfare systems near Kaliningrad. Their range exceeds 400 kilometers and affects aircraft over Latvia and Poland even before they reach Lithuanian airspace at all. In January through early March 2026 alone, Lithuania logged 302 reports; during peaks in 2025, that figure exceeded a thousand per month. More than thirty sources of jamming may be operating in the region. "The GNSS signal is jammed constantly," confirmed Darius Kuliešius, a representative of Lithuania's telecommunications regulator. The study itself states this openly — ground-based sources are responsible for most of the worldwide increase in jamming. LRT ↗ Computing ↗

Limits of this perspective

The Baltic and Polish media naturally frame the topic through the security lens of the "Russian threat," which the region experiences directly — for them, the political-security angle generally outweighs the technical one. More important, however, is the caveat from the researchers themselves: the study does not prove intent. The authors explicitly do not speculate on whether the jamming is deliberate; they merely note that its occurrence on workdays makes a random technical malfunction less likely. Some experts interpret this as possible capability testing — not as a confirmed attack. And Slovakia is not yet among the documented hotspots: aviation jamming maps show the Baltics, Poland, Finland, and the Black Sea, not Central Europe.

What hotinfo is following

Whether the preprint passes peer review at the journal NAVIGATION and confirms the attribution. The response of EASA and Eurocontrol — whether they will incorporate the space-based source into their action plan against GNSS jamming. Whether the Russian side, which has so far remained silent, comments on the findings. And whether additional documented incidents emerge closer to the airspace of the V4 countries.

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Geographic locations

Location: Austin

Austin, Travis County, Texas, United States
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Location: Kaliningrad

Калининградская область, Северо-Западный федеральный округ, Россия
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Location: Lithuania

Lietuva
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World Politics (General) 📍 austin 📍 kaliningrade 📍 litva 📍 pobaltí 📍 pobaltím 📍 texas 🏢 chasing lightning 🏢 clements 🏢 humphreys 🏢 molnija 🏢 new york times 🏢 texaskej univerzity