UK says jet carrying defence minister Grant Shapps had signal jammed near Russia

London has claimed the electronic interference happened for about 30 minutes as the RAF Dassault 900LX Falcon flew near Russian territory this week, a government spokesman confirmed on Thursday.

The electronic attack happened on Wednesday evening as the defence minister Grant Shapps flew back from Poland where he had watched a NATO exercise, The Times newspaper reported.

A UK government spokesman said the plane “temporarily experienced GPS jamming when they flew close to Kaliningrad,” on the Baltic Sea, some 1200km west of Moscow.

“It didn’t threaten the safety of the aircraft and it is not unusual for aircraft to experience GPS jamming near Kaliningrad, which is of course Russian territory,” the spokesman added.

Aircraft have several navigation systems and so don’t rely just on GPS to fly.

“There is no excuse for this and it’s widely irresponsible on Russia’s part,” a defence source told The Sun.

Kaliningrad is a wedge of Russian territory, remote from the Russian mainland, between Poland and Lithuania.

The Russian exclave, surrounded by NATO members, is highly militarised.

War planners have theorised that Vladimir Putin could in the future try and connect Kaliningrad with its ally state of Belarus, by invading Polish or Lithuanian territory.

This would cut off the land corridor between the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and other NATO members. It would also lead to conflict between NATO and Russia.

Journalists from The Times and The Sun, who were on the plane, said the GPS signal was interfered with for about 30 minutes.

Mobile phones could no longer connect to the internet and the aircraft was forced to use alternative methods to determine its location.

Dr Thomas Withington, of UK warfare think tank the Royal United Services Institute, told The Times the main aim of Moscow with its ground-based jammers was to shield its military in Kaliningrad.

“Ostensibly what the Russians are trying to do is protect their own assets in these areas, primarily to protect deployments, bases, troop concentrations and even strategic targets within Russia against satellite navigation-guided weapons,” he said.

He said that the jamming was “primarily defensive” but as it can disrupt aviation it was also “deeply irresponsible”.

It’s unclear whether the jamming was deliberate or whether Mr Shapps’ plane was caught up in a routine action by Moscow. Nonetheless, it’s likely Russia knew a minister was on the jet.

Mr Shapps had earlier watched hundreds of troops taking part in the Steadfast Defender exercise – the largest drills staged by the US-led military alliance since the Cold War.

The minister said the UK should look to spend 3 per cent of its GDP on defence to protect itself against Vladimir Putin and discourage conflict.

“All that needs to happen to resolve this is (Putin) needs to drive back east and get out of a democratic country that he decided to invade two years ago,” he said.

The UK is one of Ukraine’s strongest backers in its two-year-old fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

London has committed more than £7 billion ($13.5billion) of military support to Ukraine and has trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops.

— with AFP