Russia Disrupts Global Hawk UAV Mission Over Baltic Sea
For the first time, Russian jamming of GPS over Eastern Europe now seems to have interfered with a high-altitude surveillance mission of an RQ-4B Global Hawk UAV in Estonian airspace
A US Air Force RQ-4B Global Hawk UAV performing a reconnaissance flight near Estonia overnight on Friday,suddenly began to perform unpredictably after apparently coming under Russian electronic warfare (EW) attack. The drone had taken off from its base at Royal Air Force (RAF)Fairford in England.
For several months there have been reports of Russian forces repeatedly attempting to jam satellite navigation signals of both military and commercial aircraft operating over Eastern Europe, Poland and the Baltic states. In the first four months of 2024, almost 500 instances of GPS interference were reported.
Russian social media said the RQ-4B drone with the call sign FORTE12 had been monitoring the western borders of Russia, the Baltic coast and the Kaliningrad region when data on the FlightRadar 24 aircraft tracking website recorded the drone flying erratically for some time before its operators regained control of the aircraft and it returned safely to base.
It was reported by the UK Defence Journal that the Global Hawk, had been temporarily deployed to RAF Fairford from Sicily’s Sigonella Naval Air Station on Aug. 22.
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