Black Sea under electronic control: Russian jamming rewrites the rules of navigation

The Black Sea has become in 2025 one of the most dangerous navigation areas on the planet, a living laboratory of electronic warfare and manipulation of satellite signals that threaten civil aviation, commercial fleets, scientific research and regional energy security, according to data obtained by Spire Aviation, OPSGROUP, InSpace Engineering, as well as the report prepared by the Israeli company Cydome, as well as the investigation carried out by the Royal Institute of Navigation in the Netherlands.

In these circumstances, it seems incredible that the resolution on a united response to the recent violations of the airspace and critical infrastructure of EU Member States by Russia, a document adopted on 9 October by the European Parliament, has gone almost unnoticed, although its preamble refers to the "jamming and spoofing of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signals, including GPS”, by the Russian Federation in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea areas.

The cited sources show that in a world where the safety of maritime routes depends almost entirely on satellites, the intentional manipulation of GNSS signals has become an invisible but devastating weapon, capable of jamming, falsifying and controlling the perception of the real-time position of ships and aircraft.

The Black Sea, once a simple geopolitical scene, has become in 2025 an active laboratory of electronic warfare coming from the east. Along the coasts of Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria, GPS signal jamming and spoofing - known as GNSS spoofing and jamming - have reached unprecedented levels, transforming the Black Sea into a "gray zone” where the boundaries between peace and conflict are distorted by invisible waves of interference.

• Crimea, the epicenter of the jamming that dictates navigation in the Black Sea

Data collected by Spire Aviation, OPSGROUP and InSpace Engineering shows an exponential increase in incidents: hundreds of aircraft and commercial ships have been affected daily, especially in the Danube Delta area, over Constanta and in the maritime corridor near Serpent Island. Spire satellites confirmed that the false signals invariably come from the east, from Crimea, indicating a constant source of jamming originating from the territory illegally controlled by the Russian Federation.

In August 2024, a research balloon launched by the Romanian company InSpace Engineering from Constanţa recorded for the first time scientifically a GNSS spoofing event at an altitude of 11 kilometers: the navigation signal was completely jammed and replaced with a fake one that "moved” the balloon's position to the coordinates of the city of Simferopol, although it did not deviate a single meter from its trajectory. It is the first direct evidence of a spoofing attack in NATO airspace.

In the following months, the jamming continued with increased intensity, affecting commercial flights, scientific missions and even maritime communications. In October 2024, Spire satellites detected severe interference in the Buzău-Ploieşti area, where over 300 aircraft reported temporary losses of GPS position, while on-board systems falsely indicated perfect signal integrity. It is the classic signature of a spoofing attack: the system "thinks” that the signal is correct, but the position is false.

During the same period, in the Tulcea-Babadag area, almost 10% of aircraft completely lost positional accuracy, and in the Galaţi-Reni corridor, the interferences extended eastward, indicating a deliberate strategy of progressively covering Romanian airspace.

In May 2025, the authorities in Bucharest publicly confirmed that such attacks occur "weekly” and that they are part of a broader hybrid warfare strategy with the following effects: commercial ships appear on radars in non-existent places, rotate in circles, "slip” towards land on AIS (Automatic Identification System) maps or disappear completely from monitoring systems. In some cases, ships have been accidentally redirected to prohibited areas, risking collisions or detention.

The phenomenon is reminiscent of the so-called "Baltic Bermuda Triangle”, and in recent months, similar behaviors have been observed along the Bulgarian coasts. All indications point to the same conclusion: Crimea is the epicenter of a continuous electronic warfare, conducted by specialized units of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, such as the 475th Electronic Warfare Center at Cape Fiolent, where the "Murmansk-BN” system - one of the most sophisticated jamming complexes in the world - has been operating since 2015. According to the international intelligence community InformNapalm, this center is the core of a hybrid campaign aimed at constantly degrading the integrity of GNSS in the region, affecting not only Ukraine, but also Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

• When the signal lies: the invisible war of waves

The phenomenon was not limited in the Black Sea. In the Strait of Hormuz, almost 1,000 ships a day suffer from GNSS interference, and in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, attacks have already been linked to collisions or groundings of ships. These incidents demonstrate that satellite manipulation has become a global tool of economic and military intimidation. In parallel, the financial impact is huge.

The sources cited warn that the marine insurance industry is caught in a gray area: traditional policies no longer cover these incidents due to the LMA5403 cyber clause, which excludes losses caused "by the intentional use of an electronic system.” This ambiguity leaves shipowners, carriers and insurers in an unprecedented legal impasse, where electronic interference and malicious intent must be proven simultaneously, which is an almost impossible task in the case of state-sponsored attacks.

Insurers are essentially having to completely reassess risks, work with cybersecurity experts and introduce "cyber buy-back” clauses to restore protection where current exclusions leave gaps.

The Royal Institute of Navigation has also launched an international survey into GNSS jamming and spoofing, seeking direct data from sailors, pilots and operators in the field. The preliminary conclusion is clear: interference is pervasive in the Baltic and Black Seas, and the real risks - collisions, groundings, loss of control - are already a reality, not a hypothesis. According to Jeroen Pijpker, a researcher at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, 400 incidents of GPS "spoofing” and "jamming” have been officially recorded, 25% of which involve real ships. He warns, however, that the data is only "the tip of the iceberg”.

In this context, Nir Ayalon, founder and CEO of Israeli maritime cybersecurity company Cydome, recently told the Epoch Times that 95 percent of incidents caused by GPS signal manipulation never make it to the media. According to the Israeli expert, in 2025, the number of such attacks increased by 500 percent, and the maritime areas considered "black spots” exploded by 2,000 percent.

One such attack was blamed for the June 2025 collision in the Gulf of Oman between the Liberian-flagged oil tanker Front Eagle and the ship Adalynn, identified by Lloyd's List as part of a "dark fleet.”

In May, the MSC Antonia ran aground in the Red Sea near the southern end of the Suez Canal after its automatic navigation system was misled by a false location.

"What we are seeing is a deep-level manipulation of navigation data, both on the radio frequencies coming from the satellites and on the information transmitted between the antennas and the on-board systems,” explains Nir Ayalon.

• "Blind” navigation, a real danger

Manipulation of the GPS signal is not new: in 2019, the British ship Stena Impero was hijacked in Iranian waters, after it was allegedly misdirected by a spoofing attack, and was later captured by Iranian forces.

Manipulation of AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, used by all commercial ships, is one of the preferred methods of attackers. "AIS has neither encryption nor authentication. Basically, anyone can add any information they want there. It is very easy to infiltrate,” warns the founder of the Cydome company. Thus, a ship can appear on the map in a false location, becoming "invisible” to monitoring systems. "The MSC Antonia's autopilot attempted to correct its course based on a false position and thus ran aground,” explained Nir Ayalon.

In some cases, the attacks are politically or economically motivated, while in others, they are carried out by operators who want to hide the real position of the ship. In 2022, Russian oligarchs are said to have used such methods to hide the location of their superyachts, especially after the imposition of international sanctions.

"In Dutch waters, near Den Helder, there was a case of massive spoofing around the yacht of a Russian oligarch,” says Jeroen Pijpker, a researcher at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. To better understand these threats, the Dutch university led by Pijpker has created a "naval honeynet” - a virtual ship, connected via a Starlink device, designed to attract attackers and study malicious traffic.

However, the proliferation of low-Earth-orbiting (LEO) satellites, such as Starlink, has led to a growing reliance on automated systems, and crews' overreliance on computer data is compounding the risks. "We are seeing more and more incidents like the one on the MSC Antonia. Crews need to start checking the integrity of the GNSS signal and not blindly relying on screens,” warns Israeli expert Nir Ayalon.

In reality, no complex infrastructure is needed to launch an attack of this type. "A malicious actor only needs a small high-frequency antenna, mounted on a tall building, a cliff or near a sea route,” explains the Israeli expert.

According to the experts cited and related sources, the areas most affected by the spoofing phenomenon at the moment are the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf, the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the Barents Sea and the waters around North Korea. A minor black spot was also identified near Pensacola, Florida, possibly linked to a nearby US naval base.

In an increasingly tense global context, in which cyber attacks are becoming a strategic weapon, the world's seas are turning into an invisible battlefield. Commercial ships, the backbone of the world economy, are increasingly sailing "blindly”, guided by signals that can be falsified at any moment. Behind every blinking dot on the digital map of the oceans, there could be an illusion, and a single wrong coordinate could spell disaster.