🚨 Price of inaction? Shame.

Russia disrupted a UK Defence Secretary's GPS for three hours on a return flight from Estonia without firing a single shot. Pilots switched to inertial navigation and landed safely. I'd love to say the story ends there.

The BBC, Times and Guardian all confirmed it. The MoD described it as "reckless Russian interference." A Times journalist was on board. The flight path was visible in real time on public aircraft tracking websites. One pilot told The Times it was a rare incident he hadn't experienced "in a long time.”⠀

Here's what's actually uncomfortable about this: after the exact same thing happened to Grant Shapps in March 2024 on the same aircraft type, a 30 minute GPS jam near Kaliningrad, the UK government reversed its decision not to fit the jets with upgraded protective systems and issued a tender to do exactly that. ITV reported at the time that ministers had originally scoffed at the cost, described as hundreds of millions of pounds.

Thursday reportedly lasted three hours. The MoD gave us a press statement.

I'm not going to claim jamming an aircraft at altitude is cheap in absolute terms. It isn't. But the asymmetry is what's causing me Fremdschämen: Estonia's Foreign Minister told the BBC they have proof the interference originates from Russian territory near St Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Pskov. Between August 2023 and March 2024 alone, around 46.000 flights logged navigation problems over the Baltic region. Finnair temporarily suspended flights to Tartu because of it. This is a campaign with documented sources, confirmed by a NATO member government. What are we doing against it?

The Falcon 900LX runs a Honeywell Primus Elite suite, civil aviation certified, not hardened to military specification. The Daily Telegraph reported after the Shapps incident that the aircraft was effectively "defenceless" [sic] because ministers chose not to pay for the requisite systems when ordering it in 2021. The UK announced it would fix that.

Two years on, here we are.

The backup navigation worked. I'm glad it did. But "the backup worked" isn't a doctrine, and it isn't deterrence.

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