NKOM’s decision to stop tracking jamming in Finnmark sets a dangerous precedent, says Melanie Garson, a professor focused on international conflict resolution at University College London. “By not reacting, how do you enforce a deterrent effect?” she asks, adding it is still unclear whether the government is going to find a solution to the jamming problem or leave it to the industries that are affected.
NKOM does try to “eliminate” GPS jamming when its source is inside Norwegian territory, says spokesperson Gerrard. The agency is also among several government departments that organizes the annual event Jammerfest, held on the Norwegian island of Andøya, to experiment with countermeasures. Since 2022, representatives from industry and government travel to the arctic circle to test how their systems respond to jamming and the more serious GPS spoofing, where GPS signals are faked to deceive a plane or other device about its own location.
Yet Widerøe pilots are concerned that this issue might feel remote to the American companies that make a lot of the equipment inside their planes. They believe it is the American Navstar satellite system being targeted because other devices like iPads—which can pick up signals from multiple satellite constellations—still work throughout periods of jamming.
“The providers of the navigation computers, they are mainly American,” says Rolf Fossgård, deputy VP of flight operations at Widerøe. He’s worried that if American businesses are not affected themselves, they might not be motivated to upgrade their systems to be jamming-resistant. “For a lot of European operators or Middle East operators, they are in need of this kind of equipment.”
It’s unclear how the situation in the skies above Finnmark is going to evolve. Since 2022, most interference has hit planes above 6,000 feet—suggesting the device that is causing the jamming is located on the ground, and that the more sensitive part of a plane’s journey, at lower altitudes, is protected by the curvature of the Earth.
But in April, Thomassen claims, he encountered his first case of jamming as he attempted to land. Flying into Båtsfjord, on Norway’s northern tip, his plane suffered jamming as it approached the runway. “We were able to land just fine based on visual contact with the airport,” he explains, adding that his company Widerøe is yet to verify why this case of jamming took place at such low altitudes.
Luckily the surrounding area is very flat, he says. “Norway is a mountainous country, so if the jamming were in other parts of the country, operational impact would be significant.”