Some Taiwan watchers worried that the jamming of GPS signals over northern Taiwan meant that an invasion was imminent, as the same thing happened in Ukraine when Russia launched its invasion
A mysterious GPS jamming signal finally disappeared from the skies around Taipei yesterday evening, the same day the airplane of former U.S. national security advisor John Bolton touched down outside the city. Bolton announced a while ago that he will run for U.S. president next year. He is a strong proponent of Taiwanese independence and has called for the U.S. to have “closer coordination” with Taiwan, which he said should include the stationing of U.S. troops in Taiwan. Bolton will stay in Taiwan for a week, during which he will attend two pro-independence events.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s state-run CNA media outlet reported that a large delegation of U.S arms dealers will visit Taiwan next Tuesday to meet with senior officials of Taiwan’s defense ministry. The delegation will be made up of 25 representatives of companies that manufacture weapons for the Pentagon. The delegation’s high-level visit is seen as part of an attempt to increase the speed at which U.S. weapons systems are being delivered to Taiwan.
GPS jamming
News of the GPS jamming signal first started filtering out on the weekend, when the Estonia-based chief strategy officer at a European defense intelligence firm posted a map on Twitter of GPS signals that showed a large area over Taipei and Taoyuan being affected by a signal that was degrading GPS signals. The post first appeared on Monday April 24. The strategy officer, Erik Kannike, said in the post that the jamming started on April 21 and that it was “very concerning — first time ever I have seen GPS jamming happening over Taiwan. Has been going on for 3 straight days now [since April 21].” One observer connected the event with a similar event that happened over Ukraine the day before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Kannike later told reporters that the interfering signal could have been generated by Chinese warplanes or warships. China sends such war platforms to continually harass Taiwan by maneuvering close to its airspace and coastal waters. He also speculated that the source could have been on the Chinese coastline itself — if it was not on Taiwan itself, which would indicate that a Taiwanese organization was behind it.
GPS jamming can be used by both sides in a conflict to interfere with guidance systems in an enemy’s guided missiles and drones. China could use it in an invasion scenario to defeat Taiwanese systems while Taiwan could use it to blind incoming missiles and drones. In this article we use the term “GPS jamming” for the sake of simplicity but a more accurate term would be “satellite-signal jamming.” GPS is the name for the U.S. satellite-navigation network. Other similar satellite-navigation networks include GLONASS (Russian Federation), Beidou (China) and Galileo (European Union).
The intelligence consulting firm Knightsbridge Research also posted about the event on Twitter, saying this was the first time GPS jamming was detected over Taipei “in several years.” The firm said the level of interference was at a “medium level” on April 21 and started escalating on April 22.
One military analyst speculated that the event could have been caused by a coronal mass ejection from the sun. Coronal mass ejections can cause solar radiation storms that can interfere with GPS signals. Such a rare event did actually occur on April 21, the first day the interference was recorded, and has been continuing since. The solar storm activity is expected to end tomorrow.
In the end, the mystery was “kind of” cleared up when Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) announced yesterday that the GPS interference was caused by “a government agency” that was calibrating a “radio wave transmitter.” The NCC did not say which government agency did the calibrating, but said that it subsequently asked the agency to follow the regulations governing such tests.
NCC Vice Chairman Wong Po-tsung (翁柏宗) announced at a weekly news conference in Taipei that the NCC received a complaint about the GPS interference from the air traffic control towers of Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration on Saturday. He said the NCC then sent “a radio wave detection vehicle to the commanding heights at the junction of New Taipei and Taoyuan to conduct detection on the same day, and indeed found that there was intermittent interference.”
Wong said the investigators found that the interference came from a government agency which he described as a legitimate radio frequency user that inadvertently caused “overflow wave” energy that interfered with neighboring frequency bands while calibrating a radio wave transmitter. So, according to the NCC, this was not a jamming attack but rather a mishap that happened during a test by an unnamed government agency.
A cynical person might suspect that the NCC’s explanation could simply be a smokescreen to deflect speculation that the event was possibly part of a GPS jamming test by Taiwan’s military. Such a theoretical test would be to see how effective it would be to use hardware that could create a jamming screen that would jam GPS guidance systems on certain types of missiles and drones that China is currently aiming at Taiwan. China fields a large number of drones, guided cruise missiles and guided ballistic missiles that depend at least in part on satellite signals for guidance.
Image: DPLA, Public Domain
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