A measuring station on Bornholm has already logged around 30 cases of GPS jamming and spoofing in 2026, more than in any previous year. A Danish cargo captain says his ship sailed for about 24 hours without a usable GPS signal in the Baltic Sea.
DR reports that the station near Tejn on Bornholm has registered about 30 incidents of GPS jamming and spoofing so far this year. The total for all of 2025 was 16 cases, according to the same measurements.
One of the mariners affected is Jens Nielsen, who owns and captains the cargo ship Saturn. The vessel has four crew members and carries goods around the Baltic Sea. Per DR, he has seen more frequent GPS failures since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
Nielsen says outages normally last 15 to 20 minutes. On July 29, however, the ship lost its signal for about 24 hours between Gdansk and southern Gotland. On a later voyage from Gdansk to Hundested, the signal was missing for roughly 12 hours until the ship reached Bornholm.
When the system fails, the crew steers by hand tiller and magnetic compass, because the autopilot stops working, Nielsen told DR. He describes the method as workable but more labor intensive, since one crew member must steer manually. Accuracy also drops, and several shipping routes are marked only electronically.
Researcher points to spillover, not a targeted attack
Søren Reime Larsen, a researcher at DTU Space who specializes in GPS jamming and spoofing, says the measurements cannot reveal where the interference originates. He notes a marked increase since the war in Ukraine, linked to the use of GPS in military technology such as drones and missiles.
According to Larsen, the readings from Bornholm most likely do not indicate a deliberate attack on Bornholm’s infrastructure. He describes the disturbances as a side effect of activity in the wider region. He is not aware of cases on the island where jamming or spoofing has had serious consequences, though it can affect shipping traffic in the Baltic.
As reported by DR, authorities in a number of European countries, including Denmark, accuse Russia of being behind the disruption of navigation systems in the Baltic Sea. That position was set out in an open letter from January 2026 by coastal states of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea together with Iceland, which warned that the interference endangers ship safety.
Nielsen has begun looking at equipment that does not rely on GPS signals alone, but can connect to several satellite systems. He puts the price of such an installation at about 100,000 kroner. He says he cannot know whether those carrying out the jamming will move to other frequencies once ships change equipment.
