London:
A British Royal Air Force plane carrying the British Defense Secretary suffered a signal failure while flying near Russian territory this week, a government spokesman confirmed Thursday.
The electronic attack took place on Wednesday evening as Grant Shapps flew back from Poland on an RAF plane, where he had attended a NATO exercise, the Times newspaper reported.
A British government spokesman said the plane “experienced temporary GPS interference while flying close to Kaliningrad” on the Baltic Sea, about 1,200 kilometers (about 750 miles) west of Moscow.
“It posed no threat to the safety of the aircraft and it is not unusual for aircraft to experience GPS interference near Kaliningrad, which is of course Russian territory,” the spokesperson added.
The Times, which had journalists on the plane, said the GPS signal was disrupted for about 30 minutes.
Cell phones could no longer connect to the internet and the plane was forced to use alternative methods to determine its location, the Daily said.
Shapps had previously seen hundreds of troops taking part in the Steadfast Defender exercise – the largest exercises staged by the US-led military alliance since the Cold War.
Britain is one of Ukraine's strongest backers in its two-year battle against Russia's large-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
London has pledged more than $7 billion in military aid to Ukraine and trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)