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Researchers Say Russian Satellite Likely Source of 75 Brief GPS Disruptions

A University of Texas preprint ties short weekday pulses in GPS and BeiDou bands to Kosmos 2546, raising concern that the signals were periodic tests of a space-based jamming capability.

Overview

  • Reports published June 10–11 summarize a University of Texas–led analysis that identified 75 simultaneous navigation signal drops recorded by ground stations across Europe and into Canada.
  • The team says the events occurred between January 2019 and April 2026, lasted under ten seconds each, and centered on GPS frequencies with a secondary lower-frequency burst overlapping China’s BeiDou band.
  • Using intensity-differencing and time-of-arrival techniques the researchers localized the source to Kosmos/Cosmos 2546, a Russian early-warning satellite that operates in a high, highly elliptical Molniya/Tundra orbit.
  • The disruptions clustered on weekday business hours and on Tuesdays through Thursdays, a pattern the authors say is consistent with scheduled tests rather than random interference.
  • The paper is a preprint submitted for peer review and independent verification is pending, but experts warn that a confirmed space-based jamming capability would pose real risks to navigation, timing and services that rely on GNSS and that operators should boost monitoring and backup systems.