BRUSSELS \u2014 NATO allies have raised concerns about what they call Russia\u2019s use of a kind of electronic warfare during military exercises last month that jammed some phone networks, alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Oct. 26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt least two allies have reported about that,\u201d Stoltenberg told reporters after chairing talks in Brussels between ambassadors from NATO and Russia. He said it highlights the need for Russia to be more transparent with war games \u201cto make sure there are no miscalculations, misunderstandings, because these kinds of activities can have serious effects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Phone services in Latvia, Norway and Sweden\u2019s Oeland islands were reported to have been shut down for a few hours during the Sept. 14-20 Zapad exercises that Russia held with Belarus. The jamming is suspected to have been launched by a Russian communications ship from the Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy phone shut down for about four or five hours. The suspicion is that it was a Russian ship in the Baltic Sea, with the technology capable of blocking cellular signals,\u201d Latvian lawmaker Ojars Kalnins said earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the jamming \u201cfocused on the Oeland islands in Sweden\u201d but that \u201cit did shut down all communications, including emergency phone service in Latvia. Our 911 service was shut down for several hours during this experimental attack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Norway\u2019s intelligence chief, Morten Haga Lunde, said in Wednesday\u2019s edition of the Aftenposten newspaper that Russia had also used a kind of electronic attack that could have endangered civilian aircraft in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere were exercises in GPS jamming \u2014 in electronic warfare,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMostly likely this was jamming that was intended to disrupt their own Russian forces\u2019 use of GPS \u2014 but jamming that had side effects for (airline) and intercontinental flights of which Russia should have seen the range.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just after the Zapad exercises, the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, said that Russia had been busy developing \u201cpowerful, sophisticated\u201d means of electronic warfare while NATO allies were more focused on \u201ccounter-terrorism type operations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of this was on display, cyber and other electronic warfare capability,\u201d during Zapad, Hodges said. \u201cThey\u2019ve continued to move on this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Russian communications ship in the Baltic Sea is suspected of disrupting phone services in Latvia, Norway and Sweden\u2019s Oeland islands during the Sept. 14-20 Zapad exercises that Russia held with Belarus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":62192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":46,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[45,160,46,11,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[7633],"class_list":["post-28492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-daily-news-roundup","category-europe","category-global","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"U6R32H2FYRHSFJQK4KIKGSDOKM","arc_canonical_url":"\/electronic-warfare\/2017\/10\/26\/nato-chief-says-allies-concerned-about-russian-phone-jamming\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n