A U.S. Air Force drone faced issues due to Russian signal interference during a flight on August 29-30, according to the Estonian Ministry of Defense.
During a reconnaissance flight in Estonian airspace, the RQ-4B Global Hawk, a U.S. strategic surveillance drone, flew erratically and suffered from signal failure after Russian forces were able to attack electronically.
The Estonian Ministry of Defense said that Russian signal interference has larger ramifications in terms of military and civilian aviation in the Baltic region.
Before flying to the Black Sea, the RQ-4B Global Hawk took off from its base in Fairford, England.
After its chaotic flightpath activity, the drone managed to land at the Sigonella base in Italy, according to specialist outlet Defense Mirror.
During the reconnaissance mission, the RQ-4B Global Hawk transmitted squawking codes including 7400, which indicated that control between the aircraft and the pilot was lost.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry and the Estonian Defense Ministry for comment via email outside of business hours.
The aim of the electronic interference was to drive out reconnaissance missions from the northwestern border of Russia, according to Defense Mirror.
"The spy drone tirelessly looped along the Russian Federation's border from the Leningrad region to Pskov. Then, it suddenly signaled that it had lost contact with the operator and maneuvered chaotically for a while," according to the Baltic Sentinel.
The RQ-4B Global Hawk's mission is to "provide a broad spectrum of ISR collection capability to support joint combatant forces in worldwide peacetime, contingency and wartime operations."
The spy drone has been "deployed operationally to support overseas contingency operations since November 2001," according to the U.S. Air Force.
The remotely piloted drones have been used to monitor Russia's borders through flights over the Black Sea since February 2022, and have also been used in the U.S., Australia, Germany, and South Korea.
Newsweek also reached out to the U.S. Air Force for comment via a form on its website outside of business hours.
This is not the first time that Russian electronic interference jamming satellite navigation signals of aircrafts has been reported. There were nearly 500 reported instances during the first four months of this year, according to the Kyiv Post.
Russia has previously accused the U.S. of providing information obtained by the RQ-4B Global Hawk in conducting reconnaissance missions over the Black Sea to Ukrainian forces and threatened that Russian forces will adopt "rapid response measures" to prevent confrontations between Russian and U.S. forces in airspace.
Since the Russian electronic interference in August, the drone has been active in three flights to the eastern Mediterranean over Israel in September, but has not returned to the Baltic region.
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