{"guid":"64ec3662-a77a-51c1-98fc-65f995f49912","title":"Who cares about the Baltic Jammer?","subtitle":"Terrestrial Navigation in the Baltic Sea Region","slug":"39c3-who-cares-about-the-baltic-jammer-terrestrial-navigation-in-the-baltic-sea-region","link":"https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/hub/event/detail/who-cares-about-the-baltic-jammer-terrestrial-navigation-in-the-baltic-sea-region","description":"Reports of GNSS interference in the Baltic Sea have become almost routine — airplanes losing GPS, ships drifting off course, and timing systems failing. But what happens when a group of engineers decides to build a navigation system that simply *doesn’t care* about the jammer?\r\n\r\nSince 2017, we’ve been developing **R-Mode**, a terrestrial navigation system that uses existing radio beacons and maritime infrastructure to provide independent positioning — no satellites needed. In this talk, we’ll share our journey from an obscure research project that “nobody needs” to a system now seen as crucial for resilience and sovereignty. Expect technical insights, field stories from ships in the Baltic, and reflections on what it means when a civilian backup system suddenly attracts military interest.\r\n\r\nSince 2017, our team at DLR and partners across Europe have been working on an alternative to satellite navigation: **R-Mode**, a backup system based on terrestrial transmitters. Our main testbed spans the Baltic Sea — a region now infamous for GNSS jamming and spoofing.\r\n\r\nWe’ll start by showing what GNSS interference actually means in practice: aircraft losing navigation data, ships switching to manual control, and entire regions facing timing outages — such as the recent disruption of telecommunications in Gdańsk during Easter 2025.\r\n\r\nThen we’ll take you behind the scenes of building R-Mode: designing signals that can coexist with legacy systems, installing transmitters along the coast, and testing shipborne receivers in rough conditions. We’ll share personal moments — like the first time we received a stable position fix in the middle of the Baltic.\r\n\r\nFinally, we’ll talk about perception and politics: how a “research curiosity” became a critical infrastructure project, why ESA now wants to build a *satellite* backup (with the same vulnerabilities), and how it feels when your civilian open-source navigation system suddenly becomes strategically relevant.\r\n\r\nLicensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0","original_language":"eng","persons":["Lars","Niklas Hehenkamp","Markus"],"tags":["1997","2025","39c3","Security","Fuse","39c3-eng","39c3-deu","Day 1"],"view_count":24678,"promoted":false,"date":"2025-12-27T12:50:00.000+01:00","release_date":"2025-12-27T00:00:00.000+01:00","updated_at":"2026-04-13T18:45:06.073+02:00","length":2171,"duration":2171,"thumb_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/congress/2025/1997-64ec3662-a77a-51c1-98fc-65f995f49912.jpg","poster_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/congress/2025/1997-64ec3662-a77a-51c1-98fc-65f995f49912_preview.jpg","timeline_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/congress/2025/1997-64ec3662-a77a-51c1-98fc-65f995f49912.timeline.jpg","thumbnails_url":"https://static.media.ccc.de/media/congress/2025/1997-64ec3662-a77a-51c1-98fc-65f995f49912.thumbnails.vtt","frontend_link":"https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-who-cares-about-the-baltic-jammer-terrestrial-navigation-in-the-baltic-sea-region","url":"https://api.media.ccc.de/public/events/64ec3662-a77a-51c1-98fc-65f995f49912","conference_title":"39C3: Power 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