In September 2025, researchers sought help from the broader community at the Navigation Institute conference in Baltimore, Maryland, according to Veritasium. Months later, Humphreys received an important tip that raw jamming signal data had been captured by stations in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Trondheim, Norway, during a jamming event on February 11, 2026.
By examining the difference in when that signal reached the two different stations, Humphreys and Clements calculated a “quasi-hyperboloid surface” (the term they used in the paper) that extended tens of thousands of kilometers into space where the jamming satellite was to be located. According to Veritasium, the margin of error represented by the thickness of that surface was only five meters.
A comparison of the orbits of the suspected satellites with the quasi-hyperboloid surface showed that only the orbit of one satellite was perfectly aligned: the Russian satellite Cosmos 2546. That discovery, in turn, pointed them to six satellites in Russian territory. Edinaya Kosmicheskaya System (EKS), including Kosmos 2546, which are designed to provide early warnings when they detect ballistic missile launches.
These satellites are in very elliptical positions. Molniya orbits It extends far above the Earth’s high latitudes and provides long-lasting coverage of the Northern Hemisphere. Analysis by Humphreys, Clements, and Krizise showed that there was at least one Russian satellite high above the horizon for each reference ground station during all GPS jamming events.
The uncomfortable why
It is still an open question why Russian satellites appear to be periodically engaging in short bursts of selective GPS jamming over Europe, especially since the jamming signal is slightly offset from the usual GPS frequency band.
In the Veritasium video, Humphreys speculated that the Russians may have been testing the satellites’ GPS jamming capabilities only briefly on a neighboring frequency adjacent to the typical GPS band. “And then in the future, when there’s a hot conflict, they’ll go ahead and tune their transmitter to the GPS band, but it’s much more damaging now that it’s right in that band,” he said.
