‘Unprecedented’: 13 aircraft mysteriously disappear from radars in heart of Europe

. . . These incidents happened on June 5th and then 5 days later on June 10th happened again:

‘Unprecedented’: 13 aircraft mysteriously disappear from radars in heart of Europe

A total of 13 aircraft suddenly vanished off radars for about 25 minutes on two occasions over Austria and neighboring countries, Austria's flight safety monitor said, calling for an EU probe into the “unprecedented” incidents.

The flights vanished from air traffic controllers’ screens in Austria on June 5 and June 10 for 25 minutes each time, Marcus Pohanka of Austro Control – Austria’s flight safety organization – said Thursday.

Air traffic control in neighboring regions of Germany and the Czech Republic also reported similar problems.

Pohanka said the location, height, and identity of the 13 aircraft vanished over Austria both times, in what he called “unprecedented” incidents, AP reported.

He added that some neighboring countries had experienced similar problems. The daily Kurier, based in Vienna, elaborated that similar problems were experienced by flight controllers in Munich and Karlsruhe in Germany and in Prague, Czech Republic.

This is VERY strange occurrence(s). Each time for 25mins over Austria, airplanes are vanishing from radar - 13 to be exact.

Not only that but similar incidences have also occurred in neighboring countries - Germany & Czech Rep.



So far the only differences between this & the Malaysian airline disappearance is that the air traffic controllers were able to establish comms w/ the pilots.

The Kurier cited an unnamed expert as saying that the problem was most likely to do with interference between the aircraft transponders and the ground.

No sh*t sherlock but. . .

'What caused the interference' ?

- X-class flares ?

- Military drills (nato) ?

- Faulty transponders (multiple airliners) ?

- Some other explanation. . .?

. . . It all seems too reminiscent of the missing flight 370, imo. Would definitely like to hear what other members have to say about this curious occurrence.

This is INTRIGUING and the English news report(s) there seem only to tell half the story.

I did some quick digging and came across German reports where they said/admitted in the first case of disappearances and and also for the second one that possibly an "unknown interfering jammer" (translated) was the reason for the disappearance which also coincided with NATO EXERCISES.

In the second case of disappearances, the NATO exercise was already over and now they are speculating that hackers (!) or whatever other 3rd party is responsible for this, they also speculated someone must be on control of satellites to be capable to do that.

They also used the word "electronic attack by the Americans"...

In other word..they KNOW that someone is deliberately doing this. It's not just a "disturbance" or a malfunction like those English reports suggest.

kurier.at...

So..in other words, conspiracy theories that "someone" deliberately has the planes disappear from the screen have some merit.

I am not liking current world events lately...not one bit....

Some entity somewhere, all year long, has been testing the various defenses of different countries all over the place IMO.

People are testing the grid in America, air traffic control being tested, etc.....idk, what i do know is that 'hackers' have the ability to do much more damage to the world than terrorists do. The stuff a smart group who is good with technology can do is truly terrifying.

*** GOOGLE TRANSLATE *** (I am trying to correct where necessary)

After radar air traffic control systems were paralyzed in parts of Central Europe by an unknown jammer last Thursday, on Tuesday planes again disappeared from the screens of air traffic controllers. During the first incident, a NATO exercise had been suspected to be the reason,but at the time of the second incident there had been no NATO exercise. The European air traffic control Euro Control and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have initiated investigations.

In the first blackout in the previous week , from 14 o clock on planes disappeared from the radar screens of air traffic control centers in Vienna, Bratislava, Karlsruhe and Prague, even though the aircraft were in the air. Something unknown had obviously disturbed the transponders of the flights who provide the ground stations identity and flight details. This can have dramatic consequences. Because up to 4000 machines per day traverse the Austrian airspace alone. 50 flights may be in the air over Austria at any given time.

Emergency program

The fact that there was no crash is due to a well thought out emergency program by air traffic controllers The Austro Control immediately increased the staff on duty. Additional air spaces were created to increase the safety margins of the airplanes. The pilots gave their positions by radio and were held by the air traffic controllers on track. The error affected only the civilian systems. The military radar - even that of the Armed Forces - remained intact.
After four air traffic control centers were affected at the same time, the trigger had probably come from outside. A suspect was identified quickly. In Hungary, NATO exercised its electronic warfare against transponder aircraft. So the researchers assumed that overzealous Electronics Warriors had the interference not only directed against a practice target, but also mistakenly irradiated half of Europe.

On Tuesday a second blackout followed. Between 13:30 and 15 clock suddenly planes disappeared from the screens. This time the air traffic control in Vienna, Munich, Karlsruhe and Prague were affected.

Location Centre

The location National Operations Centre was contacted in Uedem in Germany as they did in the first incident. This position command center had suggested the NATO exercise for electronic warfare in Hungary in the first case as a possible cause. But this time the experts disagreed. The exercise in Hungary was over. And a current ongoing exercise in southern Italy is not technically able to disrupt radar systems to Northern Germany.

If it was not NATO, then who is? In intelligence circles they speculate about two possibilities: Such a large-scale disturbance could take place only via satellite. Only the U.S., Russia, China and India would be capable of doing this. What interests should they have to make such troubles? Or did terrorist hackers succeed to penetrate the ground-based data traffic of the air traffic control?

Austro Control spokesman Markus Pohanka also confirmed the second incident. This time it didn't result in so many outages as a week ago. Planes at high altitude aircraft had been affected. Pohanka tried to calm things down: There was no danger. The incidents would rather have shown that the air traffic controllers are in a position to securely manage the airspace even when there are system outages.

Only NATO mentioned....what about Russian?

A hangover caused the air traffic controller to fall asleep.

Maybe someone is playing with some technology at home trying to make an energy source and it interferes with the radar for some reason. Maybe someone is testing radar blocking technology.

Maybe someone was testing a projected stealth system and those were the test objects...hopefully after confirming it did nothing really nasty to those vanishing off radars.

Just one possible guess, being ATS and all.

a reply to: NoRulesAllowed

My apologies for the delay in response, I was also running your German article through my translator haha.

Indeed, you're absolutely correct about what it's saying.


Here's the 2nd part:

Excitement around Nato-sturgeon transmitter
Also the Austro Control supposes Nato manoeuvre as a cause for disturbed air traffic control.

Now after the failure of the civil air traffic control systems the last Thursday rules big excitement. Conspiracy theorists suppose an electronic poster of the Americans as a cause. And at the authorities one tries to kalmieren.
Like him CURE reported, the airplanes of the screens of the Austro Control disappeared Thursday from 14 o'clock. Some appeared again to disappear once more. Obvious the Transponder of the jets had fallen out by the dozen. Those data transmitters which transmit the Austro Control flight altitude, course and speed. This signified a burned situation for the flight pilots. Since they have to guarantee a free from problems expiry of about 4000 overflights over Austria.


Manual operation

The Austro Control switched over to manual operation. Additional flight pilots were used and other airspaces were opened as well as the safe distances were increased. The positions of the airmen were questioned on speech radio. Thus the system failure could be got over without collision.

At the same time the air traffic control headquarters were also concerned in Karlsruhe, Prague and Bratislava.
The COURIER could bring in experience that precisely at this time in Hungary a Nato practise took place for electronic fight guidance (EloKa). Practise purpose was to block the Transponder of airplanes with sturgeon transmitters. Besides, a mistake might be passed, and the sturgeon signal spread over half Europe.

Austro Control speaker Markus Pohanka divides the suspicion that a workplace accident has been the cause in NATO also. Compared with the APA he explained: ' Cause for the failure a Nato practise could have been in Hungary. ' Otherwise the Austro Control speaker tries to kalmieren. The failure has lasted only 25 minutes. According to the information, to him CURE are, it lasted in Austria till 17 o'clock and in the neighboring countries till 19.30 o'clock.

NATO delivers in such cases usually no statement. Probably, however, the announcement released different conspiracy theories. Thus possibly one courier's poster supposed that the Americans disturbed the radar to bring illegally an airplane through Europe. However, this is no logical theory. Since in this case they would have had to disturb the radar system of the federal army. Since the army with his active system 'golden bonnet' sees in contrast to Austro Control also those airplanes which have switched on no Transponder. Most highly Michael Bauer, speaker of the ministry of defense, sticks to the fact that the military radar has gone on working all the time freely of disturbance.

Spy airman

A similar incident is reported from the USA. There the flight schedule of an US-American spy airplane U-2 had wrong been interpreted on the 30th April by the computer of the aerial traffic check Los Angeles. Indeed, U-2 flew by extreme height. However, the computer arranged them in normal flight altitude. More than 200 flights were thereby delayed or had to be stroked generally. Other dozen were moved to smaller airports.

Indeed, this incident has another cause than the incidents of Thursday, but the effect was the same one. Also the US-flight pilots changed on 'manual operation'. They had to reach to her phones and radio devices, and question on the topical flight schedules and on positions individually.

Interesting to say the least. May have to re-examine flight 370, if this is true.

There is a thread on the board within the past 2 days that says US intercepts Russian bombers 50 miles from California coast .

a reply to: lightedhype

Agreed.

It seems that global events are popping off more frequently as of late and this doesn't help either.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Who knows, your educated guess could turn out correct.

> It's why I threw this out there because I know we have Aviation/military guru's on ATS that could shed further light on this subject.

Could be someone has found an entry point into the ground station signal paths. I get the impression that much of the system wasn't design with security at a level other than restricting physical access. Seems a lot like a test of concept.

I would think jamming would not be selective. Wasn't sure if every aircraft in an area was effected or just some.

a reply to: roadgravel

Because it's not jamming, it's electronic warfare. There's a difference. Jamming is a brute force approach that hits everything including your own radars. Electronic warfare on the other hand, can selectively target radars and convince them they're not seeing something somewhere, while they think they are seeing something somewhere else.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP
Only NATO mentioned....what about Russian?

In the 2nd part of that german article, it states that a similar 'computer glitch' incident happened within the U.S. on April 30th, 2014 (U-2 spy plane). However, there were NO planes that vanished from radar. . .

FAA says air traffic computer was overwhelmed by U-2 spy plane


As of now, there's no Russian involvement.

a reply to: SurrenderingAmerica

That's because that incident took the entire system down. I believe that the European system is more robust than the American system, because they can get funding to replace their system better than the FAA.

a reply to: Zaphod58

So it sends a stronger (or closer) signal with what appears to be certain transponder data which in effect eliminates real signals?

Wouldn't that take a high end military attack? The civilian systems seem to be riddled with holes, from what I can gather. Never under estimate people who understand computer systems and peripherals.

a reply to: roadgravel

It analyzes the signal from the radar, and uses that to tell the radar "nope, nothing here", while at the same time sending signals telling it to look at these targets over there.

It's not always a deliberate attack. Sometimes the pilots go through their checklist, which involves activating the system for a self test, and just forget to turn it off after. Then they take off, the radar hits the receiver, and the system does what it is supposed to do.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Basically what I thought was the idea behind what you meant. But the original signals have to also be kept from being received also, I would think. Proximity.

Maybe the solar flares are causing it.

Very strange when you think of MH370

Going by the proximity of the incidents, it must be location based

Since tomorrow is Friday the 13th (of June), it could have been a warning message of sorts.
cwm