Jets Vanished from Europe's Air Traffic Controllers' Radar — Later Linked to NATO Electronic Warfare During 'War Games'

Air Traffic Controller - USS Iwo Jima. (Photo by US Navy)

By Georgina Prodhan, Michael Shields, Tim Hepher, Ludwig Burger, Adrian Croft, Jason Hovet
Dozens of aircraft briefly vanished from air-traffic control radars in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia this week and last in separate incidents that Slovak authorities blamed on military electronic warfare exercises.

Air-traffic controllers in Austria and Germany said data about the planes' position, direction, height or speed went missing on June 5 and June 10, but the outages posed no serious danger to people on the aircraft travelling at high altitude.

Their Czech and Slovak counterparts also encountered cases of vanishing aircraft on the same days.

"The disappearance of objects on radar screens was connected with a planned military exercise which took place in various parts of Europe on June 5 and 10 and whose goal was the interruption of radiocommunication frequencies," the Slovak state Air Traffic Services company said in a statement.

"This activity also caused the temporary disappearance of several targets on the radar display, while in the meantime the planes were in radio contact with air traffic controllers and continued in their flight normally.

"Immediately after the identification of the problem with the displays, the side organising the exercises was contacted and the exercise was stopped."

It did not identify the military force, which Austrian media said was the NATO western military alliance. NATO had no immediate comment.

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