Electronic interference in West PH Sea has increased, Navy says

The Philippine Navy on Tuesday said it has monitored an increase in the interference on the electronic communication capabilities of its vessels in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

“There was an increase in cyber interference, electronic interference and jammings and stuff like that, not only for equipment of the ship but also for land-based communication equipment,” Philippine Navy spokesperson for West Philippines Sea (WPS) Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad said.

Trinidad noted that these interference usually happened during the cooperation stages for rotation and resupply missions to the WPS.

The Philippine Navy made the statement following the report of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) that China may be jamming the signal in the WPS to prevent the agency from disproving Beijing’s claims of driving away Philippine vessels from the area.

“We assume that they do the jamming every time they release their statements that they repelled our vessels,” PCG spokesperson for the WPS Commodore Jay Tarriela told reporters on Sunday.

“Through such jamming, any commercial [automatic identification system] monitoring cannot also disprove such statement because they may not be able to find our vessels,” he added.

However, Trinidad, in a separate ambush interview, clarified that cannot pinpoint the source of the interference.

“I would need the appropriate Navy office or General Headquarters to say that, after we do all the forensics,” he said.

“It could come from anybody. Again, common sense will dictate but I would like to be backed up with an appropriate report,” he added.

During the press briefing, Trinidad said the interference only had minimal effect on the sea-based operations of the Philippine Navy because it never reached the military’s navigation functions.

“These are more on the communications on land, cellphones, but on the overall impact on the operation they do not really cause a significant impact,” he said. —KBK, GMA Integrated News