A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible
A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible
Russia is suspected of launching a record-breaking 63-hour-long attack on GPS signals in the Baltic region. The incident, which affected hundreds of passenger jets earlier this month, occurred amid rising tensions between Russia and the NATO military alliance more than two years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“We have seen an increase in GPS jamming since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and allies have publicly warned that Russia has been behind GPS jamming affecting aviation and shipping,” a NATO official told New Scientist. “Russia has a track record of jamming GPS signals and has a range of capabilities for electronic warfare.”
Never mind Russia, I'd be happy with anyone making a "special military operation" on Putin's whereabouts. NATO doesn't have to fight Russia. They only need the head of the snake.
There is no way to convince me that the CIA, MI6, and/or Beijing couldn’t take him out if they wanted him gone, which makes me wonder why they wouldn’t, I guess World War III but it’s not like that’s not already a possibility
There needs to not be a 'Russia' after this. Split it up. Try to keep the regions peaceful and shit, but absolutely divide them politically, so one cannot say 'Russia' is a meaningful entity.
I love to be a fly on the wall behind the scenes, as far as what's going on between the two sides, that they actually decided to do something as annoying as this.
It is highly likely that exactly zero Russias nukes work. Nuclear maintenance is extremely expensive, and there is a zero percent chance that corruption that we witnessed in tank maintenance and other areas of their military did not spread to their nuclear program. It has also been 34 years since they successful a launched a nuke.
Russia as a country has never launched a nuke (USSR did) so it's seriously debatable if they even have the capability.
And I'm not advocating for war, but Russia needs to have consequences for their actions, and the world needs to respond resolutely and immediately before this gets any worse.
It stops only when they are forced to stop and not a moment sooner. Who has the will or the ability? In the U.S., conservatives are on Putin's side, so as long as conservatives have any power (like they do now), they will back him.
The EU is sounding the alarms, but only France is stepping up to the plate ready to fight. As usual, the EU will just hope France will protect the rest of them.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but VOR can be jammed just as easily? It's effectively just ground based GPS.
There are actually devices, that can to a certain extent resist jamming by rejecting signal coming from some direction while amplifying signal from other. Typically they amplify signal from space and reject signal from ground where the jammers would be. So in a way GPS is more resilient against jamming if you can use this device. But AFAIK they are only used for military purposes.
That device is called a CRPA (pronounced serpa). They are very effective at anti-jam.
As far as VOR jamming, those use a VHF omni-directional antenna, so it can be jammed. It might be hard because of the omni-directional part and the numbers of them, but definitely doable.
According to wikipedia all modern aircraft should be equipped with an Inertial Navigation System. A system that gives the position of the aircraft by using a buch of accelerometers and gyroscopes.
The GPS is just there to adjust the position given by the INS.
Yup. As long as you’re transmitting via radio waves, if something on that frequency “screams” louder, you won’t get the original signal. That’s why the FCC has strict rules against radio interference. About the only way you could get past that would be some sort of laser guided/optical communications, but would be damn near impossible given the number of planes and weather conditions.
Luckily the louder something screams the more easy it is to pinpoint.
It would matter if they chose not to jam certain frequencies due to some agreement.
Thinking only of GPS-like services, there are multiple suppliers who could take advantage of Russia jamming other services. GPS is only one, owned by the American air force. Other suppliers might be more open to making agreements with Russia. Money can make things happen.
I'm not saying it's like that, only that it is possible for bad actors to benefit from playing on both sides in a jamming war, just like any other kind of war.
Xona is out there planning their own satellite constellation in their own band of the spectrum (so not jammed at the same time as GPS), and is fully encrypted.
Explain how jamming works. The person isn't saying encryption overcomes jamming, just that encryption will be used to make the new system private and paid instead of free to use. Not being GPS will make it avoid GPS jamming.
You are talking about Xona. Private company, fully encrypted signal, paid service, not jammed at the same frequency as GPS.
EDIT: I would love for one of the people who down-voted me to explain what was wrong with my completely factual description of a company who is doing exactly what this person asked about.
If enough people are using this new system, Russia could easily pivot to target it as well. Jamming is not inherently hard, especially if a nation is attempting it.
Jamming in the US will bring the FCC down your throat. The stronger the signal, the faster they will show up. Russia transmitting a jamming signal from Russia doesn't have to worry about such things. A jamming device is not hard to find, but on sovereign soil it's still untouchable short of war.
Yes, but only if it can be proven it was absolutely Russia. And then it has to be proven that it was approved by their government as an official act, not just some vodka-soaked hackers somewhere in Siberia....
Might be worth some degree of suspicion around including GLONASS as a part of GNSS. Russia could create worldwide issues if they decided to fuck around with their constellation.
I would guess this is a matter of the media talking about all GNSS as "GPS" rather than the planes only supporting the US military's navigation system.
As others have said, you can't passively bypass GNSS jamming. The signal more or less has the same amount of power as a 60 watt light bulb, transmitted from a satellite out in Medium Earth Orbit. You throw enough energy at the same frequency as the signal and it's over. There are ways to improve the receivers resilience by giving it more signals to connect to (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou) or several signals being transmitted by the same constellation (L1, L2, L5).
Also, many different systems occupy pretty much the same frequencies, just with different characteristics which makes all the signals more susceptible.
You can't. Think of it like two radio stations that are too close. It doesn't matter how good of a receiver you have it will only ever pick up the signals being transmitted. And when there is noise on the frequency then that is what it will pick up.
Best way to mitigate is have an inertial system. It's a calculator that, based on where you are and where you're heading, keeps track of your updated position.
The math is not that crazy, but with enough time the sensors errors crop up and you'll be slightly off course, then a bit, then a lot.
You could argue ‘who benefits from blaming Russia n Europe?’ - and then look at the propaganda campaign for nato. It’s not in European interests to fight an American war.
Yeah, it also doesn't help with the situation that half of Europe has multiple past Russian invasions in their history, and Russia's leadership has repeatedly voiced territorial claims to multiple European countries.