FAA Tells Pilots To Go Analogue As GNSS ‘Spoofing’ Incidents Increase

Shepherd said:
I actually learned how to navigate with a sextant back in the mid-60s when I was in the Civil Air Patrol. We spent a bunch of time flying around in USAF cargo planes and I would bring my sextant and they would let me navigate. Had a sailboat in the late 80s, and used it then, (mostly to show off). Alas, it hasn't been out of the case since. Maybe it's time to brush off the cobwebs.
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I learned how to navigate using the hands on my watch during SERE. It's kinda the same.
 
Half Fast said:
And that would be a nearly impossible feat, given the US’s airtight border.

(Most of the necessary equipment can be bought inside the borders; don’t have to smuggle much.)
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Do you have beachfront property in AZ for sale, too? :cool:
 
quick! corral those GPS signals!

(sorry, couldn't resist)
 
Looks like a little bit at Sioux Falls in last 24 hours.
 
IFR enroute GPS since 2006 and WAAS capable since 2014. Never had an issue. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but so far so good. Figure about 4000 hours almost exclusively navigating via GPS.
 
Hope on the horizon?
scitechdaily.com

Revolutionary Quantum Compass Could Soon Make GPS-Free Navigation a Reality

A milestone in quantum sensing is drawing closer, promising exquisitely accurate, GPS-free navigation. Peel apart a smartphone, fitness tracker or virtual reality headset, and inside you’ll find a tiny motion sensor tracking its position and movement. Bigger, more expensive versions of the same tec
scitechdaily.com
 
they could just require all cell towers to transmit a location and time, there are so many you could probably triangulate your position down to inches
 
MackMooney said:
they could just require all cell towers to transmit a location and time, there are so many you could probably triangulate your position down to inches
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“so many”? not every where
 
Bob Noel said:
“so many”? not every where
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yeah, no, they are literally littered everywhere across the US, look at a tower map, its like 1000x vor coverage. at altitude, i'd bet you'd have to use AI to find a place within the continental us with insufficient coverage to triangulate a position.

Honestly, i just hope they hurry up and bring back eloran and get this over with, every VOR in my area except for GLS is notam'd out
 
MackMooney said:
, every VOR in my area except for GLS is notam'd out
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And if they aren't Notam'd out, they still don't work. And this is around the ATL area with a bit of traffic.
 
Bob Noel said:
*cough* Green Bank, WV *cough*

stop thinking like a city-slicker and consider the vast rural areas and mountainous areas
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look at a tower map, at altitude you would be hard pressed to not have sufficient coverage. i'm not talking cell service, i'm saying put a beacon on top that transmits ID/Pos/TIME, basically ground based gps.

ArcGIS Web Application

fcc.maps.arcgis.com fcc.maps.arcgis.com

it is a coverage map not actual location but the towers would have to be somewhere in the area
 
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Domenick said:
Hope on the horizon?
scitechdaily.com

Revolutionary Quantum Compass Could Soon Make GPS-Free Navigation a Reality

A milestone in quantum sensing is drawing closer, promising exquisitely accurate, GPS-free navigation. Peel apart a smartphone, fitness tracker or virtual reality headset, and inside you’ll find a tiny motion sensor tracking its position and movement. Bigger, more expensive versions of the same tec
scitechdaily.com
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Was initially thinking sandia avionics until I saw the .gov
 
MackMooney said:
look at a tower map, at altitude you would be hard pressed to not have sufficient coverage. i'm not talking cell service, i'm saying put a beacon on top that transmits ID/Pos/TIME, basically ground based gps.

ArcGIS Web Application

fcc.maps.arcgis.com fcc.maps.arcgis.com

it is a coverage map not actual location but the towers would have to be somewhere in the area
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kind of hard to see through mountains...
 
MackMooney said:
look at a tower map, at altitude you would be hard pressed to not have sufficient coverage. i'm not talking cell service, i'm saying put a beacon on top that transmits ID/Pos/TIME, basically ground based gps. ...
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Who would pay the BILLIONS it would cost to retrofit every cell tower in the USA with such a beacon? And who would cover the cost of new beacons on new towers?

There are vast areas of the Cascade, Olympic, and Rocky Mountains with poor to no coverage or the towers are in valleys blocked from propagation by miles of solid rock.
 
Domenick said:
Who would pay the BILLIONS it would cost to retrofit every cell tower in the USA with such a beacon? And who would cover the cost of new beacons on new towers?
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Billions of dollars to spend?? This sounds like a job for ……. The Federal Government!

To put into perspective, how much did the GPS system cost? And how much should a back up system cost?

As far as the west mountain regions, as long as the plane is above the towers it should pick up the signals. Just have enough around key airports to provide enough guidance for approaches.

And keep the old radio navigation up and running. If it was enough during pre GPS era, should be workable still.
 
I fly to India. (Boeing 777-300) Every leg there and back has at least one area near Ukraine where we lose our GPS signal for an hour or two. Fortunately we have inertial nav and VORs to keep us pretty close to what GPS does for us when it is working.
 
ateamer said:
Would it ever be viable to have a solid-state inertial reference system? Self-contained, not dependent in any radio signals. Cost aside, is it feasible? Has it been tried?
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submarines use INS to stay underwater and it was good for a few days before we would need an external reference to correct.... but those were expensive and well maintained units, not something that say uncared for weeks on end.
 
MackMooney said:
they could just require all cell towers to transmit a location and time, there are so many you could probably triangulate your position down to inches
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I think they do. With ADS-B UAT ground stations, they broadcast a precise tower location and can be used in a similar manner. I crowd sourced the locations of about 500 ADS-B ground station locations using this method and ForeFlight. UAT based navigation would provide RNAV enroute capability in most of the NAS and probably be good enough for LNAV approaches in much of the country.
 
My understanding of GPS spoofing is that it affects all receivers equally, and is not targeted to a particular receiver. You couldn't (easily) guide a particular westbound aircraft 1,000 ft lower into an eastbound aircraft on the same airway, opposite direction, without the eastbound aircraft also being the same 1,000 ft. lower. To say nothing of sanity check with baro. alt.

Even in lateral navigation, where there is not the same kind of ready redundancy, likewise if you spoofed a signal 2 miles east, every receiver affected would be the same 2 mi east. It's like ATC vectors being heading-based not track-based -- we're all swimming in the same pool.
 
I don't think an open forum is where GPS spoofing should be discussed in detail.
 
Lots of stuff has been all over the interweb for years. Doesn't mean that it is correct nor does it mean that it is complete.
 
My recent experience pretty much matches what the map above shows. Jamming in the Black Sea area and spoofing by the Israelis. You're over Tel Aviv at FL350 and get several EGPWS "Pull up" as the GPS position is more or less ground level over Cairo or Beirut.
 
DJTorrente said:
My understanding of GPS spoofing is that it affects all receivers equally, and is not targeted to a particular receiver. You couldn't (easily) guide a particular westbound aircraft 1,000 ft lower into an eastbound aircraft on the same airway, opposite direction, without the eastbound aircraft also being the same 1,000 ft. lower. To say nothing of sanity check with baro. alt.

Even in lateral navigation, where there is not the same kind of ready redundancy, likewise if you spoofed a signal 2 miles east, every receiver affected would be the same 2 mi east. It's like ATC vectors being heading-based not track-based -- we're all swimming in the same pool.
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Spoofing can't "guide" you anywhere. GPS tells you where you are, not where to go.

But you are right about affecting all receivers equally.

Each GPS satellite put outs a time-stamped signal. The receiver calculates the distance from the satellite using elapsed time. Three signals is enough to compute location. More is better.

Jamming broadcasts white noise to drown out satellite signals. It takes a lot of power and is only effective for a limited range.

Spoofing broadcasts a signal that mimics a satellite. Because the broadcast location is unknown to the receiver, the resulting location calculation is wrong.

Jamming and spoofing beyond a radius of a few hundred yards requires government level technology, and are only threats in areas of the world that are active war zones.

Still ROFL at old guy gets screen freeze over Indiana, thinks it must be jamming or spoofing.
 
inertial guys, inertial ... no need to re-invent the wheel, self contained, un-hackable, and the new ones laser/solid-state are super compact and precise
 
Bob Noel said:
I don't think an open forum is where GPS spoofing should be discussed in detail.
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I think it is good to discuss the known weakness of the system. I compare it to teaching VFR pilots about the foibles of the whiskey compass (i.e., north-loving tendencies; ANDS).

For example, I have lingering suspicions about ADS-B, because it relies upon the cooperation of the aircraft itself to broadcast an accurate position. What if someone were to program an ADS-B so it ceased broadcasting position if doing so would advertise an airspace bust? Unlikely that it would be done for the stated purpose, but it illustrates the weakness.
 
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Ed Haywood said:
Spoofing can't "guide" you anywhere. GPS tells you where you are, not where to go.
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Ah, but if we're watching the consumer media, we are in terror. I think it's the movie, "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" that opens with a 172 in severe clear spinning into the ground because someone spoofed his GPS. Hmmm... Scares people who don't know better, of course.

Paul
 
yup, make slant-India great again. That quantum compass bit looks promising. Not that it will solve the recreational aviation affordabibility issue since the solution would likely be mired in cErtIfiEd cost potato morass, so this may all be moot.
 
H
FPK1 said:
In a recently published Safety Alert for Operators, the FAA advises civilian flight crews to monitor the performance of their equipment onboard, report any GPS/GNSS issues to air traffic controllers, and prepare to fly without digital satellite navigation systems before they take off...

www.forbes.com

FAA Tells Pilots To Go Analogue As GNSS ‘Spoofing’ Incidents Increase

Incidents of aircraft navigation systems disrupted by false data have become more frequent, causing pilots to veer dangerously off course.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
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Hey I’ve got an idea, let’s shut down 90% of the VORs in the country, GPS is super reliable!
 
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