America's GPS Problem

Paywall or sign in to social media. Do you have a TL;DR summary?
 
Nothing new. GPS can be jammed or spoofed, and the satellites are vulnerable to acts of nature like solar flares and the ill intents of nations with spacefaring capabilities.
 
steingar said:
Nothing new. GPS can be jammed or spoofed, and the satellites are vulnerable to acts of nature like solar flares and the ill intents of nations with spacefaring capabilities.
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Yep. Not worried. No more of a threat than it has been for 30 years.
 
When someone with bad intentions can take out enough of the constellation(s) or jam their signals enough to cause a widespread and persistent GPS outage then that GPS outage is probably the least of our worries.

Localized effects, sure, but that's not nearly the threat it's made out to be given the state of GPS-denied technology.

Nauga,
and the tactics of deception
 
A crosscheck scheme using the old LORAN system would eliminate spoofing. Fiddling with that 100 KHZ signal would require a huge antennae - not anything portable.
 
EdFred said:
Henges FTW!
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Dah! Ed wins!

I have to look back at my Airplane Flying Handbook from 2500BC to remember how to use them for navigation. But I think I need to upgrade my 430 to be able to use them, it is so ancient...
 
Loadstone floating in a pail of water. Least you fly off the edge of the earth into the clutches of the waiting sea monsters ....
 
kyleb said:
Yep. Not worried. No more of a threat than it has been for 30 years.
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as more and more of our daily lives use/depend on GPS, it becomes more attractive to jam/disrupt reception of GPS signals.
 
nauga said:
When someone with bad intentions can take out enough of the constellation(s) or jam their signals enough to cause a widespread and persistent GPS outage then that GPS outage is probably the least of our worries.

Localized effects, sure, but that's not nearly the threat it's made out to be given the state of GPS-denied technology.

Nauga,
and the tactics of deception
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Local jamming is easy though and if targeted to disrupt a specific need by someone there, very effective. It doesn't have to be widespread.


Sent from my LM-G850 using Tapatalk
 
IMHO the chance than a VOR or ILS will be out when you need it is hundreds of times more likely than bad guys or black fed gov ops taking out GPS.
 
WDD said:
IMHO the chance than a VOR or ILS will be out when you need it is hundreds of times more likely than bad guys or black fed gov ops taking out GPS.
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We, meaning the government, purposefully jams GPS all the time out west here. Monthly warnings from all the usual test areas covering most of my State.

It's technically an outage and happens waaay more often than VOR outages.

Sent from my LM-G850 using Tapatalk
 
Nothing wrong with a DF steer, the only flight service station that still has one that I have come across was in Talkeena Alaska, and that was back in 09. When I enquired about it no one know how to use it. Back in the UK we used to request a QDM best I remember.
 
Interesting article, Peter. Thank you for the link.

I am in the group who thinks we do need a backup. Not sure what it should be, but LORAN was great I thought.
 
I agree with Nauga in that if we experience widespread outages, we’re probably in a wartime situation and it really won’t matter on the civ side of things. We’ll have more important things to worry about than air travel being disrupted. Military side of the house trains to these navigation denials on a regular basis. That’s why they have INS backups.
 
denverpilot said:
Local jamming is easy though and if targeted to disrupt a specific need by someone there, very effective. It doesn't have to be widespread.
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I'm well aware of what it takes to jam and spoof GPS, I just don't think it's likely to be as disruptive as the article would have you believe. Certainly not for aviation.

denverpilot said:
We, meaning the government, purposefully jams GPS all the time out west here. Monthly warnings from all the usual test areas covering most of my State.

It's technically an outage and happens waaay more often than VOR outages.
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The type of jamming "we" are testing is cooperative, in that it's announced and can be accommodated if you actually read the NOTAMS and does not compare with uncooperative jamming, spoofing, or other disruption, which in the US tends to be much lower power and less effective.

Nauga,
FUD jamming
 
Bill said:
Paywall or sign in to social media. Do you have a TL;DR summary?
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Sure. The last sentence of the article:

The fear is that debate and deliberation will continue, when time is running out.

It's alarmist claptrap, which the public gobbles like pigs at a trough.
 
I flew guns for 20 years AH-1s and AH-64s with a single NDB for IFR...bring it on...hopefully there’s also some radar for a PAR as well...I remember when GPS was only for the Artillery in the Army...
 
NDB? That’s advanced stuff right there. Not available in I Corps in 1970.

How about clock, RMI, and altimeter —your fundamentals for enroute work in the clouds: Vietnam Flight Rules (VFR).
 
Analogous in a way to never using an electronic flight calculator instead of the cardboard E6B, because you might run out of batteries. Or relying on radios, because they might break - just fly with your eyes.
 
WDD said:
IMHO the chance than a VOR or ILS will be out when you need it is hundreds of times more likely than bad guys or black fed gov ops taking out GPS.
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A single event could wreck every GPS approach within your fuel range or even further. If you come upon an ILS outage chances are you can go find another one close by to get you safely on the ground
 
WDD said:
IMHO the chance than a VOR or ILS will be out when you need it is hundreds of times more likely than bad guys or black fed gov ops taking out GPS.
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kind of hard to predict the failure rate caused by deliberate actions. And I don't believe that it's a valid comparison (random failure rate of a specific VOR vs the non-random failure due to deliberate sabotage)
 
Morgan3820 said:
I am pretty sure that I can live without gps, in fact I would prefer it.
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Why would you prefer to live without it? Not arguing - everyone has their own preferences, and those are yours and yours alone. But I am not sure I have every heard anyone say they would prefer not to have GPS in their life. So maybe just a question borne out of curiosity.
 
somorris said:
Interesting article, Peter. Thank you for the link.

I am in the group who thinks we do need a backup. Not sure what it should be, but LORAN was great I thought.
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GLONASS. If it’s down at the same time as GPS, we’re in a war and have much bigger problems than private aviation.
 
Half Fast said:
GLONASS. If it’s down at the same time as GPS, we’re in a war and have much bigger problems than private aviation.
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GLONASS has been spotty for a good while now when you're trying to use it for high accuracy differential processing. Since before Thanksgiving.
 
nauga said:
The type of jamming "we" are testing is cooperative, in that it's announced and can be accommodated if you actually read the NOTAMS and does not compare with uncooperative jamming, spoofing, or other disruption, which in the US tends to be much lower power and less effective.

Nauga,
FUD jamming
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I'm not spreading FUD. Try finding a day here where we aren't under a so-called "cooperative" NOTAM.

It's only cooperative in more densely populated areas where the service is seemed more critical and isn't a "fly over State".

Now is it causing in-flight probkrms? Usually not.

But if you chose to fly whenever there wasn't a jamming NOTAM up around here, you wouldn't fly very often.

Fully aware it is more difficult to bother aircraft than other users. Re-read my post and you'll notice it said nothing about aircraft being the possible (and easy) target of specific user jamming for a nefarious purpose.

Diversity in navaids is never a bad thing. Especially when you live in the "constant jamming zones". The NOTAMs have hit my inbox for years now like clockwork every month.

Lots of folls here have no idea such constant waemjngs of jamming by our own entities even is a "thing". That's the only reason I mentioned it. Not FUD. Reality here.

Sent from my LM-G850 using Tapatalk
 
It's amazing we find our way to the end of the street sometimes.

Nauga,
behind every tree
 
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