Russian GLONASS Down For 12 Hours 148
An anonymous reader writes "In an unprecedented total disruption of a fully operational GNSS constellation, all satellites in the Russian GLONASS broadcast corrupt information for 11 hours, from just past midnight until noon Russian time (UTC+4), on April 2 (or 5 p.m. on April 1 to 4 a.m. April 2, U.S. Eastern time). This rendered the system completely unusable to all worldwide GLONASS receivers."
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Unlikely... More likely it's them checking their (not announced) scrambling works, ready for an invasion.
Re:Ukrainian hackers? (Score:4, Funny)
Just sayin'.
Or Russian Wodka. It would give them a good excuse to take over Ukraine by accident - sorry wrong turn!
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Or Russian Wodka. It would give them a good excuse to take over Ukraine by accident - sorry wrong turn!
They've already used that excuse, without the vodka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363 [wikipedia.org]
Re:Ukrainian hackers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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From Stargate SG1:
"Plausible deniability. In the event of a future breach of security, we'll be able to point to this television program. That is, if it stays on the air." - Hammond
Well they sure solved that last part... fast turnaround times. I wonder who had the idea first.. (i hope the engineers that developed it)
sanctions? (Score:3)
How does this affect dual-system chipsets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Newer phones have location chipsets that support both GPS and GLONASS. Do they figure out automatically that the GLONASS information is bad and switch to using GPS exclusively?
I've noticed much increased performance since I upgraded to a phone that uses both systems, especially in cities with a lot of tall buildings like NYC and Chicago.
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>tall buildings
more likely you get are getting a fix from nearby cell towers + wifi
GPS/GLONASS doesn't work without direct line of sight to the satellites.
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Yes, off by dozens of feet compared to the 11,000 miles the signal traveled.
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Actually, the smarter receivers do still work with bounced signals involved.
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True. But if you, say, double the number of satellites you're tracking, you have a better shot of being in the line-of-sight of three of them...
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But more satellites that can be read = higher chance of getting them line of sight with obstructions around you.
Cell + Wifi gives rather good results quickly but I've also noticed GPS + GLONASS reduces the error margin quite substantially compared to plain GPS.
Re:How does this affect dual-system chipsets? (Score:5, Informative)
Newer phones have location chipsets that support both GPS and GLONASS. Do they figure out automatically that the GLONASS information is bad and switch to using GPS exclusively?
To promote their system, Russia decided to make new smartphones without GLONASS support illegal [gpsworld.com] in their country -- so major manufacturers added that capability to all their phones (since there is almost no additional cost to each unit, once the capability is designed into the chipset). Not sure about CDMA chipset, since there is no major CDMA networking in Russia.
Would be nice if we got Galileo GNSS and Beidou support too, but I'm not expecting it to happen unless they pull a similar stunt with their markets (well, China might).
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-1, uninformative.
You didn't answer the question (what is the response of a dual-system receiver when one system is sending bad data), you just told the OP what he already stipulated (that the receiver is dual system).
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This isn't stackoverflow you know, there is no requirement to 'answer the question' asked in the post you reply to, just that you have something interesting and preferably on topic.
This post is obviously off-topic but I'm hoping if you learn a bit about slashdot from it then at least it helped someone.
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"And with that post you contributed what exactly?"
I identified a +5,informative post as containing no relevant information beyond repeating what the OP supplied..
"have something interesting and preferably on topic... learn a bit about slashdot"
Maybe you should tell that to the person with the 5-digit ID who only quoted the OP's information back to him.
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If you think any of this information is incorrect then please feel free to post you
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I found they gave the impression things were going better with my GPSr, I synched with satellites quickly, but once in a while I'd have wild, like 1000+ foot inaccuracy. The issue would resolve after a day or so. The last time it happened I disabled GLONASS and haven't used it since. Having it does create a larger constellation to use, but only so long as they all work from the same page -- where they think they are.
Re:How does this affect dual-system chipsets? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to depend where you are. I find that in the far east GPS is often less accurate that GLONASS. My understanding is that it is due to them using different approximations of the shape of the earth (it isn't quite round, more of an ellipsoid). In fact you get this with some mapping applications too because the map data is based on, say, the Japanese approximation that is well suited to their country but the GPS receiver is using the US approximation (WGS85 or something?)
I bet if you are stood in Moscow GLONASS is better. I find it is definitely more accurate in Japan, although Japan is supposed to be launching its own GPS supplementary satellites to improve the situation in the next few years.
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Seems like the issue is that every nation wants to have its own standard for the shape of the Earth and use it for all the local maps, and rather than standardizing globally the solution is to launch multiple redundant location systems each designed around the local custom.
The whole thing seems silly, like arguing over where to draw the prime meridian. If every country wanted the prime meridian to go through their own capital, then you couldn't use a single lat/long coordinate to find yourself on any map.
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There are good reasons for having the different models. The actual latitude and longitude lines are fixed, what changes is the way GPS calculates its position. The US model doesn't work well in Japan and probably not too well in Russia, so why would they use it? Maybe the US should switch to the Japanese method if you don't think it matters that everything is off by a few hundred metres.
Maps are of course drawn with real latitude/longitude markers, not the GPS approximation.
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Maps are of course drawn with real latitude/longitude markers, not the GPS approximation.
This right here is the problem. If you're going to compute a position using GPS, then the map should be referenced to GPS.
I'm not saying the US has it right. I'm saying that having a single standard and using it everywhere makes a lot more sense than each country picking their own.
The bottom line is that if I ask "what is my current lat/long" there are 47 different answers depending on what definitions you make. By all means pick the best overall model, but don't use one model for one system and another
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It isn't the fact that you have support for both but rather that newer receivers have have improved ability to pull the signals out from background noise and lock on faster.
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Given GLONASS is really only complete above the Russian Federation and spotty everywhere outside it, a dumb navigation chip would use GPS outside of Russia and GPS/GLONASS inside because it can't acquire a complete GLONASS lock outside.
A smarter chip may use whatever GLONASS satellites it does see to aid in reception, and the error wo
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Source- I work in an industry that heavily relies upon GPS. Our dual GPS/GLONASS products (and our competitors') had major issues during this event.
Down? Or encrypted? (Score:4, Informative)
The system shutting down while still broadcasting "gibberish" seems awfully inconvenient. Sure they just didn't switch to encrypted transmissions?
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Im not up on GLONASS but don't most GPS systems broadcast in a range of service levels, you can only decrypt that access level you pay for, and countries reserve the top level for their military.
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Most likely encrypted.
They, (The Russians) are massing troupes, maybe by historical Russian standards, a small mass.
It would make sense that they would test whatever secure military mode that is built into the system.
12 hours is not an a huge amount of time, but is could be enough to operationally test most of the hardware that is deployed on the 'frontier'.
Apparently just corrupt ephemeris data (Score:1)
It wasn't the timing data that was bad, it was the ephemeris. Which is computed periodically by the ground controllers and just repeated by the satellite.
Modern satellites can operate for quite a while without updates, by using a pre-programmed series of predicted ephemerides. But that doesn't protect them from a corrupted update.
Apparently what happened was a bad upload, and they had to wait for the satellites to complete an orbit (12 hours) and come back in view of the control station to receive a corre
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It wasn't gibberish, it was just incorrect orbit data that produced invalid results when used to calculate position on the ground. There was no fault as such, the ground station just sent up some bad data and the satellites relayed it.
Down or Scrambled (Score:1)
Did not mean to cross the Ukrainian border, satnav was broken.
I don't miss them. (Score:4, Insightful)
I used them along with the US GPS satellites, until a couple months back, but found I was having some serious accuracy issues. Disabling them resolved the issue and I haven't used them since. GPSr unit: Garmin Oregon 600
Intentional (Score:2)
Until very recently the US would intentionally degrade the GPS signal to all but military traffic (all the time). Considering the major military actions going on in the Ukraine by Russia one could suppose this is actually the case, particularly if perhaps the Ukraine military also uses the same system... I would not be terribly surprised if this is the case. The US did the same when they invaded Iraq.
Unless the gibberish it was transmitting was: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Then someone needs to press a damn b
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If by "very recently" you mean 14 years ago (literally in the 20th century) that selective availability was turned off.....
As for your other points:
1. The U.S. did not degrade any civilian GPS when they invaded Iraq.
2. If you honestly think the Ukranians are beholden to GLONASS... which doesn't even work for the Russians a large portion of the time.. and are somehow too stupid to buy commercial GPS products that are made in Taiwan and used by the rest of the world, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Hell, eve
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"...it happened in 2000 once the U.S. military developed a new system that provides the ability to deny GPS (and other navigation services) to hostile forces in a specific area of crisis without affecting the rest of the world or its own military systems."
Perhaps the US is using such a system actively in the Ukraine region.
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No link, just a quote. tsk. tsk.
Anyway, how to you disable a radio signal being broad cast to a 1/4 of the world to a small subsection?
Anyways, 2000 was 14 years ago and literally in the 20th century, like the poster said.
In post-Soviet Russia when you pull out GPS (Score:1)
YOU get lost.
that explains the US military shuttle record (Score:2)
Now we know why that US DOD mini shuttle was up for so long, recently. It was hacking into the Russian satellites.
I saw this episode.. (Score:2)
How is this possible?! NCIS:LA's Eric totally fixed the zero day in GLONASS on episode 5x18! During a gun battle on a roof no less!
Cause (Score:2)
“Bad ephemerides were uploaded to satellites. Those bad ephemerides became active at 1:00 am Moscow time,” reported one knowledgeable source.
It still could have be the US, who knows.
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Maybe a little warning to Ivan that despite their recent upgrades in kit, Uncle Sam is still in the game.
So much speculation... (Score:5, Interesting)
So much speculation from people who do not appear to have even read the article.
FTA: “Bad ephemerides were uploaded to satellites. Those bad ephemerides became active at 1:00 am Moscow time... a GLONASS fix could not take effect until each satellite in turn passed back over control stations in the Northern Hemisphere to be reset, thus taking nearly 12 hours.”
The article concludes that the outage was probably due to a human error which "...could conceivably occur with GPS, Galileo, or BeiDou" and advises consumers not to rely on only one system.
My [completely uninformed and speculative] guess is that the Russians probably rushed a software update to meet some military deadline and it backfired on them - now Putin's troops amassed along the Ukrainian boarder may have to do without whatever feature they were trying to quickly enable.
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It was probably as reported, but was around during the cold war, so part of me still wonders. IT's an irrational part of my, but then a childhood full of fear of nuclear hell leaves a mark.
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The "...could conceivably occur with GPS, Galileo, or BeiDou" part of the article isn't entirely true, though. Galileo is not operational (only four satellites have been launched, all proof-of-concepts), for starters. Beidou is a mixed constellation for which half the coverage doesn't have the access issues of a pure-MEO constellation. A GPS satellite could conceivably have the same problem, but it's easily corrected because GPS is supported by a network of ground stations with global coverage--corrected ep
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I find that the impact of my arguments suffer when I try to base them on facts. It is so much more fun to shoot from the hip while looking in another direction.
shut off during war (Score:2)
Ingress (Score:5, Funny)
I sense the shadowy hand of Lighthouse... (Score:2)
Russian time? (Score:2)
What's Random Gibberish? (Score:3)
One person's gibberish is another's encrypted data. Perhaps Russia was testing a encrypted "secure" mode that would switch to in time on conflict, such as an invasion or something like that.
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This could be prep to the Russian attack. (Score:1)
In Soviet Russa.... (Score:2)
Following GLONASS directions on your Garmin gets you lost....
Yay unexplained acronymns! (Score:2)
For those of us who don't have any idea what GNSS or GLONASS stand for...it would really be nice to tell us what the hell this article is actually about.
GNSS = global navigation satellite system
GLONASS = "acronym for Globalnaya navigatsionnaya sputnikovaya sistema or Global Navigation Satellite System, is a space-based satellite navigation system operated by the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. It provides an alternative to Global Positioning System (GPS) and is the only alternative navigational system in
Not only that... (Score:3)
Oops (Score:3)
"In an unprecedented total disruption of a fully operational GNSS constellation, all satellites in the Russian GLONASS broadcast corrupt information for 11 hours [...] This rendered the system completely unusable to all worldwide GLONASS receivers."
Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.
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Careful when you shoot across bows. World Wars are easy to start, not always so easy to finish the way you want them to.
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When all their guided missiles rely on said system? I'd call that a major breach of national security
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Gee, I feel better already.....
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Re:Warning Shot (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm afraid that I most commonly see "definitely" written as "defiantly", which leads to some strange initial interpretations before I fix things up:
"I am defiantly hungry!"
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"hit there targets". Their, their, their, THEIR! Basic kingergarten-level knowledge. Damn idiocracy. 10 years from now, everyone will spell "right" as "rite" and posts complaining about it will get downvoted. Mark my words. (after all, most people already think "definitely" is spelled "definately", and can't tell the difference between "doing good" and "doing well")
It's even worse than that. There/their/they're confusion has been around a long time, but what just baffles me is that younger people today actually think that "prolly" is a real word. I talked to a relative who is in college right now and pointed out to him that "prolly" wasn't a real word and it was "probably" and he looked just shocked as he replied to me that he did not ever recall seeing the word "probably" in his life.
Missing comma (Score:1)
Calm down, it's just missing a comma:
"Hit there, targets!"
In Soviet Russia, targets hit you!
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There is always an excuse when you make a mistake.
Should I respond to your error with a rant on spelling?
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My spelling mistake was just a mistype on Samsung's stupid virtual keyboard. But if you confuse "there" with "their", it means that, for you, use of english is nothing more than parroting a bunch or sounds
ROFL.... "my mistake was the computer's fault, your mistake was a sign of your intellectual inadequacy".
Or perhaps the OP also has a virtual keyboard (or some other not-terribly-bright auto-correct mechanism) that auto-converted a slight misspelling of "their" (e.g. "ther") into "there" and wasn't noticed in time.
But don't let that stop you from telling the OP how superior your language skills are to his. You clearly are a prodigy, that's why you get to post to Slashdot.
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Muphry's Law [wikipedia.org]
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Russia is not the only country capable of this type of action. After all how much precision is really necessary when you are dealing with nukes?
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I suggest you read up how WW-I was started over nothing.
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And the world right now is all peace and love?
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Re:Warning Shot (Score:4, Informative)
It was. The chain of event that follow the assassination were a pretty rapid and unlikely chain of events to have happened without that assassination.
If you are curious, reading the account of what was happening the day the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated is a comedy of errors.
It's also highly unlikely the WWII would have happened without WWI, since there would not have been the poverty and economic status Hitler used to gain power.
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It was. The chain of event that follow the assassination were a pretty rapid and unlikely chain of events to have happened without that assassination.
Erm, no.
There had been an arms race between the European powers for decades before WWI, building more battleships, developing machine guns, bigger artillery pieces. Beyond this, the powers were signing mutual defence pacts. The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand was merely the spark that ignited the powder keg. The war was pretty inevitable due to the background behind it. Germany and England (as well as everyone else) was spoiling for a fight. If it weren't for Austria being backed by Germany Prussia
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Even speaking maximally literally, I wouldn't call the future king being assassinated "nothing." Whether they thought the country the assassin was from had knowledge of his actions is another question.
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With a pistol, Princip shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The reaction among the people in Austria was mild, almost indifferent. As historian Zbynk Zeman later wrote, "the event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On Sunday and Monday [June 28 and 29], the crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened."
Escalation of violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina
However, in Sarajevo itself, Austrian authorities encouraged[32][33] violence against the Serb residents, which resulted in the Anti-Serb riots of Sarajevo, in which Croats and Bosnian Muslims killed two ethnic Serbs and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. The events have been described as having the characteristics of a pogrom. Writer Ivo Andri referred to the violence as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate."[34] Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were organized not only in Sarajevo, but also in many other large Austro-Hungarian cities in modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Hmm. Looks like the Balkans were up to their usual hijinks. 80 years later and they went and did the same thing(ish). Sigh.
Re:Warning Shot (Score:5, Insightful)
Careful when you shoot across bows. World Wars are easy to start, not always so easy to finish the way you want them to.
I doubt the US would do it, if we did want to disable it for any reason, such as missile guidance, we wouldn't tip our hand so casually.
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It will be interesting times ahead. The US used to get away with so much of it's foreign policy because of the mythic aura of the American-Dream that made it so palatable to poor developing countries. With the recent constant revelations of j
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Where have you been for the past couple of decades? The US has gotten more blatant in it's actions. It is these very overt actions, without significant outcry from other countries, that is leading the other Big Powers to feel confident in making overt moves as well.
It will be interesting times ahead. The US used to get away with so much of it's foreign policy because of the mythic aura of the American-Dream that made it so palatable to poor developing countries.
No, the US used to get away with so much of it's foreign policy because the idea of foreign aid and economic trade with America made it very palatable to poor developing countries. See how everyone is starting to bend over backward to China as it begins to assert its economic weight.
With the recent constant revelations of just how hypocritical the US is, and the fact they're running out of countries that they haven't fucked over, they're losing their carefully built image and status as "policer-of-the-free-world".
What rock have *you* been living under for the last 100 years? Have you been paying any attention at all to US foreign policy in Latin America and the Middle East for, I don't know, the last century? Has there been a time when
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Anyways, until recently, the regular population of most countries actually still believed that the "American" way was honourable and something to strive towards.
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Anyone else think this is a shot across the Russian bow? Demonstrating to the Russians that the US really does control space even if we have to bum rides to ISS at the moment?
Seriously? The US does not even control its inner cities. Have you been in Detroit, in Trenton, etc. lately?
Instead of such "Star Wars" the money could be better spent to tackle the severe social problems at home.
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"Seriously? The US does not even control its inner cities. Have you been in Detroit, in Trenton, etc. lately? "
If you dont think this is intentional then you are nuts. they know that these cities are out of control cesspools, and it is intentional they are still that way. We have the resources to clean them up and restore order easily, but you don't have a easily controlled scared populace when you do that. DC is a cesspool because it is more effective to have an element of fear to point at to help s
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Actually, it's easier to manipulate comfortable people who feel safe. When was the last time a government was overthrown because it's populace was secure and well fed?
The PATRIOT act was easy because of 9/11. Not becasue states won't take care of their cities.
Re:Warning Shot (Score:5, Insightful)
If you dont think this is intentional then you are nuts
Of course it's intentional but not for the reason you think. The reason that Detroit, Trenton and (at least previously) DC were/are cesspools is because of the evil force known as democracy. The residents of those cities and states voted for crap politicians who drove their respective areas into the ground economically. Nobody from outside imposed Marion Barry or Kwame Kilpatrick onto their cities, and nobody had to nefariously conspire to make them suck, they did that perfectly well on their own. Externalities can hurt a city or state, but to get it into Detroit territory you have to actively keep making it worse on your own - and the residents of those areas have nobody but their own votes to thank for it.
Seriously... not EVERYTHING is a gubmint conspiracy. Sometimes it's just stupid people electing terrible leaders, and that's the downside of democracy that comes along with all the other good stuff. Ask the people of Venezuela how electing people who promise free goodies works out in the long run.
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Have you even been to DC? The vast majority of DC is a pretty cool place to live. When I lived there the only thing that vaguely made me feel threatened was terrorists with airplanes, anthrax and the sniper, who was from out of town.
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There's no money in that.
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The cities are part of a state and the state responsibility. The military is a federal organization.
The government of Michigan is letting those people down, not the feds.