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Russia Jammed GPS During Major NATO Military Exercise With US Troops (cnn.com) 236

The Russian military jammed GPS signals during a major NATO military exercise in Norway that involved thousands of US and NATO troops, the alliance said Wednesday, citing the Norwegian government. From a report: The NATO exercise, Trident Juncture, concluded Sunday and involved some 50,000 personnel. It was labeled the alliance's largest exercise since the Cold War. Non-NATO members Finland and Sweden also participated in the exercise. A spokesperson for the Norwegian ministry of defense acknowledged the jamming to CNN, which it said took place between October 16 and November 7, and said it would defer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on further questions to Russian authorities.

"Norway has determined that Russia was responsible for jamming GPS signals in the Kola Peninsula during Exercise Trident Juncture. Finland has expressed concern over possible jamming in Lapland," NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu told CNN Wednesday. "In view of the civilian usage of GPS, jamming of this sort is dangerous, disruptive and irresponsible," she added. Asked about the report of Russian jamming, NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was aware of the reports but did not offer additional information. "We have seen there have been similar reports from Norway, and I cannot share more precise information with you," Stoltenberg said Sunday at a news conference marking the end of Trident Juncture.

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Russia Jammed GPS During Major NATO Military Exercise With US Troops

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  • Helpful (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aero77 ( 1242364 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:09AM (#57642708)
    It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.
    • It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      It makes no sense. If Russia has the ability to do this, of course they wouldn't show it during a NATO exercise.

      Or maybe they can do 1'000 times more damages and want to hide it from NATO.

      Or maybe they want NATO to believe this, and they showed all they could.

      • Re:Helpful (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:26AM (#57642868)

        Come on, what ability are you talking about?
        Even petty criminals can jam GPS. The signal is so weak you can build a jammer yourself or even order one on ebay if you are too lazy.

      • Re:Helpful (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:32AM (#57642924)

        If Russia has the ability to do this,

        Everyone has the ability to do this. There is no "if" involved. Signal jamming is easy, especially if you only want to jam a single known band.
        All those FCC regulations on your wifi router that Slashdotters find an offensive infringement on their right to overload the airwaves? Those exist to reduce accidental "jamming" of nearby signal bands.

        All you need is an antenna and a bigger power supply than the signal you want to overload. With GPS, the signal strength is pretty low by the time it reaches human activities, so you could jam a large area with a car battery, a bit of frequency conversion, and a metal post.

        • I don't get how jamming GPS is so easy?
          If I\d encase the receiver's antenna with a type of metal bowl that opens to the top, so that only signals coming from the sky can be received - how could anything earth-based interfere or jam the signal coming from GPS satellites?
          • by hjf ( 703092 )

            No antenna is perfect, and the GPS satellites are 35,000Km away from earth. It's very easy to interfere from a couple km away with relatively low power.

          • Statistical wave propagation and distance squared are working against you. You could block a lot of the jamming, but it's very easy for the jamming to still be far more powerful, on account of it not being 12,000 miles away. GPS already operates with a negative SNR at ground level. It's simply very easy to drown out. Always has been.
          • It's all about ratios. Using a high gain antenna pointing directly at the satellites will improve the signal to jammer ratio. It could improve things by 10x, 100x, even 1000x. Then the jammer just needs to increase its power or focus its signal on the target more narrowly to increase the effective jammer power, and we're back to square one. The jammer has an easier job here because the GPS satellites are further and broadcasting over a wide area and through more atmosphere, the jammer can be closer and mor

          • Where is the sky? If you point a high gain antenna straight up your odds of hitting a satellite are greatly reduced. There's a reason that the best GPS antennas have a 180degree radiation pattern and a gain of 2.

            But even if you did point it straight up and even if you did have an incredibly high gain (no antenna is perfect), you're still battling a 500W signal from 21000km away vs a nefarious actor who is likely standing much closer to you.

            Before you understand how easy it is to jam a GPS signal you need to

        • Re:Helpful (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:46PM (#57643542)

          If Russia has the ability to do this,

          Everyone has the ability to do this. There is no "if" involved. Signal jamming is easy, especially if you only want to jam a single known band. All those FCC regulations on your wifi router that Slashdotters find an offensive infringement on their right to overload the airwaves? Those exist to reduce accidental "jamming" of nearby signal bands.

          All you need is an antenna and a bigger power supply than the signal you want to overload. With GPS, the signal strength is pretty low by the time it reaches human activities, so you could jam a large area with a car battery, a bit of frequency conversion, and a metal post.

          I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS instead of springing it on us in the opening phases of a shooting war. Without Russias kind assistance it might have been a lot harder to obtain funds from the politicians for preemptive improvements and the procurement of less vulnerable systems. This, and their hacking efforts along with disruptions of drone guidance signals, along with their downright dangerous jamming of civilian air traffic systems comms and air traffic radars will result ins some very swift and comprehensive upgrades to these systems.

          • by d0rp ( 888607 )

            I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS

            My guess is that they wanted to test the equipment to gauge NATO's ability to deal with the disruption. No point in using jamming equipment if it's not going to be effective (i.e. if they already have redundant systems to prevent this kind of jamming), and you'd want to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more effective.

            • I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS

              My guess is that they wanted to test the equipment to gauge NATO's ability to deal with the disruption. No point in using jamming equipment if it's not going to be effective (i.e. if they already have redundant systems to prevent this kind of jamming), and you'd want to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more effective.

              I don't think so because testing this live against opposing forces unnecessarily warns them of your capability. The Russians could have done secret tests deep in the Siberian forests in some military exclusion zone against a simulated opposing force using either civilian equipment or western military grade equipment obtained through third countries like, say, India? who in turn got it from some western country like Israel, for example, that sells hight tech military equipment and weapons to anybody willing

      • Re: Helpful (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Type44Q ( 1233630 )

        It makes no sense. If Russia has the ability to do this, of course they wouldn't show it during a NATO exercise.

        Holy shit, as I live and breathe... an actual non-idiot.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          Said the idiot.

          Yes, if the Great Russia Federation had the advanced capabilities required to block a -130 dBm radio signal, they certainly wouldn't show it off during a NATO exercise. Such high power transmitting must remain secret until the opportune moment, when you can spring it upon the Capitalist pig dogs, who never ever saw the eventuality of a nation on this earth being able to summon the terrifying raw power required to drown out watts of power transmitted at over 12,000 miles away. As I live and
      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        This reminds me of a friend of mine in high school who was... well interesting. Tony was into cryptozoology, pyramid power, orgone energy and all that sort of thing. One day he informed me he'd built a working UFO detection alarm, following directions he'd got from one of the ufologist magazines he subscribed to (this was before the Internet).

        "How do you know it actually works?" I asked.

        "Because it goes off all the time," Tony said.

        The moral of the story is that it's easy to convince yourself that somethi

        • ...the only way they can know that it would work is to actually disrupt a NATO military exercise.M/quote> Nah, they could test this on their own GPS equipment due to the way the jamming works. There's a really good bit of information about it here [thesignaljammer.com].

        • by cstacy ( 534252 )

          The Russians built a system to disrupt NATO military use of GPS, but the only way they can know that it would work is to actually disrupt a NATO military exercise.

          There is this thing called "Science" and the big feature is that it can make correct predictions. In the case of how electromagnetic energy works, it can predict -- perfectly correctly -- and we know this -- that a trivial device can disrupt GPS. So, NO, testing it is "not the only way to know", except in some existential sense. I mean, it could be that if you turn on a radio transmitter, it doesn't broadcast a signal, but instead opens a quantum vortex from which the interdimensional aliens pop out an

          • by hey! ( 33014 )

            I'm assuming they probably tested it on their own equipment first, but that's not a very convincing test. As a civilian you can buy anti-GPS jamming equipment, although some of it requires a security clearance. Presumably the Russians aren't supposed to have the classified stuff, and even if they did it wouldn't necessarily be the same as what the US or NATO military has.

            Russians were just being assholes trying to annoy us.

            That's quite possibly a contributing motivation, but it doesn't preclude a more pragmatic motivation.

      • Why? The NATO maneuver served as a show of force. What better thing to do than to answer with one, for a much cheaper price, I might add.

        • Not even remotely a fan of Russia or its president; but .. NATO running wargames that close to Russian territory -- how are the rooskies supposed to interpret that exactly? It's sort of like during the 1960's, we place missiles in Italy and Turkey, and Russia responds by placing their own in Cuba.

          If China had a real navy, and started running drills off the coast of Japan, what would the reaction be?

      • You seem to be under the impression that they have some capability that nobody knew about until now. Slashdot really has become a bad charicature of its former self.
      • My money is on the fact that Russia thought they could embarrass NATO by foiling their exercise with a simple GPS jammer... they then sheepishly shrugged their shoulders when it didn't work.

      • In case of a real war against Russia they would shoot down GPS satellites, not just jam them.

        • by Strider- ( 39683 )

          That would be extremely difficult. The GPS birds are in medium orbit, well above the theoretical range of any known or suspected asat weapon. Furthermore it would put their own network at risk, as it's in similar orbits.

      • You can buy a fucking GPS jammer off of alibaba.
        If you're bored, you can build one for $20.
        If you're determined, you can go ahead and build one with a wide area of effect for a reasonable price as well. But warning- they *will* find you.
        WTF are you going on about, anyway? Blocking GPS isn't hard, and is expected in any military encounter with any even reasonably advanced adversary.
      • by d0rp ( 888607 )

        It makes no sense. If Russia has the ability to do this, of course they wouldn't show it during a NATO exercise.

        It makes perfect sense that Russia would run their own exercise to test their jamming equipment and gauge NATO's ability to deal with it.

    • In a real conflict, wouldn't it be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source and direct a strike on it?

      • Re:Helpful (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Streetlight ( 1102081 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:41AM (#57642994) Journal
        Use many multiple jamming devices. And when your defensive response (GPS guided weaponry) require GPS and there is no GPS signal...
        • Re:Helpful (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:45AM (#57643048)

          We've had home-on-jam HARM missiles for a long time. And we have a lot of them.

          • Re:Helpful (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:27PM (#57643368)

            A HARM [wikipedia.org] missile? Depending on the model that thing costs between 250k and 800k. Building a jammer costs a tiny fraction of that price.

            If you are stupid enough to do that, I sink you with the cost to wage that war.

            • TBH, when 1 air force coffee cup costs $1200, they really don't have to do much of anything to sink us with the cost to wage war.

            • by Nutria ( 679911 )

              I never said it was cheap or cost-efficient. Just that we've had home-on-jammer HARMs for a long time.

      • In a real conflict, wouldn't it be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source and direct a strike on it?

        In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source,

        In the second place, "directing strikes" is what Western armed forces do when they have invaded some poor country without proper defences or weapons. "Directing strikes" against sites that may well be inside Russia itself would be an act of war; and Russian military doctrine is that direct attacks on Russia itself will be met with a nuclear response.

        So if you want to be hit with an unstoppable nuclear missile, g

        • " In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source "

          Easier than you may realize.

          Between ships and aircraft outfitted with the right antenna arrays to satellite based systems, if you fire up a transmitter we can build an AOU small enough to send several cruise missiles your way to say hello.

          The spooky people use to send us targeting data based on this stuff so we could incorporate it into the bigger picture of whatever region we were operating in at the time.

          Th

    • Indeed, that was suspiciously generous of them to reveal their capabilities like that...
      • Excuse me, what did they reveal? That they can jam a weak signal? Sorry, I didn't know this was a state secret.

        What they revealed was that quite a bit of the NATO equipment relies far too much on working GPS. For that PR blunder in what was the biggest military exercise since the end of the cold war, you can reveal the secret that you can do what anyone could since WW2.

    • From TFA:

      "Norway has determined that Russia was responsible for jamming GPS signals in the Kola Peninsula..."

      Er, has anyone realised that the Kola Peninsula lies wholly inside Russia?

    • It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      Well, yeah. Seriously, I'd think they need to be ready for this?

      "We'd like to announce that what the enemy did was really unhelpful, and even dangerous"

      Oh, well, OK then, that should take care of it ...

    • It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      The same thing is happening in Ukraine. With all the Russian jamming devices sent in to help the terrorists, NATO and others are taking their own equipment to the battlefield to see how things work as well as sucking up all the information they can on how to minimize or counter the jamming.

      It's almost as if Putin didn't think things through when he invaded another country, what with over 3,000 Russian soldiers dead so far, and has to supp
  • Real war conditions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nukenbar ( 215420 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:12AM (#57642736)

    Sounds like what will really happen in a conflict.

    • Sounds like what will really happen in a conflict.

      Exactly right. In a conflict, all hell would break loose and there would be collateral damage.

      When there is no conflict, civilian users of GPS can be forgiven for getting a little steamed if they become "collateral damage".

      If NATO wants to simulate a loss of GPS, they can certainly do that without "help".

      • Exactly.

        "In view of the civilian usage of GPS, jamming of this sort is dangerous, disruptive and irresponsible,"

        War is "dangerous, disruptive and irresponsible (to many)". Losing GPS isn't the worst thing that would happen to the civilian population in actual war.

        • It's mild compared to getting shot down (e.g. Russia shooting down MH17) . But in peacetime losing position can be pretty damn dangerous.

  • by techdolphin ( 1263510 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:15AM (#57642768)
    I hope our military can operate without GPS, and it is something they should practice with or without Russia's help.
    • Re:Good Practice (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:31AM (#57642920)

      They can, but Russia wants to observe the procedure so that they can interfere with that too.

      If other nations would do to Russia half of the bullshit Russia does to others then the Russian generals would have a fscking meltdown.

    • Re:Good Practice (Score:4, Informative)

      by Micah NC ( 5616634 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:39AM (#57642984)
      Iran's capture of our drone four years or so ago ... indicates our military can't operate without GPS.

      On the other side ... human pilots (with all the design/support/payload/safety) bring up aircraft cost astronomically.
  • by Octorian ( 14086 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:56AM (#57643130) Homepage

    So when Russia does their next big exercise, should we deploy the GLONASS jammers in return?

    I really do hope we're able to deal with a lack of GPS. Everything has become so dependent on it, and this general assumption that we have unchallenged space superiority. Probably because we've gotten way to accustomed to fighting Iraqis and Afghans who really cannot even pretend to challenge us technologically.

    • by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:31PM (#57643402)

      GLONASS is (slightly) better defended against jamming. It's not impossible but the signal frequency for each GLONASS satellite is not fixed like GPS. So you have to jam a broader band and since the satellites are built for this, they can switch frequencies at a dime.

      Even GPS jamming isn't that effective for military installations unless you do it from space. Various anti-jamming techniques for military purposes involve having multiple receivers, some that would shield signals that come laterally (from the ground). Although that may prevent you from acquiring satellites nearer the horizon, it's a tradeoff.

    • We should probably be prepared to use GPS or GLONASS (as well as neither).

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @11:58AM (#57643154)

    C'mon slashdot. Everyone knows that GPS can be jammed, and the NATO military can deal with it. The reason that this is an issue is that civilian GPS was jammed. Aircraft, boats, etc. that were not part of the military exercises were possibly affected. That is a reckless and possibly dangerous thing to do.

    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      does this mean people will no longer be eager to dump all those VOR stations scattered about the country?
  • ... shame on NATO. I would expect this to be one of the first things that is done during any military conflict. So I'd say we owe a thank-you to Russia for adding a level of realism to the exercises.
    • Considering a few countries filed NOTAMs about GPS being blocked before Russia jammed anything, I really doubt it was a surprise.

      Also, GPS jamming is somewhat common in military exercises. It turns out the military is not staffed entirely by idiots.

    • I would expect this to be one of the first things that is done during any military conflict.

      They do.
      What led you to believe otherwise?
      This is news because a country we have a near Cold War with did it across their border and impacted civilian population as well as military exercises.
      Not quite an act of war, but it's hostile. Whether or not it's expected in case of a real conflict is entirely inconsequential to the report.

  • by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @01:04PM (#57643636) Homepage Journal

    Civilians... other than considering them acceptable collateral damage?

  • If it's actually true that Russia jammed GPS, one should thank them profusely. Any military planner who expects GPS to last past the first minutes of a serious military confrontation, is living in fantasy land. It is easily jammed, and numerous countries undoubtedly have anti-satellite capability. Hence, practicing maneuvers without GPS had better be standard practice.

    Of course, it's also possible that one NATO unit was tasked with the jamming, without informing the other units. And this was later blamed on

  • All's fair in love and war.
    I hope they are still able to operate with map and compass and aim their guns with slide rule calculations.
    The next world war could quickly devolve into a good old fashioned hand to hand blood bath.

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