Interference With America's GPS System 'Has Grown Dramatically' (yahoo.com) 31
86 aircraft were affected by an incident in Denver ,and 256 more in Dallas-Fort Worth, America's Federal Aviation Admistrationtold the Washington Post:
The pilots flying into Denver International Airport could tell something was wrong. In urgent calls to air traffic controllers, they reported that the Global Positioning System was going haywire, forcing them to rely on backup navigation systems for more than a day. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to air traffic in the area. Eight months later, in October 2022, it happened again — this time at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, which shut down a runway as pilots and air traffic controllers scrambled over two days without GPS to guide them. Federal officials have not said who was responsible for interfering with the systems or why it took so long to get them back online, though they've said the Denver incident was unintentional. But the disruptions stoked fear about the security vulnerabilities of GPS, a satellite network relied on daily by 6 billion people, businesses and governments.
Over the past two years, interference with the U.S. Global Positioning System has grown dramatically, threatening a network that is highly vulnerable to attack in a conflict. The danger could be posed by enemy or rogue nation-states — or even just hobbyists with commercially available equipment. Efforts by the Pentagon to upgrade GPS have been delayed by years and have cost billions, as adversaries are developing increasingly sophisticated ways to jam and trick the system with false signals that make it think it is somewhere it isn't. And it's not just civilian airline traffic at risk. The underpinnings of modern life and entire economies could be disrupted by a broad attack on the fragile satellite system — power grids, financial systems, cellphone networks — raising the prospect of catastrophe in an era of increasing electronic warfare...
A report last year by the OpsGroup, an organization of international airline operators, found that in January 2024, about 300 flights per day were affected by GPS interference. By late last year, that number had grown to 1,500 flights per day as conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East continued. And in a one-month period, between July and August last year, some 41,000 flights were affected. "While GPS interference is not a new phenomenon, the scale and effects of the current wave of spoofing are unprecedented," the report found...
The Pentagon has launched eight of its next-generation GPS III satellites, which broadcast the military-grade signal that is more resistant to jamming and spoofing. Lockheed Martin, the contractor building the satellites, is also developing a next-generation spacecraft, which would have the ability to emit an even stronger "spot beam" directly to areas used by U.S. forces, making it even more difficult to jam.
Over the past two years, interference with the U.S. Global Positioning System has grown dramatically, threatening a network that is highly vulnerable to attack in a conflict. The danger could be posed by enemy or rogue nation-states — or even just hobbyists with commercially available equipment. Efforts by the Pentagon to upgrade GPS have been delayed by years and have cost billions, as adversaries are developing increasingly sophisticated ways to jam and trick the system with false signals that make it think it is somewhere it isn't. And it's not just civilian airline traffic at risk. The underpinnings of modern life and entire economies could be disrupted by a broad attack on the fragile satellite system — power grids, financial systems, cellphone networks — raising the prospect of catastrophe in an era of increasing electronic warfare...
A report last year by the OpsGroup, an organization of international airline operators, found that in January 2024, about 300 flights per day were affected by GPS interference. By late last year, that number had grown to 1,500 flights per day as conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East continued. And in a one-month period, between July and August last year, some 41,000 flights were affected. "While GPS interference is not a new phenomenon, the scale and effects of the current wave of spoofing are unprecedented," the report found...
The Pentagon has launched eight of its next-generation GPS III satellites, which broadcast the military-grade signal that is more resistant to jamming and spoofing. Lockheed Martin, the contractor building the satellites, is also developing a next-generation spacecraft, which would have the ability to emit an even stronger "spot beam" directly to areas used by U.S. forces, making it even more difficult to jam.
Exactly Why Driverless Cars Must Be Drivable (Score:4, Insightful)
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They could literally just have a game pad in them. Preferably not a cheapie from Logitech though
Re: Exactly Why Driverless Cars Must Be Drivable (Score:2)
Like the Titan submarine [wikipedia.org] that got destroyed trying to visit Titanic.
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Yea, nah, never happens.
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Before our Waymo Driver begins operating in a new area, we first map the territory with incredible detail, from lane markers to stop signs to curbs and crosswalks. Then, instead of relying solely on external data such as GPS which can lose signal strength, the Waymo Driver uses these highly detailed custom maps, matched with real-time sensor data and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine its exact road location at all times.
https://waymo.com/waymo-driv [waymo.com]
I propose an updated ground based system (Score:5, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: I propose an updated ground based system (Score:2)
They are installing Racon [wikipedia.org] in the lighthouses in the Baltic sea to have a backup due to interference from Kaliningrad.
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A proposed ground based solution exists. It's called Broadcast Positioning System [wikipedia.org], using the ATSC 3.0 TV broadcast signal to provide ground-based positioning information in areas where GPS is weak or non-existent.
It's not currently deployed, but it's a possibility and has been proposed for a long time now.
The problem right now is ATSC 3.0 is a non-starter and expensive to implement, and no one is sponsoring "free converter boxes" like there was during the ATSC transition. ATSC 3.0 tuners are only in the hig
Re: Maybe pilots ... (Score:2)
Until the weather causes problems.
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Re: Maybe pilots ... (Score:2)
Typically blinkered american article (Score:2)
No mention of Galileo, or other GNSS navigation systems.
Were they affected?
Can Boeing planes use them?
I'd like to say it's just shitty reporting, but the problem is much deeper.
Re:Typically blinkered american article (Score:4, Informative)
Avionics can currently only be certified to use GPS (or maybe in theory GLONASS, but I don't think anyone outside of Russia's sphere of influence would do that). In the US, the FAA recognizes a bunch of RTCA guidance documents like DO-208 and DO-229, but those only cover GPS. DO-401 is new (the European equivalent, ED-259, was formally published one revision earlier) and allows use of multiple constellations, but is recognized in the industry as not ready to be certified against. The same is basically true for Europe and the Pacific Rim: they either recognize the RTCA DOs as applicable, or recognize the EUROCAE ED that is harmonized with the RTCA DO.
The jammers on L1/E1 probably affect both GPS and Galileo similarly (Galileo has slightly wider bandwidth on E1, but most of the energy is in the L1 C/A part). Until a year or so ago, most jammers and spoofers were single-frequency and GPS-only -- but new jammers and spoofers are multifrequency and multiconstellation, so even having DFMC avionics wouldn't be a universal fix now.
The long term solution is going to involve beamforming or similar active antenna techniques. Those are also still being standardized, and the Ukraine war is driving the state of the art for military CRPAs.
Re:Typically blinkered american article (Score:4, Informative)
A pilot forum says no (2024): "The GLU 920/925 for instance, standard on the 747-8 for as well as the 737NGs, definitely only receives GPS." https://www.pprune.org/tech-lo... [pprune.org] The manufacturer says the same model is standard on latest Airbus as well: "The system is standard equipment on the Airbus A350 and A380 and Boeing 747-8 as well as being certified for other Airbus and Boeing platforms – making it a trusted choice for retrofits that bring next-generation navigation capabilities to existing aircraft." https://www.rtx.com/collinsaer... [rtx.com]
So no for currently flying aircraft, which isn't surprising because Galileo is considered operational since Jan. 2018, and all of those electronics were designed long before.
However, Eurocontrol says "In the future, Dual Frequency Multi Constellation services (DFMC) combining dual frequency signals from the United States’ GPS, the Russian Federation’s GLONASS, Europe’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou will help aviation both enhance its performance and benefit from additional robustness." https://www.eurocontrol.int/ne... [eurocontrol.int] and the GLU2100, latest model from the same manufacturer that equips Boeing and Airbus, supports DFMC (and therefore Galileo and Beidou) https://www.rtx.com/collinsaer... [rtx.com]
So newly designed planes, or maybe recently produced ones, will support the 3 constellations.
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If aircraft did have multi-constellation GNSS receivers, then the answer to that is, it depends. Already GPS runs on two frequency bands, L1 and L2, so jamming on one frequency might not affect the other frequency if the receiver was multi-band. Galileo also has a couple of different bands including E2 and E5 if I recall. But the problem is all of them are exceptionally weak signals and jamming across all of their different bands is not terribly difficult. Certainly it would reduce the accuracy of the fi
They don't mean "dramatically", they mean... (Score:2)
On the bright side ... (Score:2)
Re:bloop bloop coordinates (Score:2)
Waymo CEO: "Our Waymo engineers just invented self-steering submarines! We are still working out minor hitches, though."
why not find the spoofers? (Score:2)
Assuming that someone is deliberately jamming or spoofing the satellite signals, it seems like it should be pretty easy to triangulate their location and just drive over there. You could do it with a handheld directional antenna and a software-defined radio dongle plugged into your laptop.
Opposing military powers (Score:1)
military-grade signal that is more resistant to jamming and spoofing
Opposing powers say "challenge accepted."
This is and will continue to be an arms race.
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Indeed. While spoofing is hard, jamming is very easy. By its very nature, a GPS signal is not very strong and cannot be made very strong. On the other hand, I would expect that for a powerful GPS jammer, the batteries are actually more expensive than the rest of the electronics. You will probably have to build it yourself, but tons of people have the skills.
Not just jamming (Score:2)
There are some systems that are sending valid looking signals with apparently valid ephemeris and almanac data. The signals should have been digitally signed decades ago. I had two different GPS receivers revert to valentine's day over the black sea. The one started seeing sats that were 10db stronger than the real ones and it got the time but never could get a position fix.
SpaceX fix is coming 2026 (Score:1)