Tests Suggest Russian Satellites Can Jam GPS On a Continental Scale (arstechnica.com) 155
Researchers say mysterious, seconds-long GPS interference bursts detected across Europe appear to come from Russian EKS early-warning satellites, making this "a rare example of human-made GPS interference coming from space," reports Ars Technica. The signals may be tests of space-based jamming capability, short satellite communications, or something else, but experts say they raise troubling questions about whether GPS disruption could eventually be weaponized on a continental scale. From the report: The discovery came from an investigation detailed in a June 2 preprint paper by Todd Humphreys and his student Zach Clements at The University of Texas at Austin, along with Argyris Krizise at Stanford University in California. By sifting through public data from ground-based stations with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers, they identified a pattern of high-powered interference lasting less than 10 seconds each time but simultaneously detectable by ground stations across Europe from Norway to Spain to Poland, and even reaching as far west as Greenland and Canada.
By analyzing the ground station data from January 2019 to April 2026, the researchers found 75 days with at least one widespread GNSS interference event overlapping with the GPS L1 frequency band centered on 1575.42 megahertz. That represents the main band used for signal transmission by the US-made GPS satellite constellation and GNSS constellations from other countries. Such interference patterns happened mostly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during business hours in Europe, Humphreys told the YouTube channel Veritasium. Because such "continental-scale" interference was simultaneously affecting GPS receivers across Europe and beyond, Humphreys and his colleagues calculated that the source had to be at least 1,200 kilometers above the Earth.
[...] In the Veritasium video, Humphreys speculated that the Russians may have been testing the satellites' GPS interference capabilities only briefly on a neighboring frequency adjacent to the typical GPS band. "And then in the eventual future when there is a hot conflict, they go ahead and tune their transmitter down to the GPS band, but it's much more damaging now that it lies right on that band," he said. Incidentally, the raw data also revealed a second interference burst from the Russian satellites in a lower-frequency band used by China's BeiDou navigation system. "I can no longer say this is accidental with confidence," Humphreys told Veritasium. He also described the Russian satellites' quiet demonstration as a "massive escalation in the electronic warfare background conflict that is going on right now." Richard Bowden, division head of assured and resilient PNT at the multinational technology company GMV in Spain, wrote in a LinkedIn comment: "These signals are, without a doubt, intentional and placed on or around GNSS signals, and have the potential to disrupt legitimate use of GNSS services. But from our side at least, we can't be sure they are intentionally malicious or intended as an EW [electronic warfare] weapon."
By analyzing the ground station data from January 2019 to April 2026, the researchers found 75 days with at least one widespread GNSS interference event overlapping with the GPS L1 frequency band centered on 1575.42 megahertz. That represents the main band used for signal transmission by the US-made GPS satellite constellation and GNSS constellations from other countries. Such interference patterns happened mostly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during business hours in Europe, Humphreys told the YouTube channel Veritasium. Because such "continental-scale" interference was simultaneously affecting GPS receivers across Europe and beyond, Humphreys and his colleagues calculated that the source had to be at least 1,200 kilometers above the Earth.
[...] In the Veritasium video, Humphreys speculated that the Russians may have been testing the satellites' GPS interference capabilities only briefly on a neighboring frequency adjacent to the typical GPS band. "And then in the eventual future when there is a hot conflict, they go ahead and tune their transmitter down to the GPS band, but it's much more damaging now that it lies right on that band," he said. Incidentally, the raw data also revealed a second interference burst from the Russian satellites in a lower-frequency band used by China's BeiDou navigation system. "I can no longer say this is accidental with confidence," Humphreys told Veritasium. He also described the Russian satellites' quiet demonstration as a "massive escalation in the electronic warfare background conflict that is going on right now." Richard Bowden, division head of assured and resilient PNT at the multinational technology company GMV in Spain, wrote in a LinkedIn comment: "These signals are, without a doubt, intentional and placed on or around GNSS signals, and have the potential to disrupt legitimate use of GNSS services. But from our side at least, we can't be sure they are intentionally malicious or intended as an EW [electronic warfare] weapon."
If Russia can, they would... (Score:4, Insightful)
With all the satellite launches from Russia, China, and North Korea, this isn't something people think that might be done, but is something that is actually being done.
Remember, people. We are at war. Europe just does not want to realize it yet, but their entire existence is in danger right now. Ask the older people who were born and remember what life was like before 1989. In normal times, Iran's attacks on European nations would muster an article 5 reprisal, "mess with one bean, get the entire enchilada". However, Europe doesn't even have a usable navy to put to sea. Russia is actively attacking the EU and NATO. In most times, cutting undersea cables directly can be considered an act of war as well.
The EU needs to stop thinking this can be done... but start thinking of retaliation strategies because it is being done.
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad NATO has no big mean dog anymore, just a Putin Poodle.
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I'm not a fan of the current administration, but NATO along with Europe has long been dependent on the U.S. militarily for too long. America built an unparalleled military force and funded NATO well beyond the original 2%. While other countries failed to meet it.
The current direction of our country will harm more people across the globe in real democracies and countries that actually care about their citizens. The fact that we have become unreliable, and a potential threat has led other countries to do mor
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:5, Insightful)
NATO being dependent on us (USA) was a good thing for us despite it costing so much. It helped us stay the major super power. We were the guys in charge. If you care about a powerful USA then you want everyone depending on us for their defense.
Re-establishing what we had will be near impossible. Some of the fundamental ways our government operates has shifted. There's no longer the gentleman's agreement of "we'll follow this framework and won't exploit anything major even if we don't agree" anymore. You can't have one party following that and the other not. Either everyone plays by the unwritten rules or no one does.
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:4)
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I honestly think it would be best if we weren't solely in charge, as we basically were. As an example, WHO did a ranking of health care systems by country but only once, and never again. My guess is that it embarrassed the U.S. too much, but you can't fix what you don't acknowledge. I forget exactly when but thinking 2000-2010 i.e. one year in there..
Our presidents/agencies aren't perfect, even before the current one e.g. we know that there weren't weapons of mass destruction in Iran.
I was raised on Ameri
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This is asinine. The US is $39 TRILLION in debt.
Every dollar the US spends is 20-25% borrowed from the future.
This is the wealthiest society that has ever existed, and we cannot pay for everything we want.
In fact, I agree with you; in the immediate aftermath of WW2 the US was *fantastically* wealthy and could afford to pay for everything. That's what happens when you have 2 global wars wreck every other competitive industrial economy - you kind of end up on top.
Yes, we could afford to buy everyone else's
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T Yes, we could afford to buy everyone else's lunches. For 75 years. Not any more.
That's what happens when you systematically reduce taxes on your rich.
https://govfacts.org/long-term-challenges-future/economic-transformation/economic-inequality-trends/how-80-years-of-changing-us-tax-policy-have-reshaped-american-wealth/
https://inequality.org/article/tax-the-rich-we-did-that-once/
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The USA used that oversized military to wage wars that had nothing whatsoever to do with NATO so I fail to see why you are accusing other NATO members for not having militaries strong enough to start stupid military adventures. Basically, throughout the whole history of NATO only one single war was caused by an attack on a NATO member, namely the USA.
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If the US had spent only a fraction of what they wasted in Iran on Ukraine, that war probably would long be over. But best buddies cannot support the common enemy (which is peace in Europe btw.). And don't tell me the US supported the Ukraine - they want everything back in money or land or rights. T
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It wasn't all for profit...
Remember he wanted dirt on Biden's son even if it needed to be made up i.e. falsified, in return or aid as well ;P
Can't say he's not well versed in extortion :o
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I'm not a fan of the current administration, but NATO along with Europe has long been dependent on the U.S. militarily for too long. America built an unparalleled military force and funded NATO well beyond the original 2%. While other countries failed to meet it.
That's one perspective. Another is that while the US shouldered the cost of defense for much of the world, the US got a lot of goodwill for that, and that goodwill and other aspects of its reputation helped to build and extend a massive, decades-long economic expansion that outpaced the rest of the wealthy world. There's a good argument to be made that being the world's superpower was expensive, but came with an enormous ROI that justified every penny of it and more.
It also provided the more-concrete ben
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It's sad when people have been paying for your lunch for 75 years decide to stop letting you free ride, isn't it?
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe supported America through all its wars, even the stupid ones, then la Presidenta took American support away from Europe and is laughing at America getting wet. He was never able to think beyond his own pocketbook.
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh sure they'll be outdated in some aspects, but largely, roads and highways don't just get up and move themselves....
And they laughed when I said I don't wanna throw them all out....
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I just KNEW it was a good idea to hang on to all those old roadmaps from days gone by...
Oh sure they'll be outdated in some aspects, but largely, roads and highways don't just get up and move themselves....
And they laughed when I said I don't wanna throw them all out....
Breaking GPS won't break digital maps. They'll still work just fine, and will be up to date. The devices just won't be able to identify your current location, you'll have to work that out from context, the way you do on a paper map.
Or not... our smart devices use other signals in addition to GPS, to help address the fact that GPS requires a relatively clear view of the sky, and that's not always available.
Circa 2010 I navigated halfway across the country using Google Maps running on an iPod Touch. T
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I still have my Thomas Guides!
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Are you implying that WW2 was an US war? Where do you get your history from?
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Are you implying that WW2 was an US war? Where do you get your history from?
I imply nothing of the sort. And seriously, I'm responding to the statement that is easy to find:
Define all. All means all of the US wars, and your gotcha makes no sense anyhow. The US was a participant in WW2,
But taken as teh statement "all" it meant that every war the US was involved in was supported by Europe. It was not.
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And? Isn't that what allies are supposed to do, help each other? Which was the whole argument being made, ie US started wars and convinced NATO allies to join in or support them even though NATO is a defensive pact.
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And? Isn't that what allies are supposed to do, help each other? Which was the whole argument being made, ie US started wars and convinced NATO allies to join in or support them even though NATO is a defensive pact.
I had no idea that NATO existed th entire time the US existed.
Seriously defending "All the US wars, with a situation that is an organization, not a war is kinda weird.
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You mean that after Germany declared war on you, you joined the fight rather then surrendering.
Re: If Russia can, they would... (Score:2)
Germany was already starting to lose the war by the time the US joined. It could never have kept up a war on two fronts anyway.
The US didn't join either WW until late in the game.
The US joining did mean the war was much shorter.
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Germany was already starting to lose the war by the time the US joined. It could never have kept up a war on two fronts anyway.
The US didn't join either WW until late in the game.
The US joining did mean the war was much shorter.
There is a difficulty with your assertion that the USA was almost irrelevant, that the war. was won without us, we only made it as little shorter, not much else.
Can you give a dissertation that the lend-lease program had nothing to do with Germany's defeat? Would the Russians have defeated Germany without the war fighting materiel, and food the US gave to Russia?
Careful now, both Stalin and Khrushchev say otherwise, they say without US aid, they would have lost. Perhaps you know better, and there are l
Re: If Russia can, they would... (Score:3)
Rather from speaking Russian. USSR was winning with or without the US. The race on both fronts was about who gets to liberate what, and how to divide Europe after the war. My understanding is that people generally preferred being liberated by the US than by the USSR, because the Red Army wasn't nice.
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Rather from speaking Russian. USSR was winning with or without the US. The race on both fronts was about who gets to liberate what, and how to divide Europe after the war. My understanding is that people generally preferred being liberated by the US than by the USSR, because the Red Army wasn't nice.
Tell me you have no understanding of WW2 without saying you have no understanding.
First assignment is looking up the lend-lease program to Russia. Then come back and tell us that it was irrelevant, which you did, since you said Russia would have won without any US aid,
The big reason why Germans wanted to surrender to the west was because Russia bore teh brunt of deaths during WW2, and the Germans were incredibly cruel, so revenge was on the menu. Frankly, it was horrifying, but understandable.
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> What do you imagine the "allied forces" consisted of?
The USSR plus a few hangers-on. If you look at actual military history instead of Hollywood movies, the war was won on the Eastern Front where millions of Soviet soldiers died wiping out most of Germany's best forces.
The fighting in the West helped a bit, but ultimately Germany lost because the Soviets kept killing German soldiers until there weren't any left.
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the war was won on the Eastern Front where millions of Soviet soldiers died wiping out most of Germany's best forces.
While there is truth in that, you might also want to look further into where much of that "Soviet" weaponry came from.
Stalin thought they would have lost the war if it wasn't for US weapons manufacturing and Lend-Lease.
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the war was won on the Eastern Front where millions of Soviet soldiers died wiping out most of Germany's best forces.
While there is truth in that, you might also want to look further into where much of that "Soviet" weaponry came from.
Stalin thought they would have lost the war if it wasn't for US weapons manufacturing and Lend-Lease.
Exactly. Russia received all manner of materiel and a lot of food during WW2.
I posted Uncle Joe's comment on the matter again
"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
Nikita Khrushchev had the same opinion.
"If the Unit
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> What do you imagine the "allied forces" consisted of?
The USSR plus a few hangers-on. If you look at actual military history instead of Hollywood movies, the war was won on the Eastern Front where millions of Soviet soldiers died wiping out most of Germany's best forces.
The fighting in the West helped a bit, but ultimately Germany lost because the Soviets kept killing German soldiers until there weren't any left.
So all the allies were hangers on other than the USSR?
Since you talk about actual History, is it your premise that the Soviets would have won the war without the USA and its lend lease program? Hangers on have little effect on the outcome. Even Stalin admitted that was critical to victory. But you might know better than old Uncle Joe. His quote follows:
"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most
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What do you imagine the "allied forces" consisted of? Considering your last statement it looks like you somehow believe that Europe equals Germany somehow.
You might want to bone up on your WW2 history.
Germany conscripted citizens of the country it subjugated in WW2.
Germany controlled over half of Europe.
Citizens of these countries ran many of the concentration camps quite willingly. Germany did not have enough citizens on its own. There own soldiers were in a two front meat grinder.
Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia sided with Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Poland is hard to classify. In genera
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course France did. Anything to weak England's global influence.
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I believe he is referencing the only time article 5 of NATO has ever been used is the Afghan war to assist the US after world trade center. NATO did not exist during WWII. And if we really go back in time, France supported the US to create the US.
Seems like he and I have a difference between the definition of "all its wars" and using the word "Europe" instead of NATO.
Certainly the normal definition of all is every one.
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Given what Ukraine is managing to get past Russian air defences, do you think Putin is going to nuke Europe and risk French nukes hitting Moscow and Petrograd? Europe's at war, sure, but talk of an existential threat needs some serious justification.
What attacks on European nations? Cyprus isn't a NATO member; if you're counting T
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Russia is pretty much a joke. The entire Ukraine invasion has proven they:
1) Can't keep a modern navy afloat, let alone actively engaged with an enemy.
2) Can't keep an army feed and supplied beyond their own boarders, zero logistics capability
3) Can't muster serious troop strength, they are literally running out of conscripts, and even low quality ones like prisoners and men generally beyond their best fighting years in age.
4) Don't have the manufacturing and supply chain capability to produce replacement
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they are literally running out of conscripts
They're running out of prisoner conscripts, yes. They have not really tapped their main population. That's why there is still a reasonably high level of support for his war, although it surely must be waning with the recent successful attacks by Ukraine on infrastructure which must be affecting consumer prices by now. Otherwise I think your comment is accurate, but this does mean that they could throw more people at the conflict if they wanted to.
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:5, Interesting)
There actually are ways to poll people in repressive regimes. A classic one goes like this: instead of saying "Do you support President Putin?", you give them a list of a bunch of world leaders - say, Putin, Trump, Modi, Erdogan, and Macron - and ask, "How many of these leaders do you support?" And then you give the next person a different set of leaders - say, Putin, Xi, Starmer, Khamenei, and Merz - and again ask, "How many of these leaders do you support?" You can then statistically disentangle the level of support for Putin, without any individual having to ever say whether they support Putin or not.
Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not how this works; Russia comes at more powerful opponents sideways, with incrementalism, division, and hybrid warfare. They try to get pro-Russian candidates elected so that they can veto collective action. They have "accidents", such as missiles flying into your airspace, to probe how you'll react, and if the reaction is insufficient, probing ops can go further, or become normalized so that you get used to it and then don't freak out when they go a bit further the next time. They famously support "pro-Russian rebels" (quotation marks definitely demanded) in countries to try to break off chunks, and encourage secession movements. Russia prefers to work piecemeal, tearing apart countries by chunks, and only launching large-scale invasions when they think (rightly or wrongly) that they can get away with it.
Do you honestly think that France would fire nukes at Moscow - and thus face nukes raining down on Paris - if quote-unquote "Russian Separatists" with suspiciously good arms and military training took a chunk of one of the Baltics or Poland? Of course they won't, and Russia knows that. And then, "Oh, we're just sending aid to the oppressed people in the separatist regions!" "Oh, the separatist regions have requested help from us, we're sending advisors!" "Oh no, the separatist regions were "attacked" by their oppressive government, we must launch a counterattack in response!"
This is hybrid warfare. Nobody fires nukes in response to hybrid warfare. Meanwhile, Russia gets incrementally more powerful with each region it captures. A couple decades ago Chechens were bloodying the Russian army. Now they're dying on behalf of the Russian army in Ukraine. Everywhere they take represents human, industrial, and mineral resources. People are constantly propagandized to and kept in a state of poverty from which only service to the Russian state can rescue them.
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I was responding to a claim that the entire existence of Europe is in danger, not that Russia might invade Estonia next. (Also, FWIW, the Russian population of Poland is the size of a large town or a very small city).
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So your idea is that Russia takes Estonia, and then just decides, "Meh, I'm good, that's enough"?
You understand that Estonia is part of Europe, right?
You understand that Estonia is part of the EU, right?
You understand that Estonia is part of the NATO, right?
Russia is more than happy to use "pro-Russian slavs" even if not ethnic Russians. And FYI, 20% of Estonia's population is ethnic Russians.
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Ask the older people who were born and remember what life was like before 1989
Go ahead and ask me. All the worry back then was for nothing. Did you ever talk to a WW2 veteran? What you are proposing is madness. Russia is already well on its path to being a hermit kingdom and IMO that's enough. Unfortunately, so is the USA but that's entirely self inflicted.
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Re:If Russia can, they would... (Score:5, Informative)
Huh?
The US navy some things it's very good at: nuclear powered carriers, nuclear powered submarines, large surface combatants, and support ships. It sucks at smaller ships (frigates, corvettes) - it's been one project disaster after the next. Europe, by contrast, excels in frigates and corvettes. The US is currently trying to copy the European FREMM as the Constellation class, and it's somehow managing to even screw that up. It's one of the reasons that the US really wanted Europe involved in escort operations in the Persian Gulf - you don't escort a tanker with an aircraft carrier.
With submarines, the US doesn't bother with non-nuclear submarines. That was more defensible in the past, and there's still long distance power projection advantages, but there have been major leaps in AIP in recent decades. Non-nuclear submarines are now far more capable than they used to be. European AIP subs are quieter and much cheaper than US nuclear subs.
Europe also has a strong commercial shipbuilding industry. The US's commercial shipbuilding industry is in a terrible state. The net result of this is that it's often proven difficult for the US to scale up production or adapt to new designs. Europe is more flexabile in its capabilities in this regard.
None of this is to demean the US's unambiguously impressive capabilities in certain naval fields. But to call European navies unusable is... silly?
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Huh?
The GP was just regurgitating Faux News talking points which, as usual, have very little basis in fact.
Re: If Russia can, they would... (Score:2)
I live in Europe and we are aware of it, but much of the situation is not officially public.
The US population is however blinded and blindsided by MAGA.
"I want to know what war is! I want you to show me (Score:2)
"I want to know what war is! I want you to show me!!" (Apologies to 'Foreigner')
No, Europe is not at war with Russia - not yet. Sure, Europe spies, facilitates killing of Russians in Ukraine and Russia, and holds onto Russian money. On the other hand, Russia kills Russian dissidents in Europe, snips cables, holds onto European assets and occasionally jams GPS. This isn't war. The two sides should be actively negotiating a wind-down of hostilities with each other and in Ukraine, and retaliating proportionall
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Yeah, let's feed the Ukrainians into the Russian maw. Want to guess how the Ukrainians feel about that? Ever see pictures of the aftermath of Russian missiles on Ukrainian cities? Ever see the pictures of the dead Ukrainian children?
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Not " opposed to the children that are removed from their parents for reeducation purposes?" Rather, in addition to.
How do you get from "Yeah, let's feed the Ukrainians into the Russian maw. Want to guess how the Ukrainians feel about that? Ever see pictures of the aftermath of Russian missiles on Ukrainian cities? Ever see the pictures of the dead Ukrainian children?" to supporting Putin?
And while we're toting up war crimes, let's include la Presidenta in there, he was with Putin every step of the way.
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Re: If Russia can, they would... (Score:2)
Hmmm⦠spineless leadership. You must be in Britain. Or is it another European country? Iâ(TM)d say the only one showing spine besides Zelenskyy is Merz.
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You mean as opposed to the children that are removed from their parents for reeducation purposes? The declared purpose of Putler is the eradication of the Ukrain culture. War crimes are just the beginning.
And there is a reason why Ukraine fights back. They remember Holodomor, the previous time Russia attempted genocide.
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Did you ask Ukrainians how they feel about it? They have agency and can make their own decisions. From the outside it looks like it's what they want.
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Why would you have to "guess" when there's polling? Ukrainians are far less interested in conceding their lands and people to Russia than the west is, in polling.
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Don't pretend you care about dead kids Maga peasant or Russian Troll or whatever you are.
Every dead child is on Putin alone. As every dead child in Gaza is on Nethanyahu. War criminals plain as day.
Ukrainians are doing great. And you'd tried to take that away from them, what a loser you are.
GPS Interference (Score:5, Interesting)
First, GPS signals are relatively weak. Second, they come from 'up' - if you really want to avoid terrestrial jamming, then a bit of shielding that only exposes your receiver to the sky will help a lot.
The solution for creating interference is relaying legitimate signals from space, if you can't crack the encryption. By messing with timing carefully, you can severely degrade the position accuracy or cause it to drift to where you want it.
I find it interesting that GPS, Galileo and BeiDou share 2/3 of their base frequencies, but GLONASS doesn't - its overlap is additional frequencies. I'm not a comms guy, but I do wonder if that means Russia can interfere with GPS, Galileo and BeiDou simultaneously without affecting their own gear significantly.
It means less and less when it comes to military use though, since the military expects jamming and spoofing and has multiple methods of position fixing of various degrees of accuracy.
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....I do wonder if that means Russia can interfere with GPS, Galileo and BeiDou simultaneously without affecting their own gear significantly.
This was one possibility mentioned in the video - or at least, this is how I also understood the remark
Re:GPS Interference (Score:5, Insightful)
You're conflating a few things there, but you're onto something.
To jam GPS, all you need to do is fill the channel with noise, because as you say, GPS is actually below the noise floor when it reaches the ground anyway. However, you do need to fill it with 'edges', rather than just a single continuous tone. I suspect the military receivers are more resistant than consumer because they use a wider band, and so you'd need to cover a much broader area with convincing 'edges' to fully defeat them - but you can definitely cause signal acquisition issues, if not signal lock failures relatively easily.
To actually spoof GPS does indeed take a lot more work. You need to have a lock on at least one satellite, and then relay those signal with at most a few milliseconds of delay. Instead of trying to do that, you'll actually mimic the satellite completely, and by supplying a tiny bit more power than the real satellite, you'll likely fool the receiver into following your signal instead of the real one. Again, this is considerably harder to do against the military bands because they use a much longer spread spectrum key, and those keys are classified. Consumer keys aren't publicly available, but I dare say can be/have been reverse engineered out of receivers a dozen times over. Unless you're trying to do some sort of James Bond type setup to drive someone off-course and over a border or some such, this approach is almost certainly not worth bothering with.
As for Glonass - you may well be onto something there, perhaps they can jam everyone else but not themselves? One wonders what practical application that has, given the Ukrainians have found consumer GPS receivers strapped to downed Russian fighter dashboards. It might mean 'big' things like ships know where they are, but frankly, if you can't figure out where a ship is, you're not really up to much. It's much more interesting to have GPS for small things like drones, and even fighter planes - but for that, you're going to need hundreds of military-band receivers, which observation suggests don't exist.
Lastly, I'll also say that when GPS sats first went up, the Americans enabled "Selective Availability" (SA) on the consumer bands. The idea was that us ordinary folk wouldn't know where we were, but the US military would. The thing was, some of the best minds in the world were working on ways to 'smooth out' the SA so GPS would be useful for ordinary people. Then the US went into Haiti, and realised they didn't have anywhere near enough military GPS receivers, so they went to Bestbuy, bought all the consumer ones they could and turned off SA. When the conflict was over, they turned it back on briefly, but then realised it was probably better to "keep their powder dry" and turned it off again. We all went and dismantled our differential GPS systems, so are vulnerable to it again.
My point is, if there are some "GPS outages" or whatever, then all it's really doing is preparing us for the future. We're a pretty ingenious bunch, and pretty soon we'll have solutions for all these sorts of problems - even at a consumer level.
Either way, as a geek, this makes me want to get a raspberry pi and attach a GPS antenna to the shed to datalog what it 'sees'. Might be an 'early warning' of impending trouble, or maybe just something for my nerdgasm.
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Re:GPS Interference (Score:5, Informative)
Most "GPS" receiver modules these days support GPS and GLONASS. GLONASS support has been available for well over a decade on most modules used on phones these days. You can buy a very modern GNSS receiver module that support GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo and a couple of others for a "6 system" receiver on AliExpress for a few bucks.
Multi-system GNSS receivers are common, easily available and can be dropped in and used. Nowadays they're just a single chip solution where you feed in RF and it comes out as standard NMEA strings.
Re: GPS Interference (Score:2)
Intrusion is mitigated, at least for the DoD and related entities by use of the encrypted GPS signals.
Jamming and Interference are still things to have to contend with, especially since we're talking about satellites doing it...but then that's asking for an anti satellite missile.
If it turns into a
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Maybe way back when GLONASS was being developed, they had considered being able to jam GPS while allowing their own system to function. But these days multi constellation receivers are standard anyway.
Galileo and Beidou using the same bands as GPS is probably more helpful in terms of jamming resilience, in that if the US and China ever started jamming each other they couldn't just affect the other side, they would have to mess up their own system as well.
Jamming resistance is more about making the signals h
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Might help if you read my entire comment in good faith instead of just scanning for something to shout 'gotcha!' about for imaginary Internet points, but here we are.
Re: GPS Interference (Score:2)
If it were sometime else I might
Could explain (Score:2)
What seemed to be noticeable errors this past year on watching my vehicle track on GPS. Some major lags on positioning, and even some apparent forays off road while traveling on an interstate. I realize the radio testing was done in the northeast Atlantic, but it seems like a possible explanation for something I had not seen in a long time. I also realize mine is an anecdote and not significant data. I do remember when they turned off selective availability, rigging my Garmin to the computer so I could wa
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What seemed to be noticeable errors this past year on watching my vehicle track on GPS. Some major lags on positioning, and even some apparent forays off road while traveling on an interstate. I realize the radio testing was done in the northeast Atlantic, but it seems like a possible explanation for something I had not seen in a long time. I also realize mine is an anecdote and not significant data. I do remember when they turned off selective availability, rigging my Garmin to the computer so I could watch the position accuracy numbers tighten up.
I'd not be concerned about the "anecdote". That's just something like "correlation is not causation" - a favorite on Slashdot.
I too noticed some anomalous activity while traveling, things I haven't seen before. So now we have two anecdotes now! 8^) Maybe if we get 100 million anecdotes, we can move to the correlation is not causation stage. Maybe... don't want to be too hasty. ;^)
How long (Score:2)
I've seen the Veritasium video and my question at the time was, and remains, how long could it keep this up for? Producing a lot of power for a few seconds is one thing, maintaining it for any significant length of time is quite another when you only have sunlight to rely on.
Perhaps these satellites have much bigger solar arrays than GPS satellites. Perhaps they have huge batteries to allow them to maintain the required level of jamming for an extended period during a conflict.
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As noted above GPS signals are very low power. That's why Lightsquared bought spectrum next to GPS dirt cheap and tried to blackmail the US government into swapping them to much more expensive spectrum after they applied to broadcast at high power.
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Producing a lot of power for a few seconds is one thing, maintaining it for any significant length of time is quite another when you only have sunlight to rely on.
Do you actually need to do it for extended periods, though? All you have to do it make it intermittently unreliable for a few minutes at a time in order to potentially make it unusable in a war zone (if your GPS guided bombs/cruise missiles have a high probability of going off target, you're not going to use them and fall back on laser guided bombs / inertially guided cruise missiles, for example).
Is anyone really surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be surprised if all the major players didn't have this capability in some form or another. In fact, I'd expect that most LEO GPS (or equivalent) birds would be able to broadcast jamming signals for "opposition" services.
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Sure. The US government's first thought when they put up the GPS constellation was how to keep others from using it. Their second thought was shit, this thing is pretty easy to jam, how do we stop other people from preventing us from using it? They and the Russians were thinking up and testing anti-satellite weapons long before that.
I also don't think it's likely this is purposely a jamming system. You don't test your secret weapon by pressing the button a couple times every Wednesday year after year until
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Probably, but as far as we know, Russia is the only one actively testing it on a regular basis.
Your first indication (Score:2)
Your first indication of WWIII will be when the internet suddenly goes down and your GPS stops working.
If everyone suddenly starts checking their phones and asking if there's something going on with the wifi, you'll know it's game time.
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Your first indication of WWIII will be when the internet suddenly goes down and your GPS stops working.
WWIII already started for some time, now. The first indications were the resurgence of ultranationalism, fascism and colonialism around the globe.
The question is: will it remain in its current state of cold war, with conflicts erupting here and there, or will it eventually escalate into a wider, full-fledged conflict?
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The question is: will it remain in its current state of cold war, with conflicts erupting here and there, or will it eventually escalate into a wider, full-fledged conflict?
That you're asking that question is how we know WWIII hasn't started. If it had, it would already be a wider, full-fledged conflict.
That's not to say that it won't, but that this isn't a world war yet.
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I get what you're saying.
But IMHO, with such - veiled or open - conflicts happening right now between US, Russia, China, Ukraine, EU, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, i'd still argue that we're witnessing a de facto world war. Great part of the world is already involved, or dealing with serious consequences of current affairs.
Also - and this is just an educated guess - I see the UN "imploding" in the near future, which could be a repetition of WWII.
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I get what you're saying.
But IMHO, with such - veiled or open - conflicts happening right now between US, Russia, China, Ukraine, EU, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, i'd still argue that we're witnessing a de facto world war. Great part of the world is already involved, or dealing with serious consequences of current affairs.
Also - and this is just an educated guess - I see the UN "imploding" in the near future, which could be a repetition of WWII.
Your assertion means that we are not in WW3, but merely an extension of WW2. There have been proxy wars starting not long after 1946, and continuing to this day.
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Sure, but then we never really had a WW2, or even a WW1. It's all just a continuation of the wars for the succession of Austria.
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Coincidentally, this popped up on my feed last night: https://www.dw.com/en/conflict... [dw.com]
There were 65 conflicts involving at least one state recorded worldwide last year, a new high since 1946, according to a study published Tuesday.
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Definitionally, a world war is a "massive international conflict that engages most or all of the world's major powers."
We're not quite there yet, but sit tight.
Re: Your first indication (Score:2)
I completely understand your pov and think it's perfectly valid.
Curiously, this article appeared in my feed just tonight: https://www.dw.com/en/conflict... [dw.com]
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Yep, like I said, sit tight. We'll get there and it probably won't be long.
Why is Russia so aggressive? (Score:2)
I heard a description of Russia of old as a "donut" empire , all the wealth in a ring of robbed territory, and an entitled useless elite in the empty hole in the middle.
This culture playing out or some gene expression needing devolution?
Why do they worry about invasion, who do they think wants to live in Russia as a sad looking peasant under oligarchs?
Any revolutionary fight's been beaten out of the people by one bad, mad leader after another, they seem to love them.
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"who do they think wants to live in Russia as a sad looking peasant under oligarchs?" Nobody, but Putin, as do all dictators, playing on an endless loop "the godless hordes are coming for our Lucky Charms, they are magically delicious." Before you know it, Haitian dogs and cats will be eating Ohioans.
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Same old story from nearly a century ago. The country is shit but it's always the fault of others. Start with people who can't fight back and escalate with rhetoric and fascism.
Re:Why is Russia so aggressive? (Score:4, Informative)
The Washington war party pushed NATO right up to their border.
You mean countries who had escaped Russia's grasp asked to join NATO so they wouldn't get invaded by Russia. Fear of Russia made the Baltics ask to join NATO. And of course, Russia then invaded Ukraine, a country not in NATO, showing the Baltics were right to be worried. On top of that, to invade Ukraine and then continue its car with Ukraine, Russia had to remove troops along the borders with NATO countries, showing that the Russian government, for all its claims otherwise, understands that NATO is not a threat to Russia except in so far as it stands in the way of the Russia government's imperialist ambitions.
"intentionally malicious OR intended as EW weapon" (Score:2)
Most weapons are intentionally malicious.
Better than blowing up the satellites (Score:2)
It is not like the satellites's position is unknown and not like they can change position.
Jamming is more appropriate for anything short of World War III
And it is probably relatively easy to bomb the jammer.
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According to a talk I attended by one of the GPS system designers you can jam GPS with a 9v battery.
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I do not doubt that you can jam GPS with a very small battery.
But I also suspect the range you can jam would also be very small. As in, you have to put the device right next to the GPS receiver (or the satellite)
No surprises there, (Score:2)
More tiresome US ignorance ensues (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
I guarantee the US can also so big whoop.
Exactly Why "Driverless" Cars Need Steering Wheels (Score:2)
Re: Exactly Why "Driverless" Cars Need Steering Wh (Score:3)
Most driverless cars have cameras and rely on that for actual driving. Satellite info is for routing, not for staying in lane, avoiding pedestrians and vehicles, etc. Complete loss or hack of satellite info wonâ(TM)t cause a crash if the cameras are in charge. In fact, decades ago there was a navigation system that knew what the roads view looked like and used that to inform its location.
Would it be a good idea to have these systems primed to âoebelieve their eyesâ first and foremost when c
INS says hi. (Score:2)
Inertial navigation should be integrated into devices whose navigation systems are more than toys.
Depending on Someone Else's Hardware is a gross weakness.