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- cross-posted to:
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A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible
Russia is suspected of launching a record-breaking 63-hour-long attack on GPS signals in the Baltic region. The incident, which affected hundreds of passenger jets earlier this month, occurred amid rising tensions between Russia and the NATO military alliance more than two years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“We have seen an increase in GPS jamming since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and allies have publicly warned that Russia has been behind GPS jamming affecting aviation and shipping,” a NATO official told New Scientist. “Russia has a track record of jamming GPS signals and has a range of capabilities for electronic warfare.”
Is this where the beginning g of the end of free open GPS starts?
Been wondering when we’d have to start paying for the privilege to use an encrypted private GPS service.
It wouldn’t matter against jamming though. You just need a jammer that screams louder
Yup. As long as you’re transmitting via radio waves, if something on that frequency “screams” louder, you won’t get the original signal. That’s why the FCC has strict rules against radio interference. About the only way you could get past that would be some sort of laser guided/optical communications, but would be damn near impossible given the number of planes and weather conditions.
Luckily the louder something screams the more easy it is to pinpoint.
I mean, doesn’t matter. We pinpoint russia and then what. Sure, we can retaliate and block their comma, and radio communication doesn’t work for both of us. We can always invade, but a load of political capital is needed, and the west doesn’t exactly have the most ammo ever right now.
Finally, I think the true source is this
It’s nice that they “scream” there. It’s the way you know that they are hiding their ammo and weapons routes there. Instead of complaining, we should target these routes. Hey… they are outside russian borders… so…
“Our system is unjammable! Just make sure this laser receiver has clear line of sight with three satellites way up in geosynchronous orbit at all times.”
“You’re fucking with me, right?”
No . That’s how it would work. That’s why we don’t use it, because of things like weather, birds, space debris, and other planes. its more secure but technically very difficult.
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It would matter if they chose not to jam certain frequencies due to some agreement.
Thinking only of GPS-like services, there are multiple suppliers who could take advantage of Russia jamming other services. GPS is only one, owned by the American air force. Other suppliers might be more open to making agreements with Russia. Money can make things happen.
I’m not saying it’s like that, only that it is possible for bad actors to benefit from playing on both sides in a jamming war, just like any other kind of war.
In a war like this they jam everything and anything they can. No commercial solutions would be loopholed out of it.
… unless money.
Unless they are on a different wavelength from GPS, which is what Xona is doing.
Ok, then they just block that one
Do you think country-wide jamming of a high-power radio signal is easy? The magnitude of difference between jamming a building and jamming at airline altitudes or at long distances is massive. You don’t just go out and buy a jammer that blocks GPS for a country.
I don’t think that for an individual it is easy. But for a country as large as Russia (even with a somewhat pathetic economy)
I work developing the next generation GPS satellites, and half of my job is dealing with defeating jamming. Without giving specifics that can only be shared in a SCIF, jammers are for small regional use, not for large scale usage. RF power drops off at 1/r^2, so doubling the distance requires 4 times the power. A normal person can buy a jammer that handles a few hundred feet around their house or car. It is 100x harder to cover a city block of buildings and is mostly restricted to governments (my math could be off on that, since RF isn’t my specialty). Going from jamming a city block of government buildings to jamming flight traffic in a small neighborhood is roughly 100 times as much as that power. Going from that small neighborhood to blocking a very small country is 100 times as much as that power (or 10,000 as much as the power of a big jammer). Doing the same thing but with multiple RF signals is even harder.
I can’t talk about Russia’s specific capabilities, but even for Russia it wouldn’t be easy outside a small region.
That will not fix this, unless your private service flies their own satellites with more transmitter power
Xona is out there planning their own satellite constellation in their own band of the spectrum (so not jammed at the same time as GPS), and is fully encrypted.
Russia could just as easily jam two signals at once.
Not just as easily. Broad-spectrum jamming is more difficult, so they either develop one of those with enough power to jam both signals (not as easy) or the build twice as many jammers (not as easy).
Not as easy for individuals. Still relatively easy for a state actor. It’s not a magnitude difference, just a difference in degree.
That’s not how jamming works
Explain how jamming works. The person isn’t saying encryption overcomes jamming, just that encryption will be used to make the new system private and paid instead of free to use. Not being GPS will make it avoid GPS jamming.
It doesn’t matter if you encrypt it, it still has to make information out of communication with satellites. Jamming saturates the band range that something is attempting to communicate across. So no sensible information is available because it’s all noise
Did you not read what I said? I said “the person isn’t saying that encryption overcomes jamming, just that encryption will be used to make the new system private and paid.” At no point did I say or imply that encryption helps overcome jamming. I did say that since they don’t transmit on the same frequency as GPS then jamming GPS won’t affect it (depending on how close their L-band range is to the GPS L-band range).
I design GPS satellites for a living. I understand how jamming works.
You asked how jamming works, I simply discussed that.
Even if the new system is encrypted and on another spectrum, that doesn’t make it invincible from jamming, the jammer just needs to be adjusted to target it.
All I’m saying is encryption and subscription does not defend from jamming.
Tactics like signal hopping and multi signal parallel processing / handshake help with jamming (plus highly focused and shield directional antennas)
that’s… not how gps works, y’know?
the satellites only send out signal, they don’t care about the ground
You are talking about Xona. Private company, fully encrypted signal, paid service, not jammed at the same frequency as GPS.
EDIT: I would love for one of the people who down-voted me to explain what was wrong with my completely factual description of a company who is doing exactly what this person asked about.
If enough people are using this new system, Russia could easily pivot to target it as well. Jamming is not inherently hard, especially if a nation is attempting it.
Jamming in the US will bring the FCC down your throat. The stronger the signal, the faster they will show up. Russia transmitting a jamming signal from Russia doesn’t have to worry about such things. A jamming device is not hard to find, but on sovereign soil it’s still untouchable short of war.
Not the point of the post I replied to or my post. I develop GPS satellites for the Space Force. I understand jamming quite well and know what capabilities Russia has.
The person didn’t say that this hypothetical private system couldn’t be jammed. They said that if GPS is jammed then it opens up a niche for a private company to sell their own service. I said that exact thing is happening. That isn’t to say that service couldn’t also get jammed, but Russia is mainly jamming GPS because it affects military missions. Since the military wouldn’t be using this private company, then Russia is unlikely to jam their signal.
How does Russia jamming GPS open a market for a private GPS service? Russia can just jam the private network alongside the government operated one. So now people in the Baltics are gettinf blacked out of a service they are oaying a subscription to instead of one they are poggybacking off of for free.
At best they are talking about something completely unrelated to the news article.
I’m someone who works developing new GPS satellites and has to understand jamming. Even for Russia it isn’t easy to jam GPS in a very large area. It’s not impossible but also not as easy as just putting some jammers out there. In small areas it isn’t so bad for a nation. In buildings, even corporations can do it. Jamming at large scales gets very hard very fast.
So doing it for two different PNT services, one of which isn’t being used by any military, wouldn’t be something Russia would do.