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> The U.S. military uses encrypted signals for geolocation of vessels, rather than commercial GPS. It seems like a massive oversight to keep encrypted GPS sign
by hamandcheese 9y ago
> The U.S. military uses encrypted signals for geolocation of vessels, rather than commercial GPS.
It seems like a massive oversight to keep encrypted GPS signals for use exclusively for US military. As mentioned in another comment, the collision could have been caused by spoofing the commercial ships GPS rather than a cyber attack on the Navy vessel.
The ability to selectively enable GPS in a region for only US military (as mentioned, once again, in another comment) doesn't even seem like that big of a strategic advantage - surely a sophisticated enemy wouldn't rely on GPS, would they?
Any strategic advantage doesn't really seem worth the potentially massive damage that could be caused by a large scale spoofing of GPS signals.
- Johnny555 9y agoPlus with the advent of Glonass, Galileo, and Beidou, the ability for the USA to turn off GPS has less strategic value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou_Navigation_Satellite_Sy...
- dragonwriter 9y agoThat would be true if the US did not have it was not willing to use effective ASAT weapons to also deny opponents the use of GPS alternatives in the event of a war in which they would want to deny GPS.
- hamandcheese 9y agoSurely GPS satellites can also be shot down, no? It seems the best possible outcome might be a single global navigation system that all powers depend on, creating a navigational form of mutually assured destruction, ensuring its continued availability during a time of conflict. That will probably never happen, though.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoI feel like that would just encourage all parties involved to develop robust non-satellite fallback systems and procedures...which, actually, would have prevented these collisions in the first place.
- nradov 9y agoAll parties involved already have robust non-satellite systems for collision avoidance because satellite systems have never been used for that purpose in the first place.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoThe post suggests that they weren't robust enough. That's why I said systems and procedures--backup systems don't work if the guys monitoring them aren't well-trained or paying attention because everyone assumes the GPS is infallible. Policies based on GPS MAD would place a lot more attention on the non-GPS systems.
- Johnny555 9y agoSeems more likely that they'd use local jammers where needed than to risk global retaliation against the USA by shooting down 10's of billions of dollars of European, Russian, and Chinese satellites. Assuming, of course that they aren't fighting a common enemy which would let them convince all of those satellite owners to shut them down or degrade the voluntarily.
- nradov 9y agoNo one has ever tested an ASAT weapon capable of hitting GPS satellites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#Limits_of_ASATs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#Limits_o...
- Iv 9y ago> surely a sophisticated enemy wouldn't rely on GPS, would they? That leaves the unsophisticated enemies.
- nradov 9y agoThat's nonsense, there's no way that some unknown third party could have tricked the Alnic MC into an allision with the USS John S. McCain. It's the sort of thing that only works in movies, not real life. Mariners don't use GPS for collision avoidance. This is a simple case of incompetence by the crews of both ships.