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USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red Flag Air War Exercise
- masonic 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16242891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16242891 "inconsistent GPS service" for 3 hour late-night windows each day during the exercise does not justify the clickbaity title.
- anigbrowl 9y agoI don't find it clickbaity since it includes meaningful context about purpose and scope.
- greglindahl 9y agoI'm in the Bay Area, should I be concerned that my GPS will be disrupted? "Western U.S." is a big area. Maybe I should click on it just to be sure? Heeeey, yeah, clickbait. Maybe an innocent mistake from a headline writer who lives in the Eastern US? Neah. Clickbait.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago"In Western US" not "Western US".
- anigbrowl 9y agoHow much information do you want them to shoehorn into a headline? Be realistic please.
- dawnerd 9y agoI dunno, how about "USAF Is Jamming GPS in Nevada For Largest Ever Red Flag Air War Exercise"
- hedora 9y agoThey could also say they’re jamming GPS in a radio room in an Air Force base, but it wouldn’t change the fact that the jamming will impact a multiple state area, including Colorado and the coast of California.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThat depends on the strength and method of jamming, which is the point of this complaint.
- hedora 9y agoThey say Oakland will be impacted. Presumably the whole bay area will be too.
- mc32 9y agoIt's not quite clickbait as it is being less than accurate.
- macintux 9y agoIt's accurate, just not precise.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shostack 9y agoThe IMAX movie Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag was pretty cool if people want to see more about this training exercise. The level of coordination to pull this whole thing off is staggering. I wonder what sorts of things they need to account for in this day and age of drones, digital warfare, etc.
- kfcm 9y agoThis movie is an example of what happens when Boeing's Marketing department and USAF recruiting (with assistance from SAF/FMP) team up.
- mrep 9y agoIf you want to see some crazy US Air Force training, youtube "red flag training". Those videos give an amazing perspective on what our military is trained to do.
- craftyguy 9y agoAs someone who served in "our military", public videos do not capture the "hurry up and wait" that dominates the majority of all military actions.
- elchief 9y agonow? Or not
- craftyguy 9y agos/now/not/
- platz 9y agoMote accurate than than training: r/combatfootage
- ryanmarsh 9y agoHurry up and wait aside, we do some pretty incredible things, briefly, when the waiting stops.
- sneak 9y agoYes, it is definitely against credibility that an otherwise mostly civilized country would spend more than half their tax income on efforts to torture and kill millions of people.
- loteck 9y agoYou'd expect nothing less from a $170 billion organization that is tasked with being ready for global war at a moment's notice.
- jrue 9y agoWhy aren’t GPS signals digitally signed? It would be simple to prevent this kind of attack.
- Isamu 9y agoWhy would the US military create a system it couldn't manipulate itself? GPS is operated and maintained by the USAF. https://www.gps.gov https://www.gps.gov
- mitchty 9y agoThey are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Precision_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Precision_code
- gbacon 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA#Military_(M-code) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA#Military_(M-cod...
- tropo 9y agoFor this, the attack is from the operator of the GPS signals. There is no defense; the attacker could digitally sign the signals or even shut off the satellite. For an attack in a foreign country, digital signatures only prevent false information. A digital signature does you no good if the interfering signal is far stronger than the desired signal. The desired signal may even go missing if the enemy attacks the satellite. Military users can choose to use encrypted GPS signals. This at least lets them know to ignore an attacker, but doesn't help with hearing the legit signal. Military users sometimes use highly directional antennas to avoid picking up jammers near the ground, but that is no help against an enemy that can put a jammer in their own satellite.
- hedora 9y agoEncryption probably doesn’t solve the replay attack problem here. If you can jam + retransmit the signals from the satellite with a sufficiently small delay, then you can change the position the receiver computes.
- CaliforniaKarl 9y agoI wonder, will the GPS jamming cause any disruption to (or, worse, deviation of) GPS time signals? If yes, that could cause some interesting effects to NTP servers and appliances that use GPS as their stratum-zero source of time.
- mlosapio 9y agoSuperNAP is in that area. Only one of the largest colo’s in the country....no big deal
- itronitron 9y agohopefully they have the necessary details from the USAF or have recently installed an atomic clock
- jtolmar 9y agoA few months ago one of the satellites was still broadcasting while it was down for routine maintenance, reporting some time that was off by a third of the distance to the sun. There are enough weird GPS errors that I'd hope they have a backup plan already.
- tjohns 9y agoWouldn't the GPS ephemeris/almanac data would still list the satellite as inop, even if it's still transmitting?
- jtolmar 9y agoThey did, so actual GPS location chips weren't thrown off. But apparently there are GPS-based clocks out there that don't actually bother to read the almanac. (I'm a few layers removed from the error report where I saw this so I don't really know the details.)
- itronitron 9y agoif what they are doing is jamming, then if you are getting timing information from a gps receiver and your receiver is in range of the jammer you will get the timing information from the jamming signal, so yes, however the USAF _might_ be including the correct timing information in their jamming signal in order to reduce any side effects of their exercise...
- verelo 9y agoAs a private pilot, this is the kind of thing that makes me scared to fly without being well versed on radio nav aids. I feel like i know them well, but honestly i use them so rarely in practice it would likely be an uncomfortable situation.
- edraferi 9y agoWhich is exactly why the military is knocking out GPS Afro the exercise. Gotta train for the worst.
- lutorm 9y agoYeah, it makes you wonder about NextGen and the retirement of radio navaids.
- danaliv 9y agoUse them on trips when you don’t need them so you’re prepared. I flew home over New Years via VORs and pilotage just to keep it sharp.
- sliken 9y agoMost GPSs these days support GLONASS as well, my previous generation pixel phone does. Not that one shouldn't have a backup plan in case of a disruption of both.
- nraynaud 9y agoMy understanding is that it might be the gps system sending fake data, not being shut down or completely scrambled. So you might not know you are wrong.
- rdtsc 9y agoThough if you get GLONASS and Galileo you could compare and see if one is all of the sudden off? Of course if they are faking GPS, they'll probably get the capability to fake the others.
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- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- madengr 9y agoAre they jamming GPS, or just turning it off over that area? Sort of hard to tell reading that article.
- itronitron 9y agothey wouldn't be able to turn it off over a single geographic area as the GPS satellites are broadcasting from space but they might be able to turn Selective Availability (SA) on for individual satellites however that would downgrade the signal received by every GPS receiver in view of the satellite until they turned SA back off
- tialaramex 9y agoModern GPS satellites don't know how to do Selective Availability, this feature was not being used, so implementing it in spacecraft (which is not free) made no sense and new birds aren't fitted with it. Newer models of GPS satellite implement a new variant of COSPAS-SARSAT instead, unlike a Geostationary satellite they pass over the whole Earth's surface, so they can see your rescue beacon from anywhere, and unlike the weather satellites used in the past to cover the whole surface they have powerful transmitters in the right frequency range already, so they could reply. Today (in testing only) this means faster rescue after triggering a beacon. Search and Rescue resources will know where you are (often to within metres) just minutes or even seconds after you activate the beacon, an improvement on prior models (10+ minutes on most of the surface, up to hours nearer the poles) and eventually new beacons will be able to tell you that rescue is coming perhaps with short text or coded messages e.g. "Mountain patrol on their way. ETA 48 minutes. Stay where you are if safe."
- colordrops 9y agoTitle is a bit misleading. They are jamming an area over Nevada, not the entire western U.S. Suggest a title change.
- s0rce 9y agoYah, not clear. I was going to be annoyed since I plan to go hiking this weekend in California. Probably would have been good to practice the old map and compass stuff, actually.
- davchana 9y agoEven if this was not happening, and GPS were supposed to be working, carrying old school maps, compass, paper & pen is always a good idea.
- jschwartzi 9y agoAn altimeter is pretty useful too. I use my altimeter more than my compass unless I don't have any handrails nearby.
- dmix 9y agoSorry if this is a dumb question as an inexperienced hiker, why would an altimeter be more helpful in those situations?
- splendidtube 9y agoMost maps for hiking/backcountry use are topographic. If you generally know what line you’re on, like a trail or along a creek, you can match your altitude to the elevation on the map and identify your position. It’s a lot quicker and easier than finding a point, taking the angle from a compass, and plotting your position on the map.
- chiph 9y ago
- tlb 9y agoIf the goal is to similate navy pilots flying with intermittent GPS, they should add a test mode to their planes receivers rather than jamming which disrupts all planes.
- johncolanduoni 9y agoThey probably don't want to have a facility in their software or hardware that could accidentally (or purposely) be set to disable GPS during normal operation. Even something physical like a switch would make subtle sabotage easier.
- Merad 9y agoEh, such features aren't new or unusual. For example most aircraft have a "master arm" switch that enables firing weapons. Typically they have three settings: off, arm, and simulate (or something comparable).
- hudibras 9y agoWhen I was in the Navy, I participated in similar exercises. Operating in a GPS-denied environment is only one objective we trained on. Identifying that you were being jammed was also key. GPS jamming looks just like the "Huh, we're not locking on any satellites yet, better restart it" that we've all experienced with our car or smartphone. Also, it's likely that there are classified counter-counter-GPS systems or tactics that are being tested or trained on during Red Flag and other similar exercises, but these won't make it into the press.
- gbacon 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA#Military_(M-code) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA#Military_(M-cod...
- handedness 9y agoTesting the jamming is as much a part of the exercise as anything. That, and jamming is not a binary thing. Real-world exercises on something like this yield far better training than simulations, which is what a test mode would be.
- murukesh_s 9y agoWhat about self driving cars and self driving cab services? Will they run into each other? Do they depend on GPS for navigation?
- microcolonel 9y agoIf they did, they would be crashing into parked cars and buildings as well. GPS can not be the basis of fine navigation, and it does nothing for collision avoidance.
- murukesh_s 9y agoBut how do they go to the destination? Or pickup users from their location?
- mannykannot 9y agoNavigation by GPS and collision avoidance are not mutually exclusive - people do it all the time. They operate at different scales.
- coolspot 9y agoI think they are mostly operating based on LIDAR data and recognition.
- cm2187 9y agoI thought they also relied on highly precise maps hence gps would matter. Though gps is unreliable if you need to be on the right lane of the road so I assume they have fallback mechanisms.
- murukesh_s 9y agoI think they definitely require GPS or some form of satellite navigation mechanism to work. I really don't think they can use the local built-in radar to position themselves. I believe until now they have taken it for granted that GPS will always work. Theoretically we can place ourselves in the map based on visual recognition and radar, but its much more difficult than using GPS, and I don't think any of the current implementation have thought of a fallback mechanism..
- microcolonel 9y agoIt'd be cool to have another good documentary. I remember there being a good cut of one of these exercises some years ago.
- basicplus2 9y agoDenial of GPS is one thing but how do you detect when the coordinates are deliberately shifted... If you are flying could be mountain goat you hit
- matheweis 9y agoThey do this all of the time. I subscribed to the FAA alerts a couple of years ago after learning that the GPS interference tests were one of various causes of so-called “flyaways” (unexpectedly losing control of a GPS guided drone). Anyway, since then I’ve gotten an alert about these tests almost every month or so for the last couple of years. Not sure why a big deal is being made about this particular one...
- briandear 9y agoGetting NOTAMs is fun — a ton of interesting things happening all over the US at any given moment.
- atm0sphere 9y agohow do you get them?
- gbacon 9y agohttps://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/ https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/ https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/ https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/
- otp124 9y agoWhere can I subscribe to this? I've had a drone fly away once..
- gbacon 9y agoCheck the Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) for nearby airports before you go flying. https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/ https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/ https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/ https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/
- matheweis 9y agoCreate an account on https://www.faasafety.gov/ https://www.faasafety.gov/, and then set up your subscriptions from there.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- askvictor 9y agoGiven that an individual or state could implement such an attack, I would imagine it wise to test the impacts of an GPS jam on the otherwise normal running of society. How many delivery drivers don't know how to get anywhere within a GPS?
- sjg007 9y agoMaybe that explains why my pizza was delivered to the wrong house.
- d33 9y agoIt kind of baffles me that today the best solution we have to the problem of navigation is still based on the concept of having satellites in the space. Is there an ELI5 answer to why we can't have a decent system of figuring out where we are on this planet without making any unstable additions to it?
- Zeebrommer 9y agoWell why do you think we should? I don't know of any positioning principles that do not rely on measuring the distance to some known reference -- be it a star, sattelite, ground station or your place of departure.
- bicubic 9y agoBecause there is no cheaper solution that's reliable. I think when we figure out affordable global positioning without needing external infrastructure, we'll unlock a major technological milestone as a species. Right now you can do this for short periods of time with multi million dollar INS solutions which are used exclusively by the military. My guess is the answer will be in SLAM augmented with some other sources of data. See googles project tango.
- jo909 9y agoWe can and we have with mobile networks and wifi positioning. That's just not accurate enough for many applications, and resolution varies a lot.
- Gravityloss 9y agoPulsar navigation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131537 wonder if it could work on Earth too...
- coin 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system
- marcosdumay 9y agoI don't get what is so unstable about satellites. Anyway, if you want a global system with sub-meter accuracy, you will have to continuously adjust it. If you settle for ~100m accuracy, you can create something that will last for a long while without any intervention by using satellites.
- mncharity 9y agoVery not my field, but for context which hasn't been mentioned here yet: GPS spoofing attacks appear to have become more accessible of late, and to have occurred in the wild (notably on the coast of the Black Sea). And jamming could be relatively easier. [1] http://gpsworld.com/spoofing-in-the-black-sea-what-really-happened/ http://gpsworld.com/spoofing-in-the-black-sea-what-really-ha...
- xen2xen1 9y agoHasn't there been stories here about the GPS signal near important buildings in Moscow being shifted 20 blocks or something? Regardless, after a second I'm totally up with it being messed up sometimes. If it never turns off you literally don't know how to live without it.
- lettergram 9y agoThis makes so much sense... Yesterday I saw at least 6 Apache helicopters take off from the rather small Champaign, IL airport. Earlier this week I saw some strange jets as well. Was pretty confused, but they were probably moving around for this exercise (either too or from).
- tlrobinson 9y agoThe article about astro-inertial navigation systems, as found on the SR-71, is interesting as well: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17207/sr-71s-r2-d2-could-be-the-key-to-winning-future-fights-in-gps-denied-environments http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17207/sr-71s-r2-d2-coul... I imagine the military has also developed downward-looking computer-vision and/or radar based positioning systems.
- dmix 9y agoIf you're curious what the Russians will be deploying in remote areas (outside of aircraft) this is their primary electronic warfare vehicle which can jam low-orbit satellites, which I'd imagine includes GPS and other NATO networked systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasukha_EW_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasukha_EW_System > The Krasukha-4 has the range for effectively disrupting low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and can cause permanent damage to targeted radio-electronic devices. Ground based radars are also a viable target for the Krasukha-4.
- lilythberky 9y agoThe imaginary enemy may be China and Russia. Russia, in particular, has a very powerful disruptive force. China and Russia will work closely together to try to prevent the outbreak of conflict. Hopefully there won't be a major outbreak of war. source: http://www.perfectjammer.com/gps-blockers-jammers.html http://www.perfectjammer.com/gps-blockers-jammers.html
- nongle 9y agoGPS jammer is an important equipment for GPS positioning, which is very important for anti-tracking and protection. It's good for your safety. https://www.jammer-buy.com/gps-jammer/c-25.html https://www.jammer-buy.com/gps-jammer/c-25.html