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Then you jam GPS
by kierenj 8y ago
Then you jam GPS
- bencollier49 8y agoAt an airport.
- kortilla 8y agoWhich is fine because it’s not necessary for aviation.
- cjrp 8y agoGPS disruption is NOTAM'd or scheduled with Ofcom[1] from time-to-time, although not usually at the airport itself. Given that Gatwick was shut at the time, it wouldn't have affected the aircraft since they weren't able to go anywhere. [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/gps-jamming-exercises https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/information/gps-jamming-ex...
- 7952 8y agoI wonder how much of a problem that would actually cause? Surely they could announce the lack of GPS on ATC and the pilots could revert to ground based navaids. Of course it might be difficult to keep the effect localised considering how weak the competing signal from space is.
- andrewnicolalde 8y agoWhat about all of the other legitimate users of GPS?
- kortilla 8y agoThey suffer a minor inconvenience as precision is lost. The US military frequently does selective jamming near bases and other ‘special’ areas.
- tomalpha 8y agoThe tricky bit here is that this is a civilian airport. Jamming GPS could reasonably be expected to cause significant difficulties for civilian planes and pilots. And thus passengers.
- grogenaut 8y agoThe airport was already disrupted because of the drones, disrupted to the point of shut down. thus the article.
- amaccuish 8y agoAs has been mentioned earlier, there are 5 airports in London.
- JimDabell 8y agoThere aren't five airports in London. There are quite a few airports with "London" in the name, but they aren't particularly close to London. London Luton Airport, for instance, is ~45km north of London, and London Gatwick is ~50km south of London. There's ~100km distance between Luton and the airport that was affected by the drones.
- simonh 8y agoHow do you think those planes get to those airports? There are planes flying all over the south east going to if from numerous airports. Then there’s the impact on GPS in cars, trucks, phones, police vehicles, ambulances, all sorts of emergency services. We’d have to be extremely careful about potential impact before considering such a drastic step that has a very small chance of actually being effective.
- JimDabell 8y agoI think you might have misread my comment. What I said was that there aren't five airports in London. You seem to have understood that to mean something very different.
- ff10 8y agoI wonder, does that mean loss of precision or complete failure?
- mpolsz 8y agoAs always it depends. There was defcon talk[1] about messing with drones and one part of speekers research involved jamming gps signal. [1] https://youtu.be/5CzURm7OpAA https://youtu.be/5CzURm7OpAA
- snovv_crash 8y agoIt can still do dead reckoning using optical flow and the barometer.
- snibsss 8y agoThat is not what dead reckoning is. You’re idea is simply flying by other instrumentation. Dead reckoning would be the accelerometer only, and estimating an assumed possible position based on known facts about the vehicle’s inertia and direction over time.
- travisjungroth 8y agoUsing an accelerometer wouldn’t be dead reckoning either. Dead reckoning in an aircraft is measuring airspeed and heading and correcting for expected wind. Using an accelerometer is intertidal navigation.
- snibsss 8y ago> measuring airspeed > accelerometer What exactly would imagine an accelerometer meters? Something other than speed?
- travisjungroth 8y agoAccelerometers measure acceleration. This can be used to calculate the groundspeed of the aircraft. Groundspeed is different than airspeed. For example, if a drone was hovering in a 5mph wind, its groundspeed is 0 and its airspeed is 5mph. I was a flight instructor for a few years, and have taught many students how to do dead reckoning. That doesn’t mean I’m right, but hopefully gives me enough credibility that you’ll consider my argument. Each of the Wikipedia articles for these topics is robust if you’d like more detail.
- snovv_crash 8y agoAnything without a global reference is dead reckoning. Optical flow sensors just give you a rotational velocity relative to ground. They don't globally locate you. If you combine it with an altitude sensor it gives the same as an odometer would in a car, or the number of steps you take while hiking.
- sly010 8y agoThen the drones fly visually. ANY drone activity will shut down the airport. I think the crucial point to make here is the attacker is inherently in a better position then the defender. There is a buffer zone around the airport anyway. I would aim to mercilessly shoot down detected drones in that buffer zone.
- lucb1e 8y agoVisually? I have yet to hear of a drone that can fly by camera instead of GPS.
- prawn 8y agoI assume most can fly without GPS. I can launch either of my Mavics without GPS and fly free, or it can try to use visuals to maintain location. I've flown within a cave without GPS. The drone drifts and can't really hold position reliably, but it works: https://www.instagram.com/p/BoayncJgAOO/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BoayncJgAOO/
- jsjohnst 8y agoSure, I’ve flown many times without GPS too, but if one is jamming 1575.42 MHz, it’s a simple matter to do the same for 2.4ghz and 5ghz that’s used for the drone to remote link.
- NickNameNick 8y agoWhich is great, but the parent post was describing autonomous navigation and disposable drones as a way for a drone operator to evade capture.
- lucb1e 8y agoBut we were talking about not controlling it so they can't jam your controller signal. Sure you can fly manually...
- A2017U1 8y agoI saw MIT opensourcing it 5 years ago. Flying through dense forests too. https://github.com/andybarry/flight https://github.com/andybarry/flight
- janoc 8y agoJamming GPS at an around an airport is not that great idea given that the airliners rely on it for navigation. Granted, they have other means of navigating when the GPS isn't available but in the extremely busy airspace around London this would be just asking for a big problem.
- lozenge 8y agoHow big is the area of a GPS jammer? Gatwick is 10km further out than London's biggest ring road and 45km from the centre.
- jsjohnst 8y ago> How big is the area of a GPS jammer? However big you want to make it. All a “GPS jammer” is is a radio transmitting on 1575.42 MHz. Modeling the signal propagation of a transmitting device (Aka radio / antenna combo in this case) is a very very well known field.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lucb1e 8y agoBut the airport was closed anyway. And there's some work by yours truly into targeted GPS spoofing, allowing not only to jam but also to take control of the device using GPS.
- cm2187 8y agoThere are like 5 airports in London. You want to be pretty confident your jamming will be very local.
- opless 8y agoThere's actually only two "international" civilian airports in London. London City, and London Heathrow. Luton, Stansted, and Gatwick are "London" in name only. All about 30mins drive from the M25.
- vowelless 8y agoIt is very possible for a drone to fly in a GPS denied scenario.
- cronix 8y agoAll of them? My drone uses a uBlox M8N which uses 4 different GPS systems (US GPS/Galileo/Beidou/Glonass). It's nice because you can get a GPS lock in just a few seconds, and it's a lot more accurate if you're connected to 20 sats at the same time than just 5 or 6. You can pick them up for about $20 on Amazon. You can also use satellite imagery and machine learning/computer vision with no GPS at all. You just draw a boundary on the sat map that you want it to stay within and it uses its cameras to match. MIT developed some cool drones that can actually fly through a forest at 30MPH without hitting any trees. This stuff is becoming very easy to do. https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/self-flying-drone-dips-darts-and-dives-through-trees-30-mph https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/self-flying-drone-dips-darts-...
- JulianMorrison 8y agoIf you jam GPS these days, you also get confused ubers, delivery riders and tourists milling around.