6 ms·
The Pentagon Can't Trust GPS Anymore
- phplovesong 11mo agoPaywalled
- jayknight 11mo agoFrom another thread: no paywall: https://www.wsj.com/tech/the-pentagon-cant-trust-gps-anymore-is-quantum-physics-the-answer-d7b2d4e6?st=mL1XSR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/tech/the-pentagon-cant-trust-gps-anymore...
- Kurd 11mo agohttps://www.wsj.com/tech/the-pentagon-cant-trust-gps-anymore-is-quantum-physics-the-answer-d7b2d4e6?st=5yrf6Q https://www.wsj.com/tech/the-pentagon-cant-trust-gps-anymore...
- shevy-java 11mo agoAnd we can't trust the Pentago anymore, so the circle is completed (see the recent "Ukraine deal" which is basically just a sell-out toward the USA allying with Russia).
- nine_k 11mo agoBut was that "deal" even produced in the Pentagon? We can't trust the current White House anymore, but this was known since late 2024.
- tjpnz 11mo agoWritten by The Kremlin, Jared Kushner and a Florida property developer (in that order).
- terminalshort 11mo agoYou only stopped trusting the government in 2024?
- qingcharles 11mo agoOne study said the English language in the plan was likely written by a Russian native.
- rich_sasha 11mo agoThat is darkly amusing. My personal bet was either on an intern or ChatGPT.
- MomsAVoxell 11mo agoNothing says "empire treating everyone else like serfs" like expecting a peace plan between two foreign nations being written in proper English and not the mother tongue of the parties involved. Do you not see the irony in this? "The two of you should make peace in our language, or it's fake." Even if the argument is made that the USA is involved in the war and should be a party to the plan (it "isn't", except "it is"), the peace plan should've been written in Ukrainian and Russian, and only then translated to English as appropriate. Seriously, that this is even being considered as a detractor from peace is highly specious. Perhaps you should point out that the language of the peace plan wasn't written in Ukrainian, translated into Russian, and then into English. That'd probably be acceptable, right?
- baiac 11mo agoCan you explain why you think that deal is selling out? It seems reasonable from the point of view of the United States given they don’t want to pour more money into a conflict they don’t really care too much about. Surely there are some lessons learnt from the “war on terror”
- herbst 11mo agoFor not caring to much, they try to take a lot of influence in a conflict that's not theirs
- baiac 11mo agoI suppose they have responsibilities as members of NATO. Europe has been completely incapable of stopping the conflict.
- herbst 11mo agoIs that something trump is saying or is that an actual fact? It's hard to tell the difference these days ... And from my stupid European mind this is not at all how things happened. Also the conflict still didn't stop, I don't see how America is somehow more capable of doing something when they didn't do anything?
- baiac 11mo agoNowhere in my comment did I say that the conflict has stopped. But Europe is the most interested party in this conflict and they haven’t come up with any reasonable proposition to end it. It’s good that someone with power is proposing something workable.
- mcphage 11mo ago> It’s good that someone with power is proposing something workable. But not reasonable.
- 11mo ago
- terminalshort 11mo agoBut if we could actually ally with Russia against China that would be a massive strategic win. Russia is: 1. A massive nuclear power 2. On the border of China 3. Willing to take risks for geopolitical gain that the Europeans would never dream of 4. A natural enemy of China since China claims (unofficially) large areas of Siberia including Vladivostok (their only major port on the Pacific). If Russia were an ally, that would put our alliance to the north, east, and south of China. More importantly it would put the threat of a land based attack on the table which is currently not the case.
- cynicalsecurity 11mo agoIt would be amusing if US seriously contemplated allying with Japan against Germany during the WWII. If you want to ally with Russia, you must destroy the Russian Imperialist regime first, represented by Putin and FSB. Ukraine is helping with that. Then free and democratic Russia will become your ally. But if you don't crush the Russian imperialists, they will crush you.
- terminalshort 11mo agoWhat has that got to do with anything? Japan is on the other side of the world from Germany. Not a particularly useful ally. And whether or not a country is an ally is entirely dependent on alignment of interests. Democracy doesn't have the slightest thing to do with it.
- tokai 11mo agoRussia is also a failing state with a crumbling economy and a demographic disaster unfolding, that is having issues pushing further than 50kms from its borders in a land war with the poorest European nation. They would only be a liability in a conflict against China.
- terminalshort 11mo agoOpening another front is never a liability, even if your ally is losing on that front it consumes resources of your enemy.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jmclnx 11mo agoI remember reading something about defunding some satellites, so I went looking. All I could find is articles about the US not providing backup satellites. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/27/nx-s1-5127737/losing-gps-would-cost-the-u-s-1-billion-a-day-so-why-is-there-no-backup https://www.npr.org/2024/09/27/nx-s1-5127737/losing-gps-woul... https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/money-report/losing-gps-could-cost-billions-so-the-space-force-is-having-companies-like-astranis-build-a-backup-network/5945853/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/money-report/losing...
- tokai 11mo agoIts about countering adversarial GPS spoofing, not a lack of satellites.
- graemep 11mo agoWhy was that not a consideration from the start? Surely it is expected that any system with military applications will face jamming and spoofing?
- coliveira 11mo agoThe US military always believe in the idea that the enemy is stupid or poor and cannot do anything against them.
- atonse 11mo agoGot any citations that support making such a blanket statement?
- tokai 11mo agoUS were the first to develop GPS spoofing/jamming capabilities, so its not like they didn't think of it. I would guess that the need for a navigation system was huge, and it was unfeasible at the time to build a system impervious to electronic warfare.
- 11mo ago
- chasing0entropy 11mo agoFabulously complicated and only producible with exotic emitters, sensors, and high frequency ICs. Probably as easily jammed or forced into calibration state with a directed low frequency em pulse generator. High tech garbage. We will not fare any better than Ukraine relying on tech like this. Fortunately someone recently posted a real technological wonder - the F-14 cpu, old timers were messing with multithreaded compute while I was muddling along learning pong line by line from a hobbyist magazine.
- ahuth 11mo agoProbably right. But, > We will not fare any better than Ukraine relying on tech like this. Ukraine is faring amazing well, aren’t they? Russia controls a fraction of the territory, has suffered a million casualties, and lost many many armored vehicles and combat aircraft.
- coliveira 11mo agoSo, it's wining by losing?
- mcherm 11mo agoNo, it is carrying out a highly effective asymmetric war. Russia has vastly more resources, but proportionately, Ukraine's forces are being far more effective than Russia's.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoWorked reasonably well for the North Koreans and North Vietnamese. It's a fairly impressive result for the country that was expected to collapse in a week or two.
- throw0101a 11mo ago> So, it's wining by losing?* Russia wanted to wipe Ukraine off the map, literally. By simply existing Ukraine is winning.
- standardUser 11mo agoHow does GPS stand up to the more recent European and Chinese systems?
- ACCount37 11mo agoSame type of system, same advantages, same vulnerabilities. Slightly different coverage densities. GPS isn't poorly designed - it's well designed within its design constraints, which those systems share.
- halJordan 11mo agoSometimes it's important to step back and reserve that these green field systems are merely trading blows with something originally designed in the 80s which carries all that baggage to 2026.
- throw0101a 11mo agoThe Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018 had with-in it the provision National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018: * https://rntfnd.org/wp-content/uploads/National-Timing-Resilience-and-Security-Act-of-2018.pdf https://rntfnd.org/wp-content/uploads/National-Timing-Resili... A roadmap was published in 2021: * https://www.transportation.gov/pnt/national-timing-resilience-and-security-act-roadmap-implementation-january-2021 https://www.transportation.gov/pnt/national-timing-resilienc... And also from 2021, NATIONAL R&D PLAN FOR POSITIONING, NAVIGATION, AND TIMING RESILIENCE: * https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Position_Navigation_Timing_RD_Plan-August-2021-1.pdf https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021... The simplest solution is to simply to resurrect the Loran infrastructure that the US (and others) run until the 2000s. The Koreans have been running eLoran for a while, and the UK and France are teaming up as well: * https://insidegnss.com/uk-and-france-renew-ties-resilient-pnt-eloran-a-key-part/ https://insidegnss.com/uk-and-france-renew-ties-resilient-pn... * https://rntfnd.org/2025/11/12/s-korea-leads-meeting-with-u-k-and-france-on-eloran/ https://rntfnd.org/2025/11/12/s-korea-leads-meeting-with-u-k... Chinas has had a completely built out network (including fibre networks for high-precision timing) for over a year: * https://rntfnd.org/2024/10/03/china-completes-national-eloran-network-the-paper/ https://rntfnd.org/2024/10/03/china-completes-national-elora... This is not rocket surgery: a working system that can giver you continent-wide coverage can be up and running a few years, with little technical risk (there's already kit available). Throwing some money at the problem and instructing the DOT/DHS/whomever to issue an RFI/RFP would go a long way to moving the ball forward.
- icegreentea2 11mo agoSomething like LORAN would be useful for operations near friendly nations and/or relatively uncontested areas. They don't particularly help with striking Chinese assets. Which is what the DoD funding is primarily about.
- throw0101a 11mo ago> They don't particularly help with striking Chinese assets. Which is what the DoD funding is primarily about. Why not use China's own Loran (and BeiDou) system against them?
- neuralkoi 11mo agoI wonder if this changes the old adage, now that the missile knows where it is at all times. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ
- jszymborski 11mo agoI was under the impression that thr US Military doesn't use GPS; that it was a civilian thing and that they had something more precise and secure.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoThey use a different coding scheme on the same physical signal. It is resistant to spoofing but far from immune to jamming.
- Jtsummers 11mo agoIt was developed by and for the military and is still managed by the military. Those are not normal qualities of civilian only systems.
- a_humean 11mo agoThe US Military does use GPS, but ordinary civilians don't have access to high accuracy data. Commercial vendors can license for higher accuracy, but its a hybrid civilian/military system with higher quality data for military use cases.
- terminalshort 11mo agoI think that was previously the case, but not anymore. I can get within a couple meters accuracy on my phone, which is plenty good enough for weapons guidance.
- Ancapistani 11mo agoNot since May of 2000.
- btilly 11mo agoGPS was built by the US military. Its existence was first revealed in Desert Storm back in 1990 when the US military used it to drive tanks into the desert, then come out where and when they wanted. The Iraqis were quite surprised, since they knew that desert, and knew that they would get lost if they tried to do the same maneuver. Parts of the GPS signal are encrypted to be only useful for the military. The result is that civilian systems an average 4.9 meters of accuracy, while the military is precise to something like a meter instead. But that extra accuracy doesn't help if the signal is jammed.
- bob1029 11mo agoGPS has been getting better over time. The newest iteration of the system supports a directional spot beam for military users with +20dB gain for theater-level jamming resistance. A +20dB gain means that the jammer is going to need roughly 100x its current power output to maintain the same effectiveness. An adversary ramping their transmitter by this much would turn into a blazing hot target in terms of electronic warfare. There are entire classes of weapons designed to lock directly onto signals like this. The AGM-88 is an example.
- ACCount37 11mo agoA part of why GPS is such a weak point is that existing receivers out there are pretty basic. Including receivers in things like JDAMs and other PGKs. This is even worse in Ukraine, where a lot of "precision munitions" are cobbled together from civilian parts and duct tape, jammers are cheap and plentiful, and anti-radiation missiles are unicorns.
- halJordan 11mo agoThats a problem for the Ukrainians, not the Pentagon. As far as jdams (some of) the ones in ukr have "home-on-jam" capabilities so no harm needed.
- ACCount37 11mo agoYou fucking wish it was just a problem for the Ukrainians. If US ever gets into a serious near-peer war, the Pentagon may have to resort to doing the same thing Ukraine does. Mass produce inferior but easy-to-scale weapons to address the growing munition shortages. The Pentagon understands this. This is why moves are made in that direction.
- ponector 11mo ago>> precision munitions" are cobbled together from civilian parts and duct tape Like the M982 Excalibur by Raytheon which is pretty much useless now in Ukraine.
- mikewarot 11mo agoI was with a friend visiting O'hare approach control outside Chicago. As with our previous visit to the Regional air traffic control, I was there mostly to give my friend a ride. However, on this visit I asked a question when the opportunity arose "What would you do if GPS went out, permanently?" The whole room collectively didn't want to think about it. There doesn't appear to be a plan. We've collectively put all our eggs in one basket.
- digitalPhonix 11mo agoI think air traffic is probably the most resilient group - I’m surprised no one answered! IFR was designed long before GPS and for the most part, GPS has been shoehorned into the “old” system. VORs around the country are still “primary” for navigations; airways are still primarily defined around VOR radials; and approach plates to large airports have plenty of non-GPS precision approaches. (Some smaller GA-only airfields that recently got IFR approaches might be WAAS/GPS only). Losing GPS might increase workload for some sectors (en route sectors who won’t be able to clear aircraft direct to waypoints) but not likely TRACON who are vectoring aircraft on pre-defined approach plates. If you pick a random commercial flight on your favourite flight tracker and check it’s route, 99% of the waypoints on it are defined as VOR intersections, not GPS coordinates. (The remaining 1% are likely en-route waypoints and not in the departure/approach area). Also, the instrument proficiency requirements for pilots require multiple approach types to be logged every 6 months so they are definitely capable of non-GPS approaches.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- bariumbitmap 11mo agohttp://archive.today/QW9WL http://archive.today/QW9WL