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Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe
- NKosmatos 4mo agoTLDR (conclusion from the paper): "By a combination of these techniques the satellite Cosmos 2546 (NORAD ID 45608) was identified with high confidence as one source of the interference. Further analysis pointed to the Russian Edinaya Kosmicheskaya Sistema, an early warning constellation to which Cosmos 2546 belongs, as collectively responsible for the wide-area transient interference causing GNSS degradation across Europe since 2019."
- jeroenhd 4mo agoAdditionally: > Note that Cosmos 2546 was launched in May 2020 and so cannot be responsible for the interference events that occurred in 2019. Moreover, Cosmos 2546 was not over Europe during some interference events after May 2020. But during all events on the 75 days shown in Table 1 there was at least one EKS satellite above a 35∘ elevation angle with respect to every reference station that observed the interference. Thus, it is highly probable that the EKS constellation is collectively responsible for the wide-area transient GNSS interference events noted since 2019.
- yladiz 4mo agoRelated Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz23G_UXCGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz23G_UXCGA
- sippeangelo 4mo agoThe theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely. Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already. Therefore, the disruptions must either be regular tests of the capability, or just actual communication. Right?
- wcarss 4mo agoOr actual jamming mistargeted for some reason, or used because it was deemed necessary.
- alex_duf 4mo agoRepeatedly, over years, only for 2 to 5 seconds at a time? Seems unlikely
- wcarss 4mo agoyeah, I have to admit I was commenting on possibilities here without having gone into the article yet -- having now looked for real, I agree that the disruptions don't seem very useful for actual jamming and repeatedly like this for years across satellites and bands in this specific way doesn't make sense for some mistaken targeting either.
- idiotsecant 4mo agoThere is a very good reason to do this. Suppose you had a device that would make the shoplifting detectors at stores go off. The first time you did it everyone would get hassled. And the second time and so forth. But if you kept doing it eventually the employees would stop caring. Then you just walk out the door with your stuff.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- throw0101a 4mo ago> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already. Forget "state actors", truck drivers have taken out entire airports with GPS jammers: * https://www.cnet.com/culture/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-accidentally-jams-newark-airport/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-acc... People like the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation have been trying for years to get some kind of GNSS backup accepted: * https://rntfnd.org https://rntfnd.org China has certainly put their money into resiliency (both navigation and timing): * https://www.gpsworld.com/china-completes-national-eloran-network/ https://www.gpsworld.com/china-completes-national-eloran-net... * https://rntfnd.org//2026/03/19/china-has-built-a-triad-of-satellites-towers-and-fibre-to-never-lose-its-way-in-war-india-doesnt-have-one-swarajya/ https://rntfnd.org//2026/03/19/china-has-built-a-triad-of-sa... * https://rntfnd.org/2023/11/28/china-eloran-used-for-critical-infrastructure-extension-to-be-complete-by-2026-new-paper/ https://rntfnd.org/2023/11/28/china-eloran-used-for-critical... Some folks are certainly cluing in: South Korea has (e)Loran and the UK and France are joining up with them: * https://rntfnd.org/2025/04/30/the-uks-system-of-systems-approach-to-robust-pnt-inside-gnss/ https://rntfnd.org/2025/04/30/the-uks-system-of-systems-appr... * 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...
- sam_lowry_ 4mo agoThe video did not settle on the jamming of von der Leyen plane on approach to Plovdiv, but AFAIR it was a (likely unintentional) lie. Never acknowledged by von der Leyen nor by her press secretary because it exposed the lack of basic world knowledge around von der Leyen and her office.
- sam_lowry_ 4mo agoWhy downvotes? Here's the press conference where it was announced: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341 https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341 FlightRadar24 disproved the story shortly after: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178 https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178 TLDR: Neither von den Leyen nor her office knew about ADB-S nor about the multiple services that collect ADB-S broadcasts and republish, and there was none around who could stop them from announcing an embarrassing lie.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> Why downvotes? Probably because some missing mention of some specific thing you care deeply about doesn't imply "lack of basic world knowledge" for an entire political office, really strange thing to say and most likely why people are downvoting. It's neither kind, curious and definitively a snark/swipe that doesn't really add anything to the point you were trying to make.
- sam_lowry_ 4mo agoI think you normalize the deviation, here. If you listen to the press conference, Podesta (the press secretary) spoke about the plane circling and not being able to land. When preparing the press conference, she should have checked if this obvious lie can be obviously disproved, but she did not. This probably means that she did not know this was a lie, but then someone who ordered this to be announced knew. My bet is that von der Leyen or her close aide told Podesta to announce the lie in these terms, and the thing that worries me as a European is that there was none to warn these war-mongering ladies that they are making a mistake. This whole situation screams for an intern that sets up the mics and has a callsign and who can stop Podesta as she walks to the pied de stal of shame and explain that the position of planes is monitored all the time and is public information. But I bet that all their interns are servile 3rd generation eurocrats. P.S. The whole press conference (and many others) are fascinating to listen to. The language these people use is softened by the media. What do you think von der Leyen was doing on that plane? She was going "along the frontline" to inspect our preparedness for war where "the frontline" is the Eastern EU border. P.P.S The story made rounds in EU circles, and there was a parliamentary question offering a chance to apologize, but von der Leyen chose to ignore it.
- sschueller 4mo ago[flagged]
- TiredOfLife 4mo agoRussia is currently waging a huge war with europe. While your country is helping them just like they helped nazis in ww2
- jaapz 4mo agoBecause the video is based on the research done in this article, it even specifically calls out the article's authors in the description
- TechSquidTV 4mo agoAm I correct it looks like this was published 3 days ago? They made that video.. in essentially 2 days?
- yladiz 4mo agoI doubt it based solely on that there are multiple interviews including from one of the paper’s authors. Given that Veritasium is a very well known channel at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they were contacted instead and then roughly coordinated the timing of the paper and video release together.
- nativeit 4mo agoIs that normal? To promote a research paper in ArXiv so heavily? I think the parent comment’s concerns still apply, saying a large, well-funded YouTube channel is specifically releasing coordinated content to promote this prompts more questions than it answers, in my mind.
- mbreese 4mo agoYes it is common, just not always to the scale of a Veritasium video. Usually it’s just the press office for a university putting out a press release or a summary article in Scientific American. But in the case where the story is interesting to a larger audience, having a push behind a story across non-academic media is not unheard of. If you can get some media coverage of an academic topic, it can be very beneficial to the researchers’ careers. One goal for a researcher is to bring notoriety to their research, to their institution, and to the field in general. This is the main motivation I see. The authors may have pushed the arxiv paper out earlier due to the timing of the release of the video.
- throwaway2037 4mo agoEven if you think the information density of YouTube videos is too low (many do on HN), I can confidently say that the visuals are outstanding for (a) how GNSS/GPS works and (b) how they pinpoint'ed the satellite.
- uijl 4mo agoInteresting to see that they are able to identify the specific satellite. I wonder if we can do something now that we know the source. Working on construction projects on the Romanian coastline (just South of Ukraine) and on the Polish continental waters (just West of Kaliningrad) we experienced jamming on a daily basis.
- colechristensen 4mo ago>I wonder if we can do something now that we know the source. Russia signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) in 1967, this may be a treaty violation of this or other treaties, something like that or retaliation regarding it may be possible. You can hack the satellite, or use other electronic warfare options to jam or interfere with it's operations. You can shoot it down with a missile. The X-37B is in space right now and interfering with space assets is a pretty obvious possibility for why it exists at all, but it's secret so nobody says these things.
- whizzter 4mo agoIf you start shooting down stuff in orbit, it'll invite retaliation, but even without retaliation there's a huge risk of a Kessler syndrome (especially with all the stuff that SpaceX has put into orbit in recent years).
- Aerroon 4mo agoI've thought about this before - do you actually need to "shoot it down" (make it explode)? What if you just nudge it a little and either make it spin or change its orbit? If your missile can reach the satellite then these seem like things that should be possible, no?
- Cthulhu_ 4mo agoDepends, if you nudge it only a little, its own onboard stabilizers / thrusters should be able to correct it. It'd have to be more than its own systems can correct for.
- mattlondon 4mo agotl;dr - it was Russian satellites
- streatix 4mo ago[dead]
- imp0cat 4mo agoHow unsuprising.
- Cthulhu_ 4mo agoThis tl;dr is actually in the tl;dr on the linked page. We're doing tl;drs for tl;drs now?
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoIn the future abstracts will be called Tilldars and no one will remember it came originally from trying to pronounce "tldr"
- muyuu 4mo agoit should be right in the title tbh, not after some 150 words of prose
- red_admiral 4mo agoNot a new concept. From Matt Might https://matt.might.net/articles/peer-fortress/ https://matt.might.net/articles/peer-fortress/ "The scout delivers a flawless summary of your abstract."
- Maverick_G 4mo ago[flagged]
- dwa3592 4mo agoHmm - the timing is uncanny that only 2 days ago I started building a dead reckoning system.
- Joel_Mckay 4mo agoYour local cellphone towers already provide a more accurate position beacon signal for GPS modules in most parts of the world. Additional RF beam-forming in G5+ systems also make it impractical for lamers to jam long-distances due to limited coherent signal propagation. Indeed, amateur Hams have caught Russian ships jamming/spoofing local port traffic several years before the various official overseas conflicts started. Not sure if it is government sponsored, or just various smuggling schemes like some ships spamming China harbors. =3
- dwa3592 4mo agoAgreed about cellphone towers providing accurate position, but not with enough precision and highly dependent on the number of towers in the vicinity. What i started building is for a highly unlikely scenario which is ; no internet + no GPS + no cell tower.
- picofarad 4mo agoI have this idea that I'll get Bosch 9-DoF sensors onto every lane of every road, at least twice a month, then any other thing on a road can use a Shazam - like waveform lookup to determine where they are. I didn't come up with this for dead reckoning, it's more for, um, autonomous cars to be able to avoid potholes and stuff.
- platybubsy 4mo agoGPS jamming has been happening for years and it's not like dead reckoning is an insane new concept
- dwa3592 4mo agowhat are you saying? nothing of what you said is new or unknown.
- DivingForGold 4mo agoYou can likely bet that Space X with their thousands of sats deployed in space already has among them a few hundred stealth US military sats strategically placed and ready for the command to deal with the few Russky sats causing these problems ... think our Space Force.
- general1465 4mo agoCompletely different orbits to make this possible
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Coala15 4mo agoBeing engaged to warfare with Russia and being jammed in response. So weird.
- preisschild 4mo agoRussia attacked Europe, this is just another reminder that they are our enemies and we should be sabotaging their systems in turn.
- Coala15 4mo agoRelax, Russia didn't attacked Europe yet (if you mean EU).
- adrian_b 4mo agoIt may not have attacked intentionally the EU yet, but a week ago there was an incident when a Russian drone apparently strayed away from whatever Ukrainian target it may have had, and it hit an apartment building in the city of Galati, in Romania, in the EU, injuring two people. In the past there have been other incidents with Russian weapons reaching the neighboring countries from the EU, like Poland and Romania, but this was the first time when they hit a populated area, causing human injuries.
- dmitrygr 4mo agoThat was not a Russian drone in Romania. Ukraine has admitted it was theirs. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707098wkzpo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707098wkzpo
- throwaway9524 4mo agoThe linked article disproves your claim. It seems you're mistaking the naval drone incident, which did not cause casualties, with the Russian drone strike. > The country's defence ministry said the drone had self-detonated near an oil terminal without causing any casualties, although authorities have said it caused considerable damage to a ship and warehouses. > Ukraine later confirmed one of its naval drones had been involved, saying it had been knocked off course by Russian electronic interference. Moscow has yet to comment. > It also comes a week after two people were injured when a drone hit a Romanian apartment block in the eastern city of Galati - close to the border with Ukraine. > Romanian officials said they had confirmed it was a Russian drone but Moscow said "accusations" of its involvement were "unsubstantiated".
- moffkalast 4mo agoThere's a live map too: https://gpsjam.org https://gpsjam.org
- masklinn 4mo agoThat has nothing to do with the article, which is about satellite based interferences.
- f137 4mo agoI do not see any discussion of the power required for such wide-area jamming. Even as the useful GPS signal is quite weak at the ground level, this satellite would require power in kW range, right?
- awestroke 4mo agoSatellites have multi kW solar panels
- masklinn 4mo agoBeing on a Molniya orbit probably also helps: the apogee is at nearly 40000km, but the perigee is on the order of 1600 (according to the EKS wiki page), so outside of their primary observation points of their orbit they are quite close to the earth and thus have a ton of blasting ability for satellites with geostationary comms capabilities.
- yehat 4mo ago[flagged]
- snowpid 4mo ago"aybe annoying for some, but a need for others." Who needs it? Russia? I guess Russia does not need war but it started it anyway.
- avazhi 4mo agoIt's been known that Russia does GPS interference near their Western border and the Baltic down to Ukraine for several years now. It's something airline pilots prepare for now, and expect. Not sure why this is being couched as novel or surprising.
- dingaling 4mo agoThe novel aspect is that it is being conducted by a satellite, rather than a ground station. Which is an escalation in sophistication which makes counter-jamming much more difficult and also gives global reach to the jammer.
- lpcvoid 4mo ago[dead]
- numlock86 4mo agoYou could actually try reading the paper first before posting comments like this.
- avazhi 4mo agoWas responding to many of these comments, which read as if the commenters haven’t heard of this before. The top comment in this thread is some dude asking if we can ‘do something now that we know the source’ lol. We’ve known the source for 5 years. The fact this particular jamming originates from a Russian satellite and not Russian terrestrial-based equipment doesn’t change much. And while it’s unconvenient for planes and affects separation minima, planes have inertial systems and pilots deal with this easily. It happens in many places around the world, actually, although the Russians are definitely the worst offenders.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4mo agoSaved you a click: >This paper analyzes and identifies a space-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference source that has caused scores of powerful transient wide-area interference events over continental Europe, Greenland, and Canada since 2019. While terrestrial or near-terrestrial sources are primarily responsible for the recent uptick in GNSS interference worldwide, space-based interferers are of special concern given their potential for vast geographic reach and their portent of a qualitative escalation in GNSS interference. Based on data collected between 2019 and 2026 from a network of terrestrial GNSS reference stations, this paper (1) develops a received-power-based detection framework; (2) details the spatial, temporal, and spectral patterns of wide-area interference events caused by the source; (3) presents and analyzes identification techniques that blend received-power and time-difference-of-arrival measurements; and (4) applies these techniques to confidently identify the GNSS interference source as a constellation of Russian early warning satellites in Molniya ("lightning") orbits.
- DumpoLumbo 4mo agoI wonder why they call this specific discovery “jamming”. What they found is a relatively rare burst transmissions over roughly 5MHz of spectrum of something looking like a 12ms cyclic prefix with spacing related to 150 seconds multiplies. I would suspect it is some sort of sync or data close to L1 GPS frequencies, that as a side effect causing lower CNR for the GPS receivers. Btw it is only 10dB, which also I can’t really call “jamming”. Overall it seems to be an overfitting the observation to the wider intent of a malicious actor.
- scotty79 4mo ago> I wonder why they call this specific discovery “jamming”. Because it jamms.
- DumpoLumbo 4mo agoWell 10dB lower CNR for couple seconds doesn't pass my definition of jamm, but rather is a minor co-channel interference.
- gnerd00 4mo ago[flagged]
- stkdump 4mo agoOne can tell that this is 'from far away'. Europe was hoping that Russia, in their own interest would pursue peaceful cooperation, even when Putin was already talking about 'spheres of influence'. When Russia invaded Georgia, Europe turned the blind eye and was still hoping for peaceful relations with Russia. When Russia annexed Crimea, same thing. Even when Russia was pulling together forces along Ukraines border and the US pulled out their personnel from Ukraine, there were still many voices in Europe that Russia would never invade Ukraine. We can all be lucky that Ukraine wasn't as naive and prepared for this moment, otherwise Russia would probably have invaded a couple more countries by now.
- gnerd00 4mo ago[flagged]
- spwa4 4mo agoTLDR: Russia is jamming GPS and GNSS over Europe, purposefully, using a constellation of military satellites, part of the Russian nuclear program. Theory is that Russia has been constantly practicing to totally disrupt GPS and GNSS (and the Chinese system) across all of Europe since 2014. Practicing to deploy electronic warfare not across a warzone or even a country but an entire continent.
- ck2 4mo agoglad it's getting more coverage https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309667
- RealityVoid 4mo agoMildly interesting, and highly likely related. A cluster of 5(?) Ukrainian marine drones wound up today outside and around of Constanta off the coast of Romania with one detonating in the port and the rest detonating... somewhere around. Que here noisy exposion in port: https://youtu.be/Y8kdneBU_3Q?si=cr07TeMnxJTG-3TM&t=17 https://youtu.be/Y8kdneBU_3Q?si=cr07TeMnxJTG-3TM&t=17 No significant damage. The Ukrainans apparently lost control of the drones and they wound up there. My pet theory is that Russian EW jammed the control signals and guided the GPS jamming walking them to Constanta. I'll admit, if it was intentional (it seems so) it's pretty damn' impressive work from Russian EW.
- atomicbeanie 4mo agoComm signal in band with GPS? Control for a GPS software supply chain attack?
- VerifiedReports 4mo agoThe disturbing thing is that anyone was surprised by this. GPS is very fragile. This made news in the U.S. a few years ago because Ajit Pai had the brilliant idea to allow so-called "5G" telecom service on frequencies too close to those of GPS. I don't think this case is resolved yet: https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/new-5g-exemption-may-jam-gps-devices https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/new-5g-exemption-may-jam-g...
- sathyayoshi 4mo ago[flagged]
- d0mine 4mo agoU.S. Military Turned GPS into a Global "Numbers Station" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479