[HN Gopher] FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming
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FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming
Author : throw0101a
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-10-11 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| sklargh wrote:
| The FAA is actually pretty good at regulating "known" things
| within its remit. It is however, exceptionally bad at regulating
| unknown things, so it has a defined process to make things known.
|
| One of the most dangerous conditions at the FAA is when an
| unknown thing evades the FAA's process by which to make it known
| and understood to the FAA. It takes the agency a long time to
| grasp and assess. See 737 MAX, UAS...
| linuxhansl wrote:
| As a lay person in this area... There are more navigation systems
| around: The EU Galileo, Russia's GLONASS, etc.
|
| Assuming it's unlikely that all system are
| down/jammed/compromised in the same area at the same time,
| receivers for multiple systems should be OK...? (Again lay person
| here)
| rocqua wrote:
| The signals are all rather low power, in very well known
| frequency bands. That makes jamming them very easy militarily
| speaking.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| If GPS is easy to jam, that doesn't help much. You can likely
| just as easily jam signals for another GNSS as they all use
| similar technology.
| andrepew wrote:
| Can someone more familiar with the situation explain why they jam
| GPS at all?
|
| You'd think the vast industry around the military could replace
| actual jamming with training aids. Even if the bespoke training
| tools are expensive, I doubt they're as expensive as an airliner
| wandering in to an active missile range. Not to mention the
| economic disruption to air traffic throughput.
| gh02t wrote:
| The signal GPS uses is actually very very weak and can be
| jammed pretty easily just by spewing a bunch of noise in the
| general area of the spectrum where it lies. Military grade
| receivers have some countermeasures that civilian equipment
| doesn't (e.g. the military signals have much wider bandwidth to
| work with, and you can also do some antenna magic), but jamming
| is still a problem for them too and it's a pretty active area
| for R&D.
|
| https://www.afcea.org/content/jam-proof-signals-guide-naviga...
| is a good read on the subject.
| topspin wrote:
| "and you can also do some antenna magic"
|
| Just thinking about what that would involve. Very high gain
| antennas could track individual GPS satellites and probably
| defeat jammers. A phased array system (similar to Starlink's
| 'dishy', but probably larger due to the much lower frequency)
| might also work. Either solution would make many if not most
| uses of GPS either physically impractical and/or too costly.
| andrepew wrote:
| The article makes it seem like they're testing the capability
| of field personnel rather than doing R&D.
|
| For the actual R&D stuff, I can see why they'd need to do
| something in the field to see how it behaves. But I would
| also imagine that sort of testing to be fairly infrequent
| with long experiment cycles.
| takk309 wrote:
| Remember, GPS is a military tool first. Civilians get to use it
| at the militaries discretion. They could turn the selective
| availability (which was turned off in 2000) back on and remove
| a lot of civilian accuracy. Maybe civilian pilots are the ones
| that need to training aids more than the military. It seems to
| me that they should be able to navigate without gps in a safe
| manner.
|
| Edit: fixed term for selective availability.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Didn't they actually remove selective availability from the
| new sat's that were launched.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080113123316/http://pnt.gov/pu.
| ..
|
| > In September 2007, the U.S. Government announced its
| decision to procure the future generation of GPS satellites,
| known as GPS III, without the SA feature. Doing this will
| make the policy decision of 2000 permanent and eliminate a
| source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of
| concern to civil GPS users worldwide for some time.
| toast0 wrote:
| > They could turn the selective availability (which was
| turned off in 2000) back on
|
| I'm not sure if they can, if I've got the right info, block
| IIF and block III satellites don't have the hardware for
| selective availability; and those make up 16 out of 30
| operational satellites (and one out of 4 reserve).
|
| But I'm sure if they can't enable SA, they could likely just
| disable the civilian frequencies or something if needed.
| OTOH, there's GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou; the US can
| administratively deny GPS and probably Galileo, but not the
| other two, which makes SA less useful.
| dkarl wrote:
| > Remember, GPS is a military tool first. Civilians get to
| use it at the militaries discretion.
|
| That's a bit like saying Java could have dropped
| sun.misc.Unsafe at any time because it was a private API.
| Once the civilian economy started relying on GPS, the
| military had to consider the cost of turning it off. Not to
| mention that the U.S. military has traditionally been
| deployed to promote and safeguard American commercial
| interests, and if it started disregarding them, that would
| amount to a shocking political revolution.
| pigbearpig wrote:
| Probably the same reason Netflix used/uses Chaos Monkey to
| actually cause problems, rather than just relying on training
| aids.
|
| You need to find the problems you didn't anticipate.
| topspin wrote:
| We've got submarine crews that can't avoid smashing nuclear
| powered warships into sea mounts. Switching off the crutches
| seems like a very necessary training approach.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > "Aircraft are greatly affected by the GPS jamming and it's not
| taken seriously by management," reads one report. "We've been
| told we can't ask to stop jamming, and to just put everyone on
| headings."
|
| This is the military practicing, but I would hope that civilian
| airline transport operations are also robust to GNSS
| unavailability or denial. Even private pilots in little Cessnas
| are taught to navigate using radio-navigation (NDB beacons, VORs,
| etc.) in the event that GPS is not available. You should
| absolutely be able to turn your GPS off and get to your
| destination.
|
| The fact that radio-navigation aids are being phased out in favor
| of GNSS, turning it into a single point of failure, is pretty
| concerning.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| In the examples given it sounds like ATC was doing things like
| directing aircraft in to restricted air space. Obviously the
| captain has final say and ATC's role is officially just
| advisory. But this sounds like a bit more than a pilot who
| forgot how to navigate.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Are they still taught to do NDB approaches? I thought that's
| been phased out, too. In fact I was told the other day that the
| US officially tuned off the NDBs? Does not apply to VORs then,
| but as you say, the fact that they get phased out more and more
| is concerning.
| omegant wrote:
| We still have inertial and radio beacon navigation(VOR, ADF,
| ILS) , you are always able to disconnect the gps data from the
| computer.
|
| Obviously GPS is allowing much more precise route and approach
| navigation, all without ground equipment.
|
| New rules and rutes have been developed the last 15 years to
| take advantage of GPS precision and global availability.
|
| But current airplanes still keep all the old systems in place
| and we train with them.
|
| Removal of ground stations could become a problem in the
| future.
|
| I agree that it is important that alterantive navigationsystems
| are available.
| aaronfitz wrote:
| The waves of deactivations on the ground stations have
| already started. We're on a trajectory of GPS over-reliance.
|
| https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/navigation/the-
| faa-i...
|
| https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
| news/2018/may/23/vor...
| rbanffy wrote:
| What kind of deranged person messes with GPS risking to crash an
| airplane?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| The same kind that shines laser pointers in planes?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| The US military, per the article.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Makes sense. They don't seem to select for social
| responsibility.
| boglurker wrote:
| > The complaints accused the FAA of denying controllers
| permission to ask the military to cut short GPS tests
| adversely affecting commercial and private aircraft.
|
| The issue according to the article is with the FAA, not the
| military
| rbanffy wrote:
| I would expect the FAA to select FOR social
| responsibility. In the military, sociopathy is sometimes
| an asset. At the FAA it is inevitably a liability.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The DoD wants to ensure their forces can operate if GPS is
| down.
|
| This requirement should be reasonable to most people who aren't
| pacifists. So I think the real question is, why aren't senior
| level DoD and FAA bosses doing more to increase safety during
| the planned outages?
| rbanffy wrote:
| You can always disable GPS at the edges. Or almost always.
| And, for the rest, yes, they should at least be talking to
| each other and publishing NOTAMs when possible (and ensuring
| the FAA has it covered when it's a surprise drill).
|
| OTOH, would it be possible to have other location services
| such as Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou available as backups (or
| letting they all vote on your position)?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I would hope GPS denial tests also include the alt-GPS
| systems. Who knows what hardware might have unknown
| dependencies (one would assume military hardware has all
| been audited, but assumptions make for poor battle plans.)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I shall consult the expert team at 4chan /s
|
| But seriously _" We've been told we can't ask to stop jamming,
| and to just put everyone on headings."_... people inbound not
| ready for this can run out of fuel. Maybe the right passive
| aggressive response could have been to simply set a really
| large diameter TFR to keep civilian aircraft away assuming
| people check NOTAMs.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _simply set a really large diameter_
|
| I'm not particularly familiar with aviation, so is the radius
| in this comment (445NM at FL400) considered large?
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28833002)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Yes that is very large however that is just an advisory not
| a TFR. [1] Only those with special permission and Harrison
| Ford may enter into a TFR.
|
| [1] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_flight_restriction
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > people inbound not ready for this can run out of fuel
|
| Shouldn't you always be ready for a GPS (or other instrument)
| failure?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Yes that's even part of the verbal/written test. You have
| to calculate fuel requirements to different distances and
| they give you options that would be technically right but
| check to see if you pick the conservative approach in the
| event of this very situation. If you want to see how many
| people toss that knowledge out the window listen to some of
| the videos at VASAvation [1] and instead choose to land on
| freeways, city streets, farm fields, etc... Not all of them
| are due to fuel, but some are.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/VASAviation/videos
| loeg wrote:
| Instrument failures are rare and might impact a handful of
| aircraft; GPS jamming impacts _every aircraft_ in the
| vicinity. ATC might have capacity to plan low fuel-
| consumption flight heading paths for a small number of
| aircraft, but not 100%?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| ATC / radio failures happen. If ATC can't plan a route
| for you, you're still the pilot in command and
| responsible for finding a diversion airport and getting
| down safely, and for having had enough fuel to deal with
| traffic while doing so.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Of course you should be prepared for accidents, but it's
| quite another to be so prepared accidents don't turn into
| emergencies.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| Would you be ok with a commercial passenger flight
| operating with 1 of the 2 engines completely disabled? It's
| technically designed to fly with 1 engine, so what's the
| problem?
|
| Knocking out a pilot's GPS gives them one less tool in the
| event that other instruments fail. It's like saying
| "shouldn't you always be ready for backup hydraulics to
| fail?". Taking a backup system offline isn't an ideal
| situation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Would you be ok with a commercial passenger flight
| operating with 1 of the 2 engines completely disabled?
|
| Yes. They are designed for that, and have procedures in
| place for when it happens, just as they do for a GPS
| failure.
|
| (Specifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS)
|
| I would not be OK with a pilot who _didn't_ plan for the
| possibility of engine failure.
|
| If you run out of fuel because your GPS is jammed,
| there's a good chance you'd have run out of fuel if it
| failed in another more normal fashion.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| You miss the point entirely. No commercial aircraft is
| going to be allowed to take off with only 1/2 engines in
| operation. If one goes out in flight they'll usually find
| a place to land bc it's understood that if that last
| engine dies then that's a bad situation. Which is the
| entire reason they have backups in the first place.
|
| I'm not arguing about whether it's possible, I'm arguing
| whether it's smart. Airplanes have backups, and yes they
| can run on those backups, or else what would even be the
| point of having them? This kind of goes without saying...
|
| If planes are DESIGNED to have backup systems, in case
| there is a failure, then do you think it's smart to
| arbitrarily remove one of said backup systems?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > No commercial aircraft is going to be allowed to take
| off with only 1/2 engines in operation.
|
| That's a different question.
|
| If you're _knowingly_ flying into GPS jamming - these
| jamming operations are apparently announced via NOTAMs
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28833002) - you
| should be planning ahead even _more_.
|
| A pilot is responsible for having enough fuel in case of
| an emergency, like the GPS unit crapping out. Anyone
| running out of fuel due to GPS jamming was ill prepared
| for other emergencies.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| Lol, I'm not saying pilots CAN'T operate without GPS (I
| fly hang gliders and I used to fly with literally no
| instruments at all).
|
| Think of it this way. A person can live a normal life
| with 1 arm, 1 leg or even 1 eye or ear. Is it ideal?
| Probably not. If you lose your other arm, leg, eye/ear
| it's going to cause many more problems than just losing
| 1.
|
| Losing any backups in aviation is a less-than-ideal
| situation. That was the only point I was trying to make.
| OF COURSE pilots can operate a plane without GPS, my god
| I'd hope they could. I feel like that kind of goes
| without saying.
| pigbearpig wrote:
| No plane is going to crash because it doesn't have GPS.
| Aircraft have other ways to navigate.
| joncp wrote:
| Well keep in mind that US GPS was developed by and is
| owned/operated by the US military. They're just letting us use
| it.
| loeg wrote:
| The military serves the taxpayers.
| mywittyname wrote:
| That doesn't entitle them to access to military systems,
| either individually or as a collective. And surely citizens
| of other countries are not entitled to access to military
| systems.
| FpUser wrote:
| Well the only reason military can own /pay for anything is
| because it takes our money in a first place. So unless there
| are specific security concerns civilians should be able to
| use whatever military tech they've paid for.
| sklargh wrote:
| Half-joking that Uber and [Tech Major]s' Map products are
| among the greatest government subsidy stories of all time.
| Those satellites are expensive!
| asdff wrote:
| I wish I could use my phone on GPS only. Somehow the damn
| thing still needs a cell connection despite having the
| hardware allegedly.
| roognarook wrote:
| You can, you just need to download the maps for offline
| use. Google maps makes it easy:
|
| https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838
|
| It's very useful for navigating crowded touristy areas,
| remote nature preserves, sports/music events that jam the
| towers, etc.
|
| Some more specialized apps also support doing the same
| thing with other types of maps, like USGS quad sheets.
| tweedledee wrote:
| I think it's for military protection. I had a flight canceled
| due to GPS jamming. I think it was to protect a U2 flight.
| Putin also flies around with GPS jammers.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Wouldn't that mean that Putin's flights can't use GPS to
| navigate? But maybe he worries more about someone
| intercepting his plane than he does about crashing due to a
| navigation mistake. And his risk assessment may in fact be
| accurate...
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'd assume a russian military plane would primarily use
| GLONASS. GLONASS has the advantage of being more resistant
| to narrowband single tone jamming because it uses FDMA
| rather than CDMA like GPS. The signals are also in slightly
| different frequency ranges.
| xoa wrote:
| Obviously we navigated acceptably, including aircraft, long
| before the development of GPS in the 1970s. GPS is easy and
| precise and can make risky edge cases (like very low
| altitude flight) safer or allow higher density in air
| spaces and such, but it's not necessary particularly not at
| the government aircraft level. Inertial guidance, ground
| based Doppler navigation systems, and even automated
| celestial navigation in combo can produce great results
| just at a much, much higher expense. That isn't an issue
| for the leader of a major power though.
|
| The SR-71 was a cool example of a system that used a hybrid
| of automated celestial navigation and inertial. Fully self-
| contained.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| Presumably Putin's flights, on Russian-built aircraft
| (specifically the Il-96), use GLONASS?
|
| Of course, the VC-25A used as Air Force One has a cockpit
| station for a navigator, specifically so that it can use
| old-style navigation methods if access to GPS and other
| navigational aids is lost. Putin's modified Il-96-300PU may
| well also have one.
| xoa wrote:
| Yeah, the original 747s flat out had a sextant port in
| the roof. Could navigate by the stars the old fashioned
| way. Given how crazy precise (and expensive) inertial
| guidance systems were developed for ICBMs in the Cold War
| I have to imagine though they have one on Air Force One,
| along with an automated celestial guidance system for
| recalibration. The AIRS (advanced inertial reference
| system) used in the LGM-118A Peacekeeper missiles have to
| be some of the most mindblowingly precisely made machines
| in human history. Drift of something like 1.5/10000deg
| per hour! .003deg per week (not that they'd ever run that
| long obviously, ICBM and all). At any rate, highly
| precise IGS is doable for enough money, even with older
| tech though these days I'd assume they're using fiber
| optic gyros or something like that. It's a neat area.
| topynate wrote:
| It should be possible for the jammer to subtract off its
| own signal rather more effectively than anything which
| doesn't have access to the pRNG it uses to generate the
| interference.
| onethought wrote:
| You can jam 99.99% off the time except when your software
| takes a reading. So you get clear signal everyone else
| can't.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm not sure that'd work very well as the primary
| strategy. A hot start can take 20+ seconds and the
| attacker has no particular advantage in time to fix when
| the interference stops.
| jlg23 wrote:
| From the article: "The Pentagon uses its more remote military
| bases, many in the American West, to test how its forces
| operate under GPS denial."
| rbanffy wrote:
| Wouldn't it just make sense to tell them not to use GPS?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Is "them" civilian pilots or the soldiers? Because the
| military may have all sorts of equipment that has black box
| GPS functionality they can't easily control (think of GPS
| guided munitions for example).
| xxpor wrote:
| That's like saying just pretend the internet is down. The
| goal is to find unanticipated uses.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, "jamming" can include sending distorted signals.
| These distortions can be a spoofed or malformed packet of
| data. Knowing what happens when a navigation tool
| suddenly thinks the vehicle is on the other side of the
| world is important. As is, ensuring that a garbage signal
| won't crash it.
| wrkronmiller wrote:
| That wouldn't test the software, assuming cheating wasn't
| an issue
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Governments messing with other governments?
| outworlder wrote:
| Are there NOTAMs regarding GPS jamming operations? It's not a
| fix, but maybe it would allow pilots - specially ones without
| sophisticated avionics like those founds in airliners(who don't
| rely on GPS in flight) - to prepare and/or avoid the issue.
| teeray wrote:
| It would be if flight plans using tango routes through those
| temporary areas would be rejected.
| sklargh wrote:
| Not constantly but often.
| V99 wrote:
| Yes, for example:
|
| 10/034 (A0480/21) - NAV GPS (WSMRNM GPS 21-18) (INCLUDING WAAS,
| GBAS, AND
|
| ADS-B) MAY NOT BE AVBL WI A 445NM RADIUS CENTERED AT
| 334005N1063216W (ONM148043) FL400-UNL,
|
| 399NM RADIUS AT FL250,
|
| 329NM RADIUS AT 10000FT,
|
| 329NM RADIUS AT 4000FT AGL,
|
| 275NM RADIUS AT 50FT AGL.
|
| DLY 0600-1159. 13 OCT 06:00 2021 UNTIL 17 OCT 11:59 2021.
|
| CREATED: 08 OCT 20:45 2021
| c3534l wrote:
| It really annoys me how far into an article you have to read
| before it becomes clear that they're only telling one, disputed
| side of the story.
|
| > The US Army takes the safety of its operations extremely
| seriously. Calls for a cease buzzer are taken seriously and range
| control has not denied or ignored any cease buzzers.
| andrepew wrote:
| The US Army and the FAA are two separate entities. The example
| in the article mentioned that a FAA facility manager might have
| denied escalation to use the buzzer, not the US Army.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| I mean, the article is very clear that it's on-site management
| that are not allowing controllers to do their job; nowhere in
| the article do they suggest that the US Army doesn't take it
| seriously.
| agent327 wrote:
| Does this kind of jamming also affect road traffic in the area,
| or only air traffic? Just curious...
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(page generated 2021-10-11 23:01 UTC)