[HN Gopher] Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map
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Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map
Author : mjs
Score : 565 points
Date : 2024-03-20 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.flightradar24.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.flightradar24.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming
|
| Also: https://gpsjam.org/ | https://hn.algolia.com/?q=gpsjam
|
| (am I missing any other GPS jamming mapping or data collection
| projects?)
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Not jamming specific but:
|
| https://sapt.faa.gov/outages.php?outageType=129001450&outage...
| H8crilA wrote:
| Worth adding that gpsjam does the exact same thing with ADS-B
| data.
| Maxion wrote:
| This map is basically copied from GPSJAM.org, which started a
| while back.
| someotherperson wrote:
| Thanks for linking gpsjam -- flightradar24's map is total trash
| by comparison (colours, lack of borders).
|
| Does anyone know if a similar service covers things like
| GLONASS, Galileo or BeiDou?
|
| EDIT: nevermind, these services can't distinguish. From the
| FAQ:
|
| > The ADS-B data used by this map includes information on the
| accuracy of the navigation system used by each aircraft, but
| doesn't specify the type of navigation system. It could be GPS,
| another global navigation satellite system (GNSS) like GLONASS,
| or it could be an inertial navigation system (INS). My
| understanding is that most aircraft are using GPS, so that's
| probably mostly what the map shows.
| Sakos wrote:
| Flightradar24's visual representation definitely sucks, but
| comparing the two, gpsjam has a lot of unexpected missing
| areas across Africa, South America, and SE Asia that at least
| have some data on FR24.
|
| I'm not sure if that means FR24 has a better dataset, or
| they're processing it differently or if they're just
| extrapolating from few data points when they maybe shouldn't
| be.
| sodality2 wrote:
| It would be awesome if they published this data more openly for
| academic use!
|
| Edit: Looks like they might source their data from commercial
| ADSB providers. Bummer
| lostfocus wrote:
| They are the commercial ADSB provider
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Hey, I'm living in one of these cells in Germany. Hmm.
| dspillett wrote:
| They are fairly large cells. I assume the "bad" cells are
| displaying some maxima-based aggregate rather than implying the
| whole area (or a large part of it) in them is noticeably
| jammed.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Also, the reports are coming from aircraft which have a much
| larger horizon at altitude. The jamming from Kaliningrad
| probably doesn't have any effect on the ground at long
| distances.
| remotefonts wrote:
| Turn off WiFi location in your phone and see how long it takes
| for it to get a GPS fix, or if it never gets one.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Many of the patches are not surprising, but why is a small area
| between Germany and Sweden jammed?
| tuukkah wrote:
| A small area between Estonia and Finland likewise.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| Any chance the area being referenced in relation to Germany
| is near the headquarters of a company named aaronia? They
| manufacture, high-end spectrum rf analyzers, and high-end
| drone tracking and jamming/drone disabling equipment. (As a
| result, I would expect them to be testing, and or
| demonstrating their equipment near their headquarters.)
|
| Just a guess/speculation as I'm familiar with aaronia's
| products and services (indirectly)
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| If you click through some different days, it looks like that is
| just a patch of the larger overall jamming zone around
| Kaliningrad.
| wyldfire wrote:
| I wonder why there's some jamming near a small section of the
| Texas/Mexico border?
| TomBombadildoze wrote:
| Cartels disrupting law enforcement, and/or vice versa.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Drug Cartels most likely. That area is frequently jammed.
| hammock wrote:
| That is Eagle Pass, TX. The infamous, massive border crossing
| area where suspected criminal border crossers are corraled
| under the bridge, where Elon visited, etc.
|
| The jamming is done to make crossing the border without going
| through the checkpoint more difficult
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Is there some official source for that? If so, is it just GPS
| or do other GNSS constellations get jammed too?
| netsharc wrote:
| Since even phones can receive and understand the other
| systems' signals, if one wants to jam, one would probably
| jam them all...
| barryrandall wrote:
| Do these cartels only operate during normal US workday hours
| and observe US federal holidays?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's north of Eagle Pass. Laughlin AFB is on the
| southwestern edge of those two red cells. Eagle Pass is like
| 50-60 miles south.
| tazu wrote:
| I'm curious as well. My first thought was cartels, but it's
| also right over Laughlin AFB.
| barryrandall wrote:
| You're not the only person:
| https://web.stanford.edu/group/scpnt/gpslab/pubs/papers/Liu_...
|
| TL;DR: It's weak signal, not jamming. The weak signal reports
| come from military training aircraft carrying out maneuvers
| that cause temporary signal loss.
| ukd1 wrote:
| really? unless they're jamming it, how would that happen?
| barryrandall wrote:
| Rapidly execute a series of maneuvers (flips, rolls) that
| cause the radios to lose signal.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| So I'm a little skeptical on that front because military
| aircraft are still not that often broadcasting ADSB even
| during routine flights, at least in my (also close to the
| border) region. In theory the Air Force was supposed to
| have completed ADSB installation on their fleet last year
| but they blew the deadline pretty bad on even installing
| transponders, and of course they still reserve the right
| to disable them during military operations.
|
| Maybe with the data we can figure out what portion of
| military flights are included?
|
| For the helicopter training flights that I notice most
| often, it's still rare to see one that broadcasts ADSB,
| probably <10%. C-130s usually don't either here but it's
| more often, maybe more like 25%. Perhaps for other
| categories of aircraft they've installed more
| transponders. But in the city where I live, even passive
| mode-C MLAT is probably around 50% success on tracking
| military flights for ADSB Exchange. FlightAware might
| have better coverage for mode-C. mode-C can't contribute
| to this GPS reliability data anyway but it illustrates
| that even C-130 pattern practice is sometimes "stealth"
| from a radio perspective due to the low installation
| rates for ADSB and difficulty of good mode-C coverage.
|
| The paper linked elsewhere (https://web.stanford.edu/grou
| p/scpnt/gpslab/pubs/papers/Liu_...) mentioned issues with
| military training flights resulting in spurious low-NIC
| cases but unfortunately doesn't quantify it. With the way
| the AF rollout has gone it probably depends on the
| specific installation, command, and aircraft type.
|
| In the border region specifically we would tend to expect
| the majority of non-military flights to be civilian CBP
| aircraft that aren't performing unusual maneuvers. CBP
| has a somewhat complicated and limited authority to
| disable ADS-B that I don't know the contours of, I'm not
| sure how often they do so on their larger (non-sUAS)
| aircraft. Involvement of the Air National Guard in the
| Texas area might complicate the analysis though.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| How does not having ADSB impact air control?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| ATC is used to working with military aircraft without
| ADSB since it's been the status quo (and keep in mind
| that ADSB is not required on aircraft in general,
| although the set of airspace situations in which it's
| required has been expanded over the years to become a de
| facto near universal mandate). But the FAA doesn't like
| it, which is why they set the deadline for the Air Force
| to install ADSB, which the Air Force missed.
|
| Military aircraft on military maneuvers don't deal with
| FAA ATC, the military has its own controllers. It's
| mostly an issue when they're operating near civilian
| airports (or the many, many military facilities that
| share an airfield with an airport). There are still
| adverse safety impacts to the lack of ADSB on many
| military aircraft, in that it defeats things like TCAS.
|
| Actually this topic is slightly complex and I think a lot
| of people have misconceptions, so let's lay it out. These
| rules have gotten stricter and stricter in recent years.
|
| 1. ADSB is not required. Meaning, there is no universal
| requirement that aircraft be equipped with ADSB, and
| plenty of aircraft still legally operate without.
|
| 2. ADSB _is_ required in class A, B, C, in many cases in
| class E, and within the "Mode-C veil" surrounding major
| airports.
|
| 3. ADSB is required in any case where a transponder is
| required, for those edge cases that are not included in
| the above.
|
| 4. The result is that the areas in which you can legally
| operate without ADS-B are mostly limited to low altitudes
| in rural areas. Of course, this encompasses a large
| portion of hobby aviation especially, but not very much
| commercial flight.
| gol706 wrote:
| I can say that in San Antonio where I live and also
| operate a ADSB receiver the dedicated air force flight
| trainers (T38 Talons and T6 Texans) routinely fly with
| ADSB on. The C5 cargo plans also fly with ADSB on when
| doing training but I've seen non-training flights fly
| overhead with ADSB off.
|
| I can actually receive high flighting planes over Del Rio
| so it would be interesting to see if they are reporting
| bad NIC values.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yep, this map doesn't show jamming. It shows weak signals, of
| which jamming is one potential cause. An airplane pointing
| their GPS receiver at the ground will also cause a weak
| signal.
| lxgr wrote:
| How does an airplane "point their GPS receiver at the
| ground" (for an extended period of time since a combined
| GNSS/INS positioning solution, which is what all airliners
| use at this point as far as I know, will need an extended
| signal loss to report decreased accuracy)?
| kube-system wrote:
| Probably something like this
|
| https://youtu.be/Ynvoriv09Ks?t=105
| lxgr wrote:
| Ah, is this Ryanair's plan to divest from their all-
| Boeing fleet? :)
|
| It should be pretty simple for Flightradar24 to exclude
| non-commercial aircraft from the data through, which
| would solve that problem.
|
| There's also tons of data available in the ADS-B signal
| that should help distinguish between aircraft-motion-
| induced outages and actual jamming: https://mode-s.org/de
| code/content/ads-b/7-uncertainty.html
| kube-system wrote:
| From the FAQ, it sounds like they simply presume that
| anywhere with multiple low NIC values is indicative of
| interference.
|
| > The GPS interference data is derived from NIC
| (navigation integrity category) values that we receive as
| part of the ADS-B protocol. We mark regions as affected
| if a significant number of flights in that area report
| lowered NIC values.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Unfortunately some of the data that's most directly
| applicable to determining aircraft attitude, like roll,
| is optional and rarely sent by aircraft, but yes I'm sure
| you could do a decent job of inferring maneuvering from
| change in heading and vertical rate (especially if you're
| looking at ADS-B data with high temporal resolution vs.,
| say, every 10-60 seconds.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| on a pure radar scan, what would return of formation
| flying like this look like to a radar operator? is it
| just one large dot, or can they distinguish the number of
| planes in the formation?
| blitzar wrote:
| It happens when you are giving the bird.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| That's a good link (that I should have posted). I suspect
| that some of the yellow (maybe even red) hexes in the U.S.,
| and maybe some in Europe too, are due to that effect.
|
| For people doubting that aircraft maneuvering can affect
| navigation accuracy as reported by ADS-B, I found a fun
| example. Around 1300 UTC today (0800 Texas time), 4 T-38s
| took off from Laughlin AFB for what looks like training, with
| lots of maneuvering. This link shows what it looks like when
| mapped in 2D: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adffc3,adf
| ff9,adffd2,ae...
|
| Here's a 60 second segment of the track of one of those jets,
| STEER21, that captures a steep turn and dive: https://globe.a
| dsbexchange.com/?icao=adfff9&lat=30.067&lon=-...
|
| If you click on the track, you can inspect the ADS-B data at
| that point in time in the sidebar on the left. If you scroll
| to the bottom of that sidebar, there's an "ACCURACY" section,
| that shows the Estimated Position Uncertainty (EPU). You can
| see it change from better than < 30 meter uncertainty to >
| 18.5 km(!) uncertainty as it performs the maneuver.
|
| I made a video that shows how to see those values, and also
| shows the maneuver in a 3D viewer so you can see how steep
| the dive is (it's steep!):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHlpnEdHxw
|
| (The viewer uses a generic aircraft model, FYI, don't be
| distracted by that.)
| ape4 wrote:
| Can't the US military turn it off in some areas. Law
| enforcement wouldn't have to jam.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Is the data actually interesting? I feel like any place that
| would have widespread jamming would also see routing away of non-
| military aircraft meaning you'd never see the jamming taking
| place except if you happen to get lucky and the jamming zone is
| larger than the "stay out" zone. This makes sense then why the
| map is entirely green with some red just at the periphery of
| Ukraine with the majority of Ukraine having no data since it's a
| no-fly zone for civilian traffic.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The jamming over Kaliningrad affecting civil aviation has made
| the news recently, and the map does provide some interesting
| insights both how far the effect reaches into Poland and
| Sweden, and how often it is turned on and off.
| hoffs wrote:
| If you read the article, jamming is based on uncertainty of the
| aircraft, just because it's uncertain, doesn't mean that it's
| dangerous level of uncertainty
| martinky24 wrote:
| This is a case where nominally, with a solid understanding of
| geopolitical events, maybe it's not interesting on average.
| BUT, all of a sudden something might pop up one day. The
| accessible, "crowdsourced" data is helpful to have in those
| cases.
| irviss wrote:
| Why in the world is there so much jamming in Turkey? What's going
| on?
| nevir wrote:
| Iran maybe?
| nurgasemetey wrote:
| Red dots are in the north of Turkey. I don't think that Iran
| reaches there.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Turkey has been jamming GPS for years. I can't find a good
| explanation.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| To the north is the Black Sea, and the Russia-Ukraine war. To
| the east is Armenia and Azerbaijan (as well as Iran). To the
| south is the middle east. Also Cyprus with the frozen conflict,
| there.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| In addition to Armenia/Azerbaijan, Turkey has had a
| significant internal conflict with the PKK (Kurds) in the
| East/South East for... a very long time.
|
| Also that whole region is just patchy with flight data - it
| makes it difficult to really see the true shape of jamming.
| tivert wrote:
| So how should I interpret this? The map lacks geopolitical
| boundaries, so it's hard to interpret.
|
| There looks like a big hole of no data over Ukraine, where I'd
| most expect GPS jamming, but I suppose there are no civilian
| flights either. Maybe they could setup an GPS observation station
| on the ground at a surveyed point to get data there.
|
| There's a big red blob over Turkey, is that maybe the southern
| edge of the reach of Russian jammers in the Black sea?
|
| There's also a big red blob over the eastern Mediterranean. Is
| that Israel? I'm not so sure though, because it's not centered on
| Israel and parts of Israel proper are green on the map. I also
| assume they're heavy users of GPS, so wouldn't want to jam it.
|
| There's a red blob in Southeast Asia, and that looks like
| Myanmar, where there's a civil war right now.
|
| There's a little red blob over what looks like Kashmir.
| seatac76 wrote:
| I was curious too. Did some sleuthing, it looks more like
| Punjab. I think that's to block drone infiltration from
| Pakistan [1]. It does change going back to 14th March there is
| no jamming in the region, US and Europe blobs also reduced, so
| I think this stuff is event driven, wonder what goes on,
| fascinating stuff.
|
| [1]https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-
| states/over-100...
| muglug wrote:
| Their data comes from commercial flights. If there are no
| flights, there's no data. There aren't many commercial flights
| over Ukraine or Belarus right now, so that whole area's empty.
| mcculley wrote:
| ADS-B is only commercial flights? I thought many kinds of
| flights are broadcasting. Does Flightradar24 only track
| commercial flights?
| mcpherrinm wrote:
| I doubt there's any private flights over Ukraine too.
| Military planes generally don't advertise their location in
| combat zones
| rjsw wrote:
| > Military planes generally don't advertise their
| location in combat zones
|
| They might if they are from countries neutral to that
| conflict, like NATO flights over the Black Sea.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| It tracks private flights too. I'm only tangentially
| familiar (though I have an ADS-B receiver reporting to
| FR24), but my understanding is that it's not required for
| private flight now, but more and more aircraft are being
| retrofitted.
|
| Actually, it's more about airspace:
|
| https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraft-and-
| ownership/ads-b/whe...
|
| "The FAA requires ADS-B Out capability in the continental
| United States, in the ADS-B rule airspace designated by FAR
| 91.225:
|
| Class A, B, and C airspace;
|
| Class E airspace at or above 10,000 feet msl, excluding
| airspace at and below 2,500 feet agl;
|
| Within 30 nautical miles of a Class B primary airport (the
| Mode C veil);
|
| Above the ceiling and within the lateral boundaries of
| Class B or Class C airspace up to 10,000 feet;
|
| Class E airspace over the Gulf of Mexico, at and above
| 3,000 feet msl, within 12 nm of the U.S. coast."
| wongarsu wrote:
| The hole over Ukraine is definitely the lack of civilian
| flights.
|
| Another notable spot is Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave. It
| looks relatively normal on some days, like today, but on others
| like yesterday it's covered by solid red stretching far into
| Poland, Sweden and even Germany.
| tivert wrote:
| > Another notable spot is Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave.
| It looks relatively normal on some days, like today, but on
| others like yesterday it's solid red.
|
| Oh yeah, I totally forgot that was a thing, and that explains
| that spur of red in the Baltic. I'd (probably incorrectly)
| assumed it was some kind of spillover from jamming in
| Ukraine.
|
| I didn't realize you could look at it over multiple days. One
| interesting thing about that blob is the _outline_ of red
| seems to always be there, in the same shape, but the middle
| is often green. Maybe that 's some artifact of their
| agreement algorithm? More overflights around the edges than
| through?
|
| It also looks like there's some jamming in Estonia? Or maybe
| that's just the edge of jamming around St Petersburg?
| ardaoweo wrote:
| Russians do plenty of jamming that expands beyond their
| borders in the Baltic, either on purpose or just as a
| spillover as they don't care. Before Finland joined NATO
| they used to also violate our airspace on frequent basis,
| but since then that has stopped.
|
| https://yle.fi/a/74-20079715
| wkat4242 wrote:
| They violated NATO airspace a lot with their "Bear"
| nuclear-capable bombers until very recently. Not sure if
| it's still happening. It was so frequent that it didn't
| make the news every time.
| jajko wrote:
| The idea that russians are doing these things 'by
| accident' ain't even funny, just dangerously naive and
| nobody from intelligence community thinks so. They know
| damn well what they do and its well planned and even
| heroic in some childish fashion in their f*cked up
| mindset.
|
| They are at war with west (more Europe than US though)
| for solid 2 decades straight, just that they started to
| use military only in last decade, but were subverting
| public opinions in usual command & conquer strategy for
| much longer (riling western and former soviet populations
| against EU and Nato, supporting ultra-right groups,
| spreading false rumors ie on covid in us vs them psi-
| ops).
|
| Whatever politicians on their side say is meaningless or
| diversion and definitely just wasted time, just look at
| actions alone.
| whalesalad wrote:
| hole = no measurement
| nolongerthere wrote:
| Yea, oddly, if you go back to like august, there's still a
| bunch of red over the Mediterranean, parts of Israel, Jordan,
| Lebanon, etc. so it's not totally clear what that is. I've
| heard anecdotally that gps has gotten unusable in Israel in
| recent weeks but it's not clear why that's changed based on the
| mapping information we're seeing here.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Northern Israel is completely jammed. There's talk of
| Israelis getting matched on Tinder with women from Beirut.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| I see 2 red cells on the US/Mexico border right about
| Texas/Coahuila region. Navigating that dessert region without
| GPS or with GPS for that matter can be deadly.
| bradgessler wrote:
| That's the most curious jamming I see on the map--anybody
| know why jamming is present there? Is there a military base
| in that region?
| just_steve_h wrote:
| U.S. military has some Very Secret Stuff happening in
| certain desert areas.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| Laughlin air force base is there.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Organized crime in Mexico would probably do it to prevent
| other people from using migration routes they control and
| reduce police efficacy. Of course, slightly rogue Mexican
| police or even US vigilantes also have an incentive.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| If you line it up with that big lake, you can see there's an
| Air Force base right nearby
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@29.3385589,-100.8055747,12.72z?.
| ..
| gregmac wrote:
| It's kind of neat how this works:
|
| > As part of the ADS-B messages we receive from each aircraft,
| the Navigation integrity category (NIC) encodes the quality and
| consistency of navigational data received by the aircraft. The
| NIC value informs how certain the aircraft is of its position by
| providing a radius of uncertainty.
|
| > Poor NIC values alone might indicate a problem with an
| aircraft's equipment or unfavorable positioning. However, when
| observed in multiple aircraft in close proximity during the same
| time frame, it suggests the presence of a radio signal
| interfering with normal GNSS operation.
|
| A single observer can't really say for certain that jamming is
| happening; you need a distributed sample from multiple different
| sensors over a period of time to have reasonably high confidence.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > A single observer can't really say for certain that jamming
| is happening; you need a distributed sample from multiple
| different sensors over a period of time to have reasonably high
| confidence.
|
| Could you use RTLSDR triangulation to hone in on granular lat
| long of jamming sources?
|
| https://www.rtl-sdr.com/detecting-gps-jammers-in-augmented-r...
|
| https://www.rtl-sdr.com/kiwisdr-tdoa-direction-finding-now-f...
| pierat wrote:
| You can get rough areas with a GPS and a RTLSDR and a bunch
| of samples (either over time OR with lots of people with the
| same device)
|
| But to get fine granular data, you need a timestamping SDR.
| (each parcel of signal data for a quantum of data needs an
| exact time down to 6-8 significant figures, basically GPS
| timebase).
|
| Most your cheaper SDRs cant do that.
|
| Stuff like the BladeRF and higher do provide timestamped
| data.
| mNovak wrote:
| With synchronized receivers you could do some rudimentary
| direction finding. Note that synchronizing SDRs is much more
| achievable if they're physically nearby (e.g. can run a cable
| between them for a common clock) vs if they're physically
| distant observers (can't exactly use GPS time for
| synchronization if you're measuring GPS interference)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Very helpful (as well as sibling comment by pierat). Thank
| you both. I will need to do some research with regards to
| pairing SDRs with local disciplined clock that can tolerate
| temporary loss of remote (stratum-0,1) time precision.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_disciplined_oscillator
| XMPPwocky wrote:
| > can't exactly use GPS time for synchronization if you're
| measuring GPS interference
|
| Can other GNSSes (Galileo/BeiDou/GLONASS/etc) give usable
| timestamps? Seems like it'd be tricky for a jammer to
| target all of them simultaneously. (Of course, since they'd
| be on a different band, unless your SDR is wideband enough
| you'd need two RX heads which gives you potential issues
| with phase drift between the tuning VCOs even if your
| _sampling_ is coherent).
|
| Perhaps a sufficiently directional antenna/phased array
| (for getting an actual satellite signal) as well as an
| omnidirectional one (for picking up the jamming signal)
| could get you somewhere...
|
| Or perhaps one could look at computing AoA at each receiver
| site (using MIMO-y techniques, e.g. Kraken/KerberosSDR) and
| triangulating based on angles instead, which wouldn't
| require synchronizing physically-distant sites at all...
|
| The problem definitely seems soluble, though I don't have
| the technical background to know how realistic that is.
| CogniDizz wrote:
| KrakenSDR would do a good job of this, they combine five
| RTLSDR into a coherent array. The top end of their tuning
| range is 1766 MHz which would include the 1575 MHz of the GPS
| L1 signal.
|
| The little five antenna array can even attach on the roof of
| a car for a handy ground plane. Prob not a good idea to drive
| with it out there tho.
| pgorczak wrote:
| You could also use a single receiver with a small antenna
| array (GPS wavelength is around 20 cm) to estimate the angle
| of arrival of the incoming signals.
| adolph wrote:
| Do aircraft systems really only use GPS and not the full
| constellation of navigational satellite systems?
|
| _Besides GPS, the GNSS currently includes other satellite
| navigation systems, such as the Russian GLONASS, and may soon
| include others such as the European Union's Galileo and China's
| Beidou._
|
| https://www.terrisgps.com/gnss-gps-differences-explained/
| ptaipale wrote:
| The linked page already says that it reports on the
| constellation, not just GPS:
|
| "The map uses are color coded overlay to indicate low (green)
| to high (red) levels of interference with global navigation
| satellite systems (GNSS). Often just referred to as GPS,
| there are actually multiple systems beside the US GPS
| constellation, such as Russia's GLONASS, Europe's Galileo,
| China's BeiDou, and others."
| blauditore wrote:
| Just came here to wonder who came up with the beautiful
| name of CLOWNASS... er, I mean GLONASS.
| mNovak wrote:
| Like the article states, many people use GPS as a shorthand
| for GNSS generally. In any case, they're all at similar
| frequencies, so typically they'll all go out together if
| there's significant interference.
| kube-system wrote:
| It doesn't matter too much, aircraft don't rely solely on any
| GNSS for navigation, because they're all susceptible to
| similar availability issues. Magnetic, inertial, barometric,
| and land-based radio systems are also used. One or more of
| those other systems are used as a fallback when GNSS fails.
| runjake wrote:
| They use full constellation, in addition to Inertial Nav
| (INS) -- at least in the US military.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Modern phones use all the available navigation
| constellations, and have done so for years.
|
| But aviation is much more conservative due to its safety-
| critical nature. Galileo was only just recently (2023)
| certified for use in aircraft systems by ICAO:
|
| https://www.esa.int/Applications/Navigation/Galileo/Galileo_.
| ..
| michaelt wrote:
| In the specific case of jamming, it seems unlikely anyone
| would jam GPS and not _also_ jam the other public GNSS
| services.
|
| The redundancy of multiple independent GNSS systems is a
| fine thing for dealing with unintentional failures, of
| course.
| tdudhhu wrote:
| Is interference the same as jamming?
|
| I am absolutely no expert in this but I can imagine that even
| natural occurrences can interfere with the GPS.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| There are things that will naturally interfere with GPS and
| they are fairly well known. The FAA provides an expected outage
| map [1] (a forecast, if you will) for pilots that may need that
| info. Jamming is an act by humans to _intentionally_ disrupt
| the GPS signal.
|
| [1]
| https://sapt.faa.gov/outages.php?outageType=129001450&outage...
| kube-system wrote:
| And I think the above commenter's point is that ADS-B data
| does not indicate intentionality.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Could be. I was directly answering "what's the difference?"
|
| It's hard to know intentionality without also knowing where
| there is expected+natural interference. Of course, when a
| region is surrounded by persistent GNSS issues and is a
| known war-zone with large actors, intentionality is fairly
| reasonably assumed.
| krzyk wrote:
| Poland has some big issues with this jamming.
|
| I wonder, how does it influence navigation in mobiles/cars?
| machinekob wrote:
| Most of the time it is not that strong but few weeks ago my
| family living north have problems with mobile internet and
| phones (gps was almost fully dead) for like two days cause of
| interference from r*ssia.
| throw0101d wrote:
| See also perhaps:
|
| * https://gpsjam.org
| mjs wrote:
| The FAQ on that site is useful too: https://gpsjam.org/faq/
| tuukkah wrote:
| That link would have been a better submission than the blog.
| photonbucket wrote:
| What's going on in that part of western australia? It's a very
| empty area
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > What's going on in that part of western australia? It's a
| very empty area
|
| You answered your own question. Put 2+2 together.
|
| Hint... https://www.flightradar24.com/apply-for-receiver/
| photonbucket wrote:
| I don't live in that country though
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I don't live in that country though
|
| Exactly.
|
| You don't live there.
|
| Not many people live in the Australian desert.
|
| Conclusion: No data or very limited data
| lxgr wrote:
| "No data" cells are grey on that map, but western
| Australia has a couple of red ("high interference")
| cells.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > but western Australia has a couple of red ("high
| interference") cells.
|
| Erm mate, have you tried looking at different days ?
| Those cells you find so suspicious in Australia are not
| there on other days !
|
| Seriously, given the largely community-based nature of
| FR24 data I would not expect too much in term of
| accuracy.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Erm mate, have you tried looking at different days ?
| Those cells you find so suspicious in Australia are not
| there on other days !
|
| That kind of disproves the "no data" hypothesis though,
| no?
|
| One explanation could be they have a simplistic algorithm
| like "if uncertainty > (something indicating more than 5
| minutes of GNSS-to-INS fallback) on more than 50% of all
| flights of a day", and there's only one flight per day in
| that region.
|
| > Seriously, given the largely community-based nature of
| FR24 data I would not expect too much in term of
| accuracy.
|
| Flightradar24 data is accurate enough for some commercial
| entities to rely on it. Also, in case of a lack of ADS-B
| receiver data we'd also expect a grey square, not a red
| one, right?
| trollian wrote:
| I thought it might have been Square Kilometer Array
| interference but that's to the north of those spots.
| Nition wrote:
| If green or "no data" areas randomly turn red sometimes,
| I'd expect to see them elsewhere in the world sometimes
| on different days as well. But I've checked every day
| that's available and I never see them appear in e.g. that
| big empty space in eastern Russia.
|
| I don't really see any other evidence that low data areas
| can turn into red areas when there's no actual
| interference.
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| Ok, but let's acknowledge the difference between no data
| (depicted as no colored cell in the map) and data which
| reports high interference (depicted as a red cell). In
| remote western Aus we see a few red cells to the west of
| a large area of empty cells. So they do have ADS-B
| receivers there, and at least some of them are reporting
| a troublesome NIC, and there are enough reports for FR24
| to place a colored cell there rather than an empty cell.
| Why exactly do you think that a red cell comes from no
| data or very limited data, when the article does not
| indicate that no data / limited data results in a red
| cell?
| tuukkah wrote:
| Grey areas: Few people live there and none have set up a public
| ADS receiver. And/or no planes flying in the area.
| https://gpsjam.org/faq/#why-arent-there-red-or-green
|
| Red areas: Military experiments and exercises, probably.
| https://gpsjam.org/faq/#what-can-cause-aircraft-to-report-lo...
| seatac76 wrote:
| The choice of cells as a fundamental unit is interesting, I guess
| it's better than a color coded gradient map. But this will still
| suffer from centroid issues.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I remember reading about geohexes (H3).
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| The data is taken from aircraft [EDIT: not airlines; see
| traceroute66's comment], so it doesn't give full coverage of the
| world, but it does include other satellite navigation systems
| aside from just GPS. Looks like the jammed/interfered areas are:
|
| * A large part of Eastern Europe around Ukraine is missing data,
| and there are many jammed/interfered areas around it, including
| the southern coast of the Black Sea and parts of Poland and the
| Baltic. Part of the Baltic Sea off the coast of Kaliningrad are
| also jammed/interfered.
|
| * Part of Germany near Berlin, possibly part of the Ukraine-
| related jamming/interference?
|
| * A large part of the eastern Mediterranean and some of the
| Middle East around Gaza.
|
| * A small area on the India-Pakistan border near Punjab and
| Lahore.
|
| * Two medium-sized areas in western Myanmar.
|
| * Two small areas in New Guinea with a gap in the data between
| them, spanning the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea border.
|
| * Two small areas in western Australia.
|
| * A small area on the US-Mexico border.
|
| * A dot in southern China with some gaps in the data around it
| near the border with Vietnam.
|
| Ukraine, Gaza, and Myanmar all have major conflicts going on.
| Other comments have suggested that the US-Mexico interference
| might be related to drug cartels. The India-Pakistan border is a
| longstanding point of tension. Not sure what (if anything) is
| going on in New Guinea and Australia.
|
| The jamming/interference in India-Pakistan, US-Mexico, and China
| all went away in the last 6 hours -- they're only visible in the
| 24-hour data.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > The data is taken from airlines
|
| No. It is not.
|
| The data is ADS-B data which is broadcast by aircraft.
|
| FR24 (and other similar services) obtain the data via a
| community[1], you can take part too[2].
|
| For certain parts of the world, they may have the option to
| augment the data via commercial services, but that is highly
| unlikely to be on a global basis.
|
| Conclusion: Missing coverage means no community coverage in
| that area and no commercial augmentation.
|
| [1] https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/how-we-track-flights-
| with... [2] https://www.flightradar24.com/apply-for-receiver/
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Could you use weather balloons transmitting ADS-B where there
| are gaps?
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| I corrected my comment. Thanks!
| ben_w wrote:
| > Part of Germany near Berlin, possibly part of the Ukraine-
| related jamming/interference?
|
| Of the four tiles in that area (for March 19th at least), one
| is entirely in Poland, one is covering the Polish-German
| border, one is a bit of the German coast around Rugen but
| mostly the Baltic Sea, and the other is Bornholm (island in the
| Baltic Sea) and a bit of the Swedish coast.
|
| My guess is, this is part of a larger system to limit Russian
| military use of the Baltic, and possibly also a single layer of
| defence against Russian aircraft and missiles targeting Berlin
| and Copenhagen. Likewise, I would guess that the strip of
| interference from St Petersburg in the direction of Moscow is a
| similar single-layer of defence by Russia.
|
| At this resolution, it also looks like the west is interfering
| with access to St Petersburg and _someone_ (could reasonably be
| either side) is worried about Kaliningrad, but that image is
| also also making me think "WTF?" about the Gulf of Riga.
|
| The single tile near Kandalaksha (Russia) suggests _something_
| interesting is going on there, but I have no idea what that
| might be, and there 's a non-zero possibility that it's a
| deliberate red-herring to make western analysts waste time --
| as an analogy, imagine a troll releasing three greased pigs
| with the numbers "1", "2", and "4" painted on the side.
| verandaguy wrote:
| This is suspiciously similar to `gpsjam.org`. It's useful, for
| sure, and it does use readily-available ADS-B data that FR24 (and
| ADSBExchange) uses anyway, but the data viz is just eerily
| similar.
|
| Then again, I'm not very GIS/geodesy minded, so maybe hexagons
| are the best shape that'll tessellate over a sphere easily.
|
| Was this work in any meaningful way inspired by GPSjam? If yes,
| it'd be nice to have an acknowledgement in there.
| Spacemolte wrote:
| I can't say if it's inspired by the site you link, but basing
| your suspicion on the hexagonal shape is very weak, at best.
| Also, the data seems to be in different resolutions, and the
| actual jamming data is quite different just looking at both
| sites.
|
| I've seen hexagons used for maps and boardgames for years.
| y04nn wrote:
| > Then again, I'm not very GIS/geodesy minded, so maybe
| hexagons are the best shape that'll tessellate over a sphere
| easily.
|
| This is Uber H3 for spacial indexing: https://h3geo.org/
|
| This was a good read:
|
| https://klioba.com/how-to-use-postgresql-for-military-geoana...
|
| HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39662246
| croemer wrote:
| If line of sight to the jamming antenna is required to be jammed,
| why do aircraft not have a downwards shield so that they only
| receive GPS signal from the sky (satellites) and not from jammers
| (coming from the bottom hemisphere)? Or is the jamming signal so
| many orders of magnitudes stronger than the satellites that
| there's always going to be some gain no matter how good the
| shield is?
|
| Ok it exists, but shielding is (only) about 20dB looking
| downwards, which may not be enough: https://safran-navigation-
| timing.com/product/8230aj-gps-gnss...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I thought GPS signals from space were incredibly weak. Limited
| power budget + 100km in the sky. Seems trivial for a ground
| based system to crank up the watts to whatever arbitrary limit
| they desire.
| croemer wrote:
| True, signal per satellite is only around 150-160dBW on earth
| despite them radiating at 25W. Satellites are ~20000km away.
| If a jammer is 100 times closer (200km), they need to use
| only 1/10,000 (1/100^2) the power, so it's very easy to jam
| sadly.
| morcheeba wrote:
| Two issues to consider:
|
| - GPS positioning is more accurate if the satellites it sees
| come from a variety of angles (GDOP), so the satellites near
| the horizon are valuable.
|
| - Aircraft pitch and roll, so a fixed antenna like this would
| lose precision as it turns to make an approach - just about the
| worst possible time.
|
| It's difficult to make an antenna with a sharp cutoff to limit
| the ground vs. above-ground. So, most anti-jammers will use
| beamforming to cancel out interference in one or more specific
| directions. So, the null in the antenna moves to follow the
| interference.
|
| GDOP:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_of_precision_(navigat...
| gusfoo wrote:
| It would be a lot more useful if country contours were drawn too
| like https://gpsjam.org/ does.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Does anyone know if the how the ADS-B uncertainty measurements
| interact with GPS spoofing? Often when you look at these maps you
| see a donut around Kaliningrad - could it be that there's wide
| area jamming, and then localized spoofing more directly around
| Kaliningrad?
| topynate wrote:
| I'm a little surprised that Shenzhen doesn't seem to be churning
| out ITAR-busting anti-jamming systems. The tech is pretty old by
| now and the market is there.
| dghughes wrote:
| I'm disappointed in Jamaica I thought they'd be jammin for sure.
| dv35z wrote:
| Well played.
| hoherd wrote:
| I love this feature, especially how they were able to create it
| from data that they were already getting, but personally my
| excitement about it is overshadowed by how colorblind unfriendly
| it is. Considering how many people are colorblind, ~4% of the
| global population, or roughly 1 out of 25 people, it's remarkable
| how often designers get this detail wrong.
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| macOS and iOS have systemwide settings for color blind people.
| You can remap colors.
| dfworks wrote:
| If anyone found the above interesting, I wrote a short article
| mapping plane activity on FlightRadar's 'blocked' list (i.e
| FlightRadar had agreed to remove the ADBS data from their dataset
| following probable legal pressure).
|
| https://dfworks.xyz/blog/hnwi-osint-private-jet/
|
| Slightly tangential so feel free to remove if irrelevant
| araes wrote:
| The article was interesting alone, simply for the Google Dork
| technique explanation. Have not heard the "unusual, yet
| specifically frequent" search technique described that way
| previously. Very similar to what's necessary for searching
| StackExchange and similar, such as
| "site:https://aviation.stackexchange.com/ tracking private
| planes"
|
| The Bombardier Global Express 6000 GLT6 result is interesting,
| as it's a plane with a known large number of military
| conversions.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_Global_Express#Mili...
|
| Known Conversions: GlobalEye, Project Dolphin, Raytheon
| Sentinel, Saab Swordfish, PAL Aerospace P-6, E-11A, HALOE,
| PEGASUS, Hava SOJ, CAEW, HADES.
|
| Actually has a tie-in with the article, since the Hava SOJ is
| an air stand-off jammer configuration for the Turkish region.
|
| Otherwise, if I still worked for the government contracting,
| I'd probably offer you a job, although you're apparently
| British, so there might have been citizenship issues.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| That's LADD (Limited Aircraft Data Displayed), which requires
| that aircraft marked as such in the FAA's database to be
| removed from the official data feeds used by the commercial
| flight radar sites.
|
| Crowdsourced data isn't subject to LADD, so adsbexchange and
| other such sites can and do display such aircraft.
|
| For flights within the US, there's also a private address
| program that allows an ADS-B equipped plane to broadcast an
| alternate address.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy
| silvestrov wrote:
| OBS: Does not seem to work in Safari on Mac. Chrome and Firefox
| works.
|
| Might be use of WebGL which Mac-Safari doesn't support.
| can16358p wrote:
| I'm on Safari/macOS, and it works perfectly here.
| callalex wrote:
| Did you disable WebGL in the Developer menu and forget about
| it?
| hk1337 wrote:
| A lot of jamming going in Easter Europe. I wonder who's doing
| that?
| stracer wrote:
| Russians? However, isn't Russians jamming common signals in
| other states' territory an act of war?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Curious about the other areas than near Russia where jamming
| seems to occur: Myanmar and Kashmir(?)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Is that Perth with a great big red blob as well?
|
| I don't think I am misreading the map - what on earth is that?
| Are the sheep rebelling and have some decent anti-aircraft tech?
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I was thinking that could be the CIA base in Pine Gap, but that
| seems like it's more in the center of the country
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What if this Russian jamming crap causes another major loss of
| life like MH17? We really have to do something about this.
| Maxion wrote:
| Airplanes don't need GPS to fly. Jamming GPS won't cause any
| crashes.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| The US has laws against interfering with GPS, but I don't think
| there's any global laws about GPS jamming, you'd need something
| from the UN but it doesn't seem like most countries would want
| to give up that ability - we can't even get people to stop
| making nukes and they have a much higher danger
| consumer451 wrote:
| I find it interesting how far into Poland Russia can jam GPS. I
| assume this is done from Belarus?
|
| What is the max range I wonder? Probably same as radar? How much
| power does it take?
| asdfgjkl wrote:
| More likely it is from around Kaliningrad
| terryf wrote:
| Interesting - as I'm in the middle of one of the red blobs on the
| map and just used my phone with google maps to drive around. It
| worked fine. All the local services that rely on positioning via
| phones seemed to work fine as well.
|
| I wonder how the jamming works - is it just for higher altitudes
| or maybe it only affects GPS and my phone also uses GLONASS or
| something?
| jcfrei wrote:
| On your phone the GPS is just one input to determine its
| position. It's most likely also triangulating cell phone
| towers. Get an app that only shows GPS data and check if you
| see coordinates jumping around.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| Google maps (and your phone's location services) seldom rely
| only on GPS.
|
| For one, accelerometer-based location has become pretty good.
| You can usually get by for a few kilometers on the average
| road.
|
| For two, Google maps is aware that you are driving, and this it
| sticks to roads, especially ones that are on your itinerary,
| because of your GPS registers as the middle of a field, it's
| more likely that you're experiencing GPS issues rather than you
| driving at 130km/h in a potato field.
|
| Finally, location services are amplified by nearby wifi
| signals, mapped by google with street view. Your phone can say
| "here is the Mac address of every wifi network I can see and a
| rough estimate of my position" and Google's services can very
| accurately triangulate where you are.
| cft wrote:
| Does accelerometer-based location algorithm integrate the
| acceleration readings to get the phone displacement? Is it a
| part of the phone operating systems ?
| tjohns wrote:
| Aircraft fly higher, which means they pick up ground radio
| signals from much further away - both good (ATC communication,
| ground-based navigation beacons) and bad (intentional jamming).
|
| On the ground, the radio horizon is about 20-40 miles. In the
| air, the radio horizon is about 200-400 miles.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Most of these GPS-jammed zones are, obviously, near areas of
| active conflicts (Ukraine, Myanmar, Isreal/Palestine, Kashmir,
| etc).
|
| But what's going on in Western Australia? And South-west Texas?
| zsims wrote:
| Western Australia could be the ongoing emu war -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
| jjwiseman wrote:
| That spot in western Australia is interesting, I was looking at
| that earlier. My map doesn't show any indication of
| interference there, in fact from what I can tell there's plenty
| of evidence of _no_ interference. Eh, there are sometimes
| analysis or other artifacts, and it can be tricky to try to
| infer too much from one hex.
| lhoff wrote:
| I crosschecked with google Maps and I belive the Jindalee
| Operational Radar Network in Laverton is stationed there. Maybe
| that has something to with the interference. A 560kw
| transmitter is no joke.
|
| I guess south-west Texas is most likely also military. E.g. the
| Naval Air Station Kingsville is not far away.
| Arrath wrote:
| Huh I had no idea Australia had a big OTH radar network. TIL!
| barryrandall wrote:
| According to this study (https://web.stanford.edu/group/scpnt/g
| pslab/pubs/papers/Liu_...), the Texas spot is the US Military
| doing aerobatics training, causing the training aircraft to
| repeatedly report signal loss.
|
| My guess is that the spots in Western Australia are the same
| thing, given the nearby RAAF training bases.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| I've been working on mapping GPS jamming using ADS-B data for a
| couple years, and I'll try to address questions and points
| brought up here based on what I know.
|
| Relevant previous posts on HN:
|
| 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245346
|
| 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37868106
|
| (From my comment on that 2023 post: "Why haven't FlightRadar24,
| FlightAware, or any of the other flight trackers done this?")
|
| "A single observer can't really say for certain that jamming is
| happening; you need a distributed sample from multiple different
| sensors over a period of time to have reasonably high
| confidence."
|
| There are heuristics you can use that allow you to make a pretty
| good guess about whether jamming is happening based on signals
| from just one or two aircraft, and have worked well on GPSJAM for
| the past couple years.
|
| With regard to localization of GPS jammers, yes you can do
| direction finding of the emitted signal directly, but that's easy
| mode. For a fun challenge, do it based just on observations of
| the ADS-B data from affected (and unaffected aircraft). Here's
| one approach from researchers at the GPS laboratory at Stanford,
| "GNSS Interference Source Localization Using ADS-B data":
| https://web.stanford.edu/group/scpnt/gpslab/pubs/papers/Liu_...
|
| I have some other ideas about how to do that localization.
|
| https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1764054377982308484
|
| "Do aircraft systems really only use GPS and not the full
| constellation of navigational satellite systems?"
|
| ADS-B doesn't tell you what navigation system is, but my
| understanding is that most aircraft are still using GPS. Maybe
| someone who works on aircraft avionics will chime in. A few years
| ago I did see data that distinguished between different GNSS, and
| GPS was experiencing more jamming than the others. I assume as
| multi-network systems become more and more common jammers will
| just target all of them, if they're not already.
|
| "There looks like a big hole of no data over Ukraine, where I'd
| most expect GPS jamming, but I suppose there are no civilian
| flights either. Maybe they could setup an GPS observation station
| on the ground at a surveyed point to get data there."
|
| That's right, no (or few) flights over Ukraine with ADS-B
| transponders means no data. I actually first started mapping GPS
| jamming on Feb. 14, 2022 (https://gpsjam.org/?lat=45.00000&lon=35
| .00000&z=3.0&date=202...), because I thought it might give me an
| early warning of the expected Russian invasion of Ukraine. It
| didn't work out that way--there was no indication of interference
| right up until Feb 24., and then all civil aviation stopped and
| there was no more data for that region (https://gpsjam.org/?lat=4
| 9.18928&lon=33.51687&z=3.9&date=202...).
|
| As some of you have noticed, GPS jamming is highly correlated
| with conflict zones. Some conflicts are higher intensity than
| others--for example, I think the airspace around Cyprus has been
| jammed for years (since 2018 maybe?), and I get the feeling it's
| more harrassment than anything else (maybe someone more
| geopolitically savvy than me knows more).
|
| "I see 2 red cells on the US/Mexico border right about
| Texas/Coahuila region". Someone always says it's cartels, and the
| evidence is that it's much more likely to be U.S. military
| testing and training. First, the interference is always in the
| Laughlin and Randolph military operating areas (MOAs)
| (https://imgur.com/vieGhgN). Second, the interference usually
| runs during the week and takes weekends off--which I doubt
| cartels do, but that's the typical pattern seen for military
| exercises.
|
| "am I missing any other GPS jamming mapping or data collection
| projects?"
|
| From 2/24/2022 until 3/19/2024, gpsjam.org was the only site with
| regularly updated GPS jamming maps. On Twitter, @auonsson
| (https://twitter.com/auonsson) and @rundradion
| (https://twitter.com/rundradion) have been posting geospatial and
| other analysis of similar data for the past several months at
| least, and @x00live (https://twitter.com/x00live) has looked at
| ADS-B and GPS interference for a while too. (I'm not even going
| to try to catalog academic or government efforts, though I will
| mention HawkEye 360's satellite based GPS interference mapping:
| https://spacenews.com/hawkeye-360-gps-ukr/)
|
| "If line of sight to the jamming antenna is required to be
| jammed, why do aircraft not have a downwards shield so that they
| only receive GPS signal from the sky (satellites) and not from
| jammers (coming from the bottom hemisphere)? Or is the jamming
| signal so many orders of magnitudes stronger than the satellites
| that there's always going to be some gain no matter how good the
| shield is?"
|
| Yes, GPS signals are so weak (below the noise floor!) that it's
| just super easy to overpower them with terrestrial (or airborne)
| jammers. But there are special antennas and other techniques for
| building jam-resistant systems, e.g. "controlled reception
| pattern antennas" (CRPA): https://www.gpsworld.com/anti-jam-
| technology-demystifying-th... But I think the main reason most
| civilian aircraft systems aren't jam resistant is because they
| didn't need to be--For the past several decades GPS jamming has
| been a much smaller issue than it is now, and I don't think there
| was sufficient reason to spend time and money on what would have
| been an over-engineered, mostly unnecessary system. But the
| situation is changing, and I expect anti-jamming to become a more
| significant concern by equipment manufacturers and aviation
| authorities.
|
| [Edited to add:]
|
| "I'm in the middle of one of the red blobs on the map and just
| used my phone with google maps to drive around. It worked fine."
|
| From the GPSJAM FAQ: ""I live in one of the red zones and my GPS
| was fine?"" (https://gpsjam.org/faq/#i-live-in-one-of-the-red-
| zones). Yeah, the answer is, as you mentioned, aircraft fly at
| higher altitudes, so they get much longer line of sight to the
| jammer.
|
| On the general idea of using ADS-B to map GPS interference, when
| I thought of this idea I was pretty excited. I realized that if
| you had access to worldwide ADS-B data, which ADS-B Exchange
| graciously gave me as part of my Advisory Circular project
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188661), you could also
| make a worldwide map of GPS jamming, and I hadn't seen anyone do
| that before (later I found some researchers who realized you
| could get GPS jamming information from ADS-B, but they only
| looked at a couple aircraft).
|
| I just think it's pretty neat that even though there were
| multiple companies devoted to processing, analyzing, and selling
| ADS-B data, and ADS-B data is not all that complicated, none of
| those companies had realized this new way of using it. Sometimes
| there's gold left even in data that you think must have been
| completely mined out.
|
| Even specifically looking at ADS-B data as it relates to GPS
| interference, there's still lots to be done! FR24 is mapping
| jamming, but I don't think anyone else has made worldwide maps of
| spoofing (yet!):
| https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1770515361739493488
|
| [Edited to add more:]
|
| With respect to safety issues, yes, aircraft have redundant
| navigation systems. But GPS is one of the important layers that
| add safety to aviation, and it is not at all normal for entire
| countries or even larger regions to lsoe GPS while still
| maintaining passenger flights. This Eurocontrol presentation,
| "GNSS Interference and Civil Aviation", has lots of details:
| https://rntfnd.org/wp-content/uploads/Aviation-GNSS-interfer...
|
| From the presentation: Aviation Safety is built
| on two main principles: * Trust your instruments
| * Follow standard operating procedure GNSS RFI causes
| pilots to have to question both principles!
|
| There have been close calls due to lack of GPS. It increases
| workload for both pilots and controllers, which is a safety issue
| by itself. Despite a lot of airlines and government aviation
| agencies saying everything is fine, they're not really prepared
| for a world with frequent GPS denial, and everything is not fine.
| Industry and government are organizing emergency meetings about
| how to handle this in a less ad hoc way than they have been so
| far (commercial aviation is kind of the opposite of ad hoc).
| jjwiseman wrote:
| I'm not a NATO strategist or anything, so I'm adding this as a
| child comment, but I think the big story in the GPS/aviation
| world these days is probably Russia's near-constant frequent
| jamming of GPS over Poland, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, and
| Lithuania. Degrading and even neutralizing strategic
| infrastructure in EU and NATO countries, significantly
| affecting commercial aviation at the least, is a big deal.
| There's some reluctance to say it's Russia doing the jamming,
| though that seems to be the consensus among experts. I assume
| governments know with 100% confidence who it is.
| tommymanstrom wrote:
| OSINT by Markus Jonsson
| (https://x.com/auonsson?s=21&t=L_vyKMe6Kz1tXjeWTeGk3g) has
| been tracking this for some time now.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Who is jamming around Tallinn area? Also is GPSIII just as
| susceptible to jamming?
|
| Hawkeye + SAR data would be pretty interesting for ship
| tracking. I think I've seen some papers here before, but
| nothing interactive like your site. I think open SAR data is
| not quite realtime yet, but hope soon is.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| Search and Rescue data? How does that help here? And is there
| a repository of SAR rescues somewhere?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Think it's Synthetic Aperture RADAR.
| keithflower wrote:
| John, I've been following your work for years (including back
| in the old lemonodor years). I just wanted to say thank you
| here, for sharing your expertise for all on this topic, and for
| all the other tremendous work you've done. What an inspiration.
| tamimio wrote:
| > but my understanding is that most aircraft are still using
| GPS.
|
| GNSS, GPS plus other constellations depends on the receiver.
| Even drones or consumer ones support that these days, some
| bigger drones even support L5 bands.
| CSDude wrote:
| When I wait for relatives/friends to land in Turkey, I always get
| a mini heart attack because either plane drifts like Fast and
| Furious or disappears completely from map and ask myself, is this
| real this time? Sometimes I have nightmares about it, I see the
| planes just falling down from the sky spontaneously because of
| the stress that GPS jamming induced to me over the years.
| poorman wrote:
| Need to get some more Helium hotspots proving location with proof
| of coverage and then people wouldn't have to rely on government
| controlled GPS.
| Havoc wrote:
| What's the deal with a large chunk of Turkey's northern coast
| being jammed?
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