[HN Gopher] Planes are having their GPS hacked. Could new clocks...
___________________________________________________________________
Planes are having their GPS hacked. Could new clocks keep them
safe?
Author : justin66
Score : 143 points
Date : 2025-03-07 13:31 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| anovikov wrote:
| So this pertains to jamming so strong that traditional jam-proof
| GPS that uses signal phase shift to weed out GPS signals coming
| from "wrong" directions, are insufficient? 100db attenuation of
| jamming signal has been achieved around 15 years ago with those.
|
| In the air, there are always more GPS satellites visible than
| necessary. So jam-proofing through signal processing methods is
| the way to go.
| elchananHaas wrote:
| It can be done, but airplane GPS receivers aren't jamming
| resistant. This is expected to change in the next decades.
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| I don't understand this article. If the GPS signals are jammed,
| what purpose does it serve to have an atomic clock on board your
| plane? You still need accurate signals with time data to measure
| against.
|
| Am I missing something?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I didn't read the article, but: a GPS receiver must
| calculate/find both it's time and position to get a fix. So
| maybe by having the time already available really accurately it
| makes the job of finding position easier?
| gorbypark wrote:
| From my (very basic) understanding of GPS you need at minimum
| four satellites to calculate the time. If you had a local
| atomic clock in sync with the GPS satellites, you'd only need
| three satellites to get a position fix. It would (probably,
| maybe?) also speed up the time to first fix / time to a
| precise position fix.
| simne wrote:
| As I read from book about gyroscopes, most sensitive achieve so
| fine accuracy, they detect daily Earth rotation and even yearly
| Earth rotation.
|
| But when they speaking about near zero temperatures, looks like
| they talking about something like Rydberg atoms - extremely
| sensitive matter, which could be considered as nuclear scale
| gyroscopes, or quantum gyroscopes, or read more about quantum
| accelerometer.
|
| And current inertial navigation could be used to calculate
| relative coordinates like automobile odometer, but from
| integrating accelerations. But classic accelerometer is just
| not fine enough, and at this place appear quantum accelerometer
| and quantum gyroscope.
|
| And I agree, article is terrible. I don't know why they use so
| abstract language, when could just say, navy already tested
| quantum navigation.
| simne wrote:
| To be more concrete, space rockets nearly all fly with
| inertial navigation, but they are extreme case, because most
| use only inertial navigation just few minutes (so all those
| classic gyros/accelerometers integrated errors are small
| enough to successful enter stable orbit, and then using some
| sort of radio or optical fine measurements and making
| corrections with fine engines).
|
| Planes flights are much more lengthy than rockets - I think,
| typical ~40 minutes or more (most long I hear 20 hours), so
| INS could integrate huge mistake.
| p_l wrote:
| INS essentially was expensive and AFAIK once GPS became
| available started to drop off in use outside of military.
| And with GPS availability coinciding with switching to more
| modern integrated Flight Management System/Computer, a lot
| of planes simply don't have INS installed.
| scrlk wrote:
| > a lot of planes simply don't have INS installed
|
| Perhaps in general aviation, but I can't think of any
| modern commercial airliner without an INS via the air
| data inertial reference unit.
| simne wrote:
| Many small planes don't have INS in typical meaning, but
| their pilot is INS computer, calculated approximate nav
| from air data (air speed + weather data + compass or
| radio compass).
| p_l wrote:
| Except ADIRU isn't INS.
|
| The INS unit is separate and often has its own set of
| gyros and has to be connected as separate input to FMS or
| other navigational computers, same as connecting GPSes or
| other radio nav components.
|
| For example the current model of popular Universal
| Avionics UNS1 series of NCU (navigational computer part
| of FMS) come with built-in augmented GPS receiversz but
| do not mention INS functionality at all even in extended
| models. Don't have access to manuals at the moment, but
| I'd expect to see INS as optional to connect over one of
| the external connectors on the MCU, as it was on the
| older models without integrated GPS
| scrlk wrote:
| In that case, I stand corrected.
|
| I had assumed that the ADIRU's inertial reference data
| from its gyroscopes and accelerometers would feed into
| the FMS as an inertial navigation source in case GNSS was
| unavailable.
| simne wrote:
| Your words are near to truth. Before GPS from nearly
| 1950s used LORAN navigation system, with similar to GPS
| principles, but used long waves and have relatively low
| precision - about kilometer at best.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LORAN
|
| Before LORAN, used radio beacon navigation and star
| navigation (from Newton time), and good human navigator
| could achieve about 50km precision.
|
| You could easy see signs of star navigation on good
| preserved old planes - they all have some sort of fully
| glass dome, or blister, to provide good near semi-sphere
| view. And sure, all those before-GPS era planes have
| separate navigator job position, sometimes shared with
| mechanic.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/WWIIplanes/comments/59xfkz/pby_w
| ais...
|
| You could ask, how planes could fly with 50km precision?
| Answer is easy - at all plane routes built ground
| structures easy seen from air and last mile navigation
| become essentially visual flight, nothing more, nothing
| less.
|
| On some places ground navigation structures preserved
| now, for examples:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airway_beacon
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Airway_Sys
| tem
| p_l wrote:
| LORAN was mostly long range over sea, on the ground we
| had NDB, DME, VOR, etc all ultimately linking into
| "airways" for higher altitude operations where earth
| might be not visible due to cloud cover for example
| foldr wrote:
| I believe submarines navigate long distances using INS. I
| don't know how accurate it is, or how often they have to
| make corrections using other data. But ballistic missile
| submarines can't really use active sonar or surface with
| any frequency, so I'm not sure what other method they'd
| use.
| simne wrote:
| I talked with captain of submarine. He said, in real life
| navigation was not reliable, so they have to go to
| surface and make adjustments with some classic navigation
| - radio beacons and star navigation.
|
| And civilian education now close to forgot star
| navigation, but navy still train people to navigate with
| stars and learn Morse code.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43319923
| simne wrote:
| > ballistic missile submarines can't really use active
| sonar or surface with any frequency
|
| Detect semi-surfaced submarine at night is really hard,
| if don't have intelligence data that it will surface on
| some non-random position.
|
| From experience of Ukrainian war, my country have success
| with eliminating surface military ships, because have
| constantly monitoring their moves with satellites, but I
| cannot remember any case when semi-surfaced submarine was
| hit.
| foldr wrote:
| Are they not easy to detect on radar? Even during WWII,
| radar got good enough to detect submarine periscopes.
| It's hard to imagine that a partially surfaced submarine
| wouldn't have a significant radar return. That doesn't
| mean that they're easy to detect at long ranges, but I
| would have thought that partially surfacing or raising a
| periscope would be a significant risk to a submarine if
| the enemy knew its rough location.
|
| At a guess, Ukraine probably can't deploy naval assets
| with powerful radar close enough to where Russian subs
| are operating. But an adversary with a more powerful navy
| might be able to.
| maratc wrote:
| > Are they not easy to detect on radar? Even during WWII,
| radar got good enough to detect submarine periscopes.
|
| They are, if you can get your radar on top of the
| periscope, e.g. mounted on a plane that flies above the
| sea.
| simne wrote:
| > if the enemy knew its rough location
|
| In these words you hit bull eye.
|
| During WWII, submarines was just very special type of
| boat. You could check wikipedia about German u-boats -
| exist about TEN subtypes, from which only latest types
| have really significant underwater range, but all others
| was extremely limited in underwater activity.
|
| But, surface ships of that time was even more limited,
| many could not achieve even half of surface speed of
| u-boat, so become easy prey.
|
| But if you will try to find some artificial object on sea
| surface, that is really hard question. Just because sea
| is huge, so you need to check extremely large space in
| short time.
|
| Radars are better to spot artificial object on sea
| surface than visual, just because radar easier to
| automate. But nothing more. Radar is also have problem of
| square distance, very similar to visual. So, as it is
| hard to spot partially surfaced submarine visually, it
| also hard to spot such sub with radar, because much less
| part will be on surface, so radar will have much less
| signal to detect.
|
| Periscope size is nearly undetectable on surface, if it
| used carefully, just outside detection range of radar.
|
| So, to conclude, Ukraine problem is, we cannot detect
| partially surfaced submarines on open sea, but they could
| fire missiles. Fortunately, Russians have very few
| submarines on Black sea, and after they was hit at
| harbors, their usage become very limited.
| foldr wrote:
| > But, surface ships of that time was even more limited,
| many could not achieve even half of surface speed of
| u-boat, so become easy prey.
|
| Agree with most of what you said, but U-boats generally
| had top surface speeds under 20 knots and were thus
| slower on the surface than most naval vessels of the
| time. They could certainly move faster than most convoys,
| but they couldn't outrun pursuing destroyers or
| corvettes.
| simne wrote:
| > slower on the surface than most naval vessels of the
| time
|
| That is point. I'm not agree about most, but will be
| agree if you say about many.
|
| > they couldn't outrun pursuing destroyers or corvettes
|
| But problem was, navy have so huge deficit of ships, so
| some convoys was run without naval support.
|
| Sure, if all convoys was supported with fastest ships
| with best commands, u-boats will be no problem anymore,
| and as I understand, once this was happen.
| crote wrote:
| A big issue during WWII is that the submarines were
| trying to find and approach the ships in order to sink
| them - and the ships in turn were looking out for the
| submarines. The submarine is _forced_ to be close to
| ships equipped with radar.
|
| Ballistic missile submarines are a completely different
| story. They aren't chasing anyone. Their entire goal is
| to be unpredictable and stay hidden, so if there's anyone
| with a radar around they are just going to keep quiet and
| move somewhere else.
|
| Finding a sub prowling a shipping route is quite doable.
| Finding a sub in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Not a
| chance.
| simne wrote:
| I must admit, I agree with nearly all you said. Problem
| is that Ukraine was weak, and nearly without navy, and
| civilian ships was unable to resist to Russian navy. And
| Ukrainian export was blocked, as civilian ships fear to
| run within range of fire of Russian navy.
|
| When Ukraine got enough weapons to force Russian ships to
| stay at distance, situation changed dramatically, so
| export was unblocked.
|
| I think, very similar things happen during WWII.
|
| This is not about only submarines, this is about
| superiority.
| magnetometer wrote:
| > most sensitive achieve so fine accuracy, they detect daily
| Earth rotation and even yearly Earth rotation
|
| Daily rotation is 360deg/23.934h, so 0,25deg/min, which is
| acutally quite a lot if you want to use a device to track
| your orientation.
| simne wrote:
| Unfortunately, these numbers considered state of art for
| modern classic gyroscopes.
|
| Better are quantum navigation systems, using quantum matter
| as sensor, but they was too bulky to be used on planes,
| only last years appear more compact systems, sized like
| common home fridge.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| > daily Earth rotation and even yearly Earth rotation.
|
| Minor FYI: the earth rotates daily, but it _revolves_ around
| the sun yearly. revolve /ri-volv'/
| intransitive verb To orbit a central point.
| "The planets revolve around the sun."
| HPsquared wrote:
| I took it to mean "able to measure a rotation rate of 1
| turn per year".
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _they detect daily Earth rotation_
|
| This is the principle gyrocompasses work on; when left
| running for a while they align themselves with true north;
| the axis of Earths rotation.
| touisteur wrote:
| You can get a very accurate timestamp from GNSS. What lots of
| people do then is slave a PLL based on a local oscillator, to
| be able to get time between two GNSS captations. Or to be able
| to extrapolate when they have no GNSS signal.
|
| Now suppose someone is spoofing your GNSS signals, it's pretty
| hard to replace a constellation with another one whilst
| maintaining time consistency _for you_. One way to detect
| spoofing is comparing what a local clock is saying to whatever
| the GNSS is giving. A local, unfudgeable, stable, accurate
| clock is a good reference for this.
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| Ahhhhh, that makes sense. Treating this as security mechanism
| rather than an anti-jamming one.
| harha_ wrote:
| Russia is like a kid playing with matches. I'm a noob when it
| comes to aviation, but AFAIK RNAV GPS approaches are quite
| common? Disrupting that is dangerous.
| yetihehe wrote:
| No, they are bullies trying to extort other kids. They fully
| know what they are doing, but they are trying to find what they
| can get away with.
| piokoch wrote:
| Russia is playing with matches since NATO allows for this. It
| would be sufficient if in Kaliningrad Oblast or in Petersburg
| NATO forces jammed GPS/Glonas/Beidou and, as a bonus, also VAR
| system (much more important than GPS for aviation) and next day
| Russia would apologize and never try stupid games again.
| harha_ wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance, but do you mean VOR instead of VAR? Or
| what does VAR stand for in your example?
| p_l wrote:
| RNAV are less common than people think, and given the
| limitations appear to mostly be used as secondary help in
| conditions where one could possibly go by vectoring.
|
| Losing them however _does_ drop capacity because now you need
| extra work to get planes to final.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Russia keep seeing what they can get away with and then push
| harder. Since nobody is willing to apply enough meaningful
| punishment due to fear of escalation, and they successfully
| propagandized/bought the US Republican party, they're winning
| on this axis.
|
| More sanctions should have been imposed when they shot down a
| passenger plane and killed several hundred Dutch civilians.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| True, the cheapest option was always to hid hard with
| sanction on Russia as early as the first Chechen war and
| establish backup for Russian energy. But instead, Germany
| still build Nordstream after Georgia.
| pjc50 wrote:
| German politics was clearly heavily compromised as well,
| beyond the basic self interest of cheap gas. See Wirecard
| and Jan Marsalek.
|
| The interesting question is how compromised British
| politics has been. Lots of very suspicious things (secret
| Boris Johnson meeting against the advice of security
| services; appointment of Lord Lebedev), but UK support for
| the Ukraine war has been unwavering.
| miohtama wrote:
| Since this year, the most likely reason to die in an consumer
| aviation accident is being hit by a Russian missile.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, and its leadership held to account; for some reason the
| results of the investigation was that a number of individuals
| were marked as suspect, while IMO the entire military
| leadership all the way up the chain should be held
| accountable.
|
| I really hope this war ends, and ends up with Russia paying
| for repatriations, including this case.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't see the reparations coming about
| without the war getting much, much larger first, like a EU-
| NATO ground invasion of Russia. Which violates a whole load
| of red lines and would get a lot of people killed. But
| maybe Russia will force it to happen regardless.
|
| (what is happening is turning the asset freeze into asset
| seizure, but this is complicated - rightly - by human
| rights law, because most of the assets are nominally
| private)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And they have for years now. Invaded / occupied Crimea with a
| slap on the wrist at best. International cybercrime for at
| least 15 years now, probably longer, but they get plausible
| deniability because it's not officially state doing it (even
| though we know they are).
|
| But outside of Ukraine, none of it crosses physical borders;
| the sabotage of undersea cabling is all done in international
| waters, the internet is some kind of free for all as well, etc.
|
| What should have happened is that the international community
| stepped up and sent a clear message, like "Russia will be cut
| off from the internet if they do not stop their digital
| attacks". Boundaries mean nothing if there are no consequences
| to violating them.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| GPS and other navigation systems are well worth the time to look
| into.
|
| something like Decca or LORAN are really simple to understand:
| two or more base stations in a known location emitting phase
| locked signals. By counting the nodes/antinodes of the harmonics,
| you can work out how far away you are from the base stations. The
| downside is that you need a initial fix to work out absolute
| location.
|
| The thing thats kinda touched on here is that GPS uses clocks to
| allow the receiver to work out how long the signal has been in
| flight (simplification) If you know where the satellites are
| (using the Almanac of satellite positions) you can get your
| location by fairly simple triangulation.
|
| Now, you don't have an atomic clock on your receiver, so how can
| you accurately measure the time difference between signals?
|
| for GPS you only need to know the relative time difference
| between each satellite, and even thought quartz clocks are only
| accurate to seconds a year, in the ~20-50ms it takes for the
| signal to arrive, its more than accurate enough.
|
| However that means you are open to spoofing, because you sync
| your local clock to a satellite, you have no real way of
| detecting if the clock has skipped.
|
| If you have an accurate clock source, you can then validate the
| clocks that are on the transmitters. I think, but can't
| confidently assert that calculating position becomes easier
| because you have an authoritative clock source, so don't need to
| piss about with clock sync using an unknown time offset.
|
| I think the implication is that this provides a strong form of
| signal authentication.
|
| However chipscale super-stable clock references also allow more
| autonomous styles of navigation. (ie celestial)
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Fun fact: optical mouse tech was developed for airplane
| navigation first. So it would not be very expensive to have this
| system as a backup.
| Eduard wrote:
| > optical mouse tech was developed for airplane navigation
| first
|
| Citation needed.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| I don't think there is any direct claim for this. But you
| will find lots of old research about optical flow measurement
| for navigation. Optical flow sensor part of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_flow seems like a good
| start.
| bArray wrote:
| https://archive.md/DvdcV
|
| I cannot tell you how infuriating it is as a UK tax payer on a
| UK-based ISP, that pays for this content to be made, to be
| blocked from viewing it.
|
| Worse still, if I view the article in 'Private' browser mode then
| I can see it all.
| PinguTS wrote:
| What I don't understand about this GPS spamming: we don't need to
| rely on GPS. We have Galileo, (GLONASS) and BAIDU. That is the
| reason we its now called GNSS.
|
| Most of the chips and as such the receivers are supoorting all of
| these systems in parallel. While I understand that the Chinese
| use their own coordinate system, I don't if BAIDU is based on
| that or not. Galileo is available. Galileo is able to use
| authenticated signals. Galileo has much improved over GPS. I
| assume in (important) comercial applications like aircrafts, you
| could use the better Galileo service for which you have to pay
| for.
|
| So how important is GPS spaming really?
| jstanley wrote:
| Do you mean it is specifically GPS that is getting spammed, or
| more generally are all of the GNSS systems getting spammed?
| bArray wrote:
| In the UK "GPS" is used as a general term for GNSS. I don't
| doubt that the aircraft already use multiple satellites.
| ElectRabbit wrote:
| > Galileo
|
| Which has optional cryptographic signatures of its positioning
| data. It's not spoofable anymore (but still jam'able with
| strong transmitters).
|
| Free for use.
|
| (https://www.gsc-
| europa.eu/sites/default/files/sites/all/file...)
|
| Same for the HAS (High Accuracy Service) which offers precision
| down to 30cm without additional correction data.
|
| Also free for use. But requires a special receiver as it's
| using an additional band.
|
| Galileo was the ugly duckling for a very long time - but it
| turned into a shining one after it aged a bit.
| PinguTS wrote:
| > Galileo was the ugly duckling for a very long time - but it
| turned into a shining one after it aged a bit.
|
| Yeah, for some time I was also in the camp of "why we need
| our own expansive service". But the current development has
| shown, that it was a wise desicion to have our own system.
|
| BTW: thanks for updating on some other details. I never
| followed up really, it was from the initial plans, that I was
| told there should be comercial service, that should pay. Also
| that for some emergency services there is a very limited
| possibility to have a back channel.
| ElectRabbit wrote:
| As far as I know all nav sats have emergency beacon
| payloads (Cospas-Sarsat). All providers (Beidou, GPS,
| Glonass, Galileo) joined this.
| azernik wrote:
| It has optional cryptographic signatures of the _navigation
| message_ , i.e. the data indicating position of satellites.
|
| Spoofing generally works not by altering the navigation
| message, but by altering the timing of arriving signals. I'd
| recommend this video for a publicly-available overview of the
| techniques: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAjWJbZOq6I
|
| tl;dr Galileo spoofers exist and work just fine.
| PinguTS wrote:
| Nope, the GNAV message is not only the position of the
| sateellites, the almanac https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/ind
| ex.php?title=Galileo_Navig...
|
| Spoofing of Galileo was possible as long as the
| authentification was not enabled.
| https://www.septentrio.com/en/learn-more/insights/osnma-
| late...
| filleokus wrote:
| In other comments to this link people are describing GPS
| according to my mental model, which is hard to combine
| with cryptography making it un-spoofable.
|
| If someone can re-broadcast the keystream and control the
| latency I perceive as a receiver, how would me checking
| that the MAC is correct help?
| azernik wrote:
| A) you keep on using the word "almanac". That term only
| refers to the imprecise information about _all_
| satellites that _every_ satellite broadcasts, mostly to
| improve TTFF. The actual position used for navigation is
| called "ephemeris", and each satellite only broadcasts
| its own.
|
| B) none of that other stuff in the navigation message
| changes the pseudorange, which is what spoofers mess
| with. For a networking analogy - pseudoranges are
| calculated based on layer 1/2 properties of the network.
| (Specifically the code phase and Doppler shift.)
| Navigation messages are layer 7 information passed on top
| of that physical layer. You can change the timing and
| frequency characteristics of the PRN code without
| touching a single bit of the navigation message.)
|
| The G/NAV message (note the G - _government_ ) is for a
| separate service - not OSNMA - where not only is the
| navigation message encrypted, but the PRN code is also
| encrypted (symmetrically, so it can't be done for the
| mass market or even untrusted commercial customers).
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Authenticating signals for GNSS sound like an impossible
| cryptographic task. What stops a malicious actor from recording
| the signals coming off the satellites and replaying them louder
| with a delay?
|
| If you pick the delay properly you can make the plane believe
| it is at an arbitrary point in space and time (although of
| course that time would always have to be at least a few `us` in
| the past).
| PinguTS wrote:
| https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/Galileo_Open_Servic.
| ..
| marsovo wrote:
| Can you point us to which part of that can deal with the
| scenario in question?
|
| > What stops a malicious actor from recording the signals
| coming off the satellites and replaying them louder with a
| delay?
| azernik wrote:
| "GPS" is being used as a genericism in these articles. All the
| GNSS constellations work the same way, and all of the military-
| grade spoofers are multi constellation.
| jotux wrote:
| They receive these signals in parallel because they're sharing
| frequencies: https://novatel.com/support/known-solutions/gnss-
| frequencies...
|
| You can jam 5-6 frequencies and knock out multiple
| constellations.
| ElectRabbit wrote:
| Galileo offers optional cryptographic signatures for their
| positioning data.
|
| It's a solved problem and free for use.
|
| https://www.gsc-europa.eu/sites/default/files/sites/all/file...
| michaelt wrote:
| Sadly this doesn't solve the problem.
|
| Spoofers simply receive the signed signal and re-broadcast it
| with a tiny delay. Signatures still intact.
| brohee wrote:
| If you ever received unspoofed data, and have a somewhat
| accurate local clock (rubidium is fairly cheap), you can
| detect the spoofing.
| bArray wrote:
| > The Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 had already descended to around 850ft
| (259m) when the disruption occurred. Instead of landing, the
| plane was forced to climb back into the sky and divert nearly
| 400km (250 miles) south to Warsaw, Poland. Lithuanian air
| authorities later confirmed the aircraft had been affected by
| "GPS signal interference".
|
| GPS is incredibly flimsy. Normally it operates by taking the
| average of 1000 observations to generate a noisy signal. It's not
| that difficult to be louder than something shouting from space.
| You can pick up cheap GPS blockers easily about the size of a
| walkie-talkie (handheld radio).
|
| > By carrying a group of atoms cooled to -273C on the plane
| itself, rather than relying on an external signal, the technology
| can't be interfered with by jamming.
|
| Last year I was on a plane where if the engines were not running,
| it entirely went into darkness. They hooked the plane up to the
| airport and tripped the airport electrics too. Now imagine if
| your plane loses power momentarily, and suddenly your GPS stops
| working entirely.
|
| > Henry White, part of the team from BAE Systems that worked on
| the test flight, told BBC News that he thought the first
| application could be aboard ships, "where there's a bit more
| space".
|
| > Quantum clocks, gyroscopes and accelerometers are large, bulky
| and incredibly expensive, with an accurate quantum clock costing
| around PS100,000. Yet military research is allowing the creation
| of smaller, better and cheaper systems.
|
| Likely a minimum of 10 years from being viable. Mt White of BAE
| is politely saying as much.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| > Now imagine if your plane loses power momentarily, and
| suddenly your GPS stops working entirely.
|
| Now imagine your plane loses power momentarily and switches to
| a backup system... The exact same GPS every plane is using
| today.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Even further, you can loose your super accurate special
| crystal and simply fall back to "normal" GPS.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I don't really understand why the plane was diverted because
| GPS was jammed; I get that it's important for navigation, but
| not how it's required for landing when they're that close.
| There's (iirc) close range guidance systems, and of course
| visual ones (lamps, stripes, etc).
| mapt wrote:
| Commercial air travel is very risk-averse. Best practice is
| that if something unexpected occurs, and you have plenty of
| fuel to spare, you go and and find someplace else to land.
| macguillicuddy wrote:
| My understanding is it depends on the amount of visibility,
| plus what type of approach they were on. One type of
| approach, an ILS, has big radio transmitters pointing from
| the runway into the air and allows the plane (either pilots
| or autopilot) to get close enough to the runway without
| visibility, and with enough precision, to land. In many
| circumstances ILS isn't available and an alternative is
| Required Navigation Performance (RNP) which uses GPS plus a
| ton of other inputs to give some amount of precision to the
| same end. If they're on an RNP approach but suffer a
| reduction in navigation accuracy then I imagine it's a policy
| 'go-around'. Even if there's enough visibility it allows the
| pilots to brief a 'visual' approach before attempting it.
| Gathering6678 wrote:
| Considering it's below 1000 feet, losing GPS could indicate
| an "unstablized" approach and require a go-around, as opposed
| to losing it at a higher altitude where the pilot could have
| more time to safely switch to alternatives (other navigating
| aids or go to visual?).
|
| Source: my guess after watching a lot of aviation YouTube
| videos......
| alistairSH wrote:
| For anybody who doesn't know, a "stabilized approach" is an
| approach with a constant angle and speed as the plane
| descends and lands. This allows the plane to keep
| consistent control settings (flaps, throttle, etc).
|
| It's best practice/policy for all major airlines to use
| stabilized approaches and most/all require a go-around if
| the stabilized approach is interrupted (there are edge
| cases and exceptions).
| rlpb wrote:
| Not all types of approaches are available at all runways (or
| airports), and sometimes they are down for maintenance.
| Specific runways may be required due to wind, aircraft weight
| and runway condition and length. Most airlines ban "circling
| approaches" (using an approach to one runway end and then
| circling visually to land at a other) for safety reasons.
| ILS, which is probably the "close range guidance" you are
| thinking of, must be installed, maintained and calibrated
| individually per runway end. Visual aids cannot be used for
| approach if there is low cloud.
|
| It is usual to be able to abort an approach and try again at
| the same airport using a different approach technology. But
| if the journalist wanted to find the most extreme example,
| it's not surprising that it happened at least once that an
| alternative wasn't available. This is probably "sampling
| bias"!
|
| Note that final operational decisions are made by the
| aircraft commander. Aircraft do not "get diverted", except by
| decision of the "captain".
| mapt wrote:
| Chip-scale atomic clocks based on cesium were demonstrated in
| 2003 with DARPA/NIST funding, and entered commercial production
| in 2011.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip-scale_atomic_clock
|
| Apparently they're not even export-protected, despite their
| obvious use in GPS validation schemes and in RTK.
|
| > The SA.45s CSAC has an Export Commodity Control Number (ECCN)
| of EAR99. This means it is not ITAR-controlled and does not
| require a special license to ship to most nations. The SA.45s
| CSAC classification is controlled by the Bureau of Industrial
| Security (BIS) within the US Department of Commerce.
|
| The article talks about quantum "optical clocks" but doesn't
| really explain the concept.
|
| Which appears to be this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_logic_clock
|
| Which, like many things named "Quantum", still doesn't really
| explain how you get an IMU out of it.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You can do about 5x worse (in accuracy terms) than a Cesium
| clock in a smaller package using a rubidium atomic clock.
| Average ~4 of these and you get to the same accuracy as a
| cesium clock. They aren't export controlled because they
| aren't that special in terms of what you get.
| mapt wrote:
| To improve instrumental accuracy by 5x in a single
| dimension when fighting against random uncorrelated
| drift/noise, from what I recall of statistics you require
| 5^2 = 25x as many instruments.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yeah, I think you're actually right. I was thinking you
| double them with 2 (experimentally), so you double that
| again to get 4x, but my curve was pretty off.
| fanf2 wrote:
| The article is deeply confused.
|
| It's true that optical clocks will improve the accuracy of
| our measurement of time, and it's true that GPS depends on
| time, but there are several steps between primary frequency
| standards (ie, optical clocks) and GPS, and several more
| steps between GPS and navigation applications.
|
| So optical clocks cannot, in fact, have any effect on the
| end-user perceived reliability of GPS.
|
| For that, the best solution is to revive LORAN which is much
| less susceptible to jamming. (And would also benefit from
| better atomic clocks.)
| mapt wrote:
| Much of Finland and Estonia are currently being jammed per
| https://gpsjam.org/?lat=58.53948&lon=24.82400&z=4.9&date=20
| 2...
|
| Finland is reintroducing DME:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/three-
| fin...
|
| Which seems to be a different concept from LORAN, but still
| useful for navigation when multiple base stations are in
| range.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_measuring_equipment
| Havoc wrote:
| They're probably talking about this for quantum navigation
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/15/lond.
| ..
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The diamond-based quantum IMUs are a completely different
| appliance and a different application (dead reckoning).
| vlovich123 wrote:
| High quality dead reckoning over a long duration + an
| initial fix solves the reliable instantaneous absolute
| fix. So different technically but OP is correct it would
| be relevant to the problem of solving GPS jamming.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It absolutely does not. Dead reckoning has error that
| accumulates over time, and even "high-quality" dead
| reckoning will be beaten by a crappy GPS fix very
| quickly.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The dead reckoning I'm referring to (and I suspect op is
| too and seemingly you are as well), is the work being
| done by the military in the usage of submarines that stay
| submerged for extremely long periods of time. The error
| accumulated is many orders of magnitude less than
| traditional accelerometers + gyroscopes over the same
| time frame. The point is you can dead reckon within your
| error bounds even when GPS is unavailable and the
| accuracy from fusion will beat GPS by itself (not that
| that matters for the applications we're discussing). For
| the duration of a flight it should be well within the
| capabilities of such sensors to dead reckon accurately
| from a last GPS fix before blackout and OP is correct
| this would be a complementary solution to more accurate
| clocks making it harder to jam GPS in the first place.
|
| Indeed it's being examined precisely for this
| application:
|
| https://newatlas.com/aircraft/quantum-navigation-
| infleqtion-...
| gbil wrote:
| Personally, I find it comforting that the plane was able to fly
| 400km more!
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| But do planes not have these fancy laser gyroscopes- so accurate,
| they have to correct in software for earth and the solar system
| moving?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_laser_gyroscope
|
| Why is GPS relevant here?
| h1fra wrote:
| It's bad when Russia is doing it, but no mention of Israel
| jamming a big part of the land during the war
| jjwiseman wrote:
| For one thing, the scale of Russia's interference is probably
| close to 100x as many aircraft being affected. Maybe 1000x or
| more if you consider the total number of aircraft affected over
| the past 3 years.
| Iolaum wrote:
| Before the GPS era (military) planes had inertial navigation
| systems, why can't civilian planes have something like that as a
| backup until you get in range of a terrestrial navigation radio
| tower - those are still in use, right?
| secondcoming wrote:
| They still have this system. This video gives great insights
| into how GPS jamming affects planes:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm9B-oofY9g
| izacus wrote:
| INS is still the primary navigation system on most airliners
| with GPS providing correction data for drifting.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Commercial airliners have this for a long time. Early 474
| models have it.
|
| And VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Range) beacons are still used.
|
| Many of the systems used are much older than people realize.
| Airports had ILS (instrument landing systems) in the 1950s.
| Improved low visibility versions started coming out in the
| 1970s.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| A lot of these systems are being phased out. Lots of airports
| now have GPS only approaches where they would have had an ILS
| systems in the past. The bigger airports still have more
| advanced ILS systems for landings in extremely limited/no
| visibility but also have GPS approaches.
|
| A normal IFR approach has more relaxed minimums that you can
| get to with GPS so there are a lot of airports without any
| ILS system in place at this point. The GPS approach gets you
| down to minimums of something like 200 feet above ground at
| which you either have the runway in sight or abort the
| landing.
|
| Likewise, VOR radios are slowly being retired and
| increasingly used as a fallback only. GPS systems in planes
| have been common for since end of last century. ILS and VOR
| infrastructure is kind of expensive to keep up and running
| and increasingly optional.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I wasn't meaning to apply that ILS was a sufficient
| alternative . I was using it as an example of tech
| technologies that have been around for a long time.
|
| Navigation without GPS is not a problem for a commercial
| airliner. Landing without it in poor visibility is a
| different issue.
| distantsounds wrote:
| I love it when James Bond plots come to life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_Never_Dies
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The behavior will continue until a negative stimulus is
| introduced.
|
| Which seems to be hard seeing as how the Russian government is
| good at convincing people (mainly their own, Europe's elite, and
| members of the Republican Party in the US) that it's okay to do
| what they do.
| _heimdall wrote:
| When Israel was waiting for a retaliatory strike from Iran they
| jammed GPS in the region. I never found a clear explanation of
| how it was done technically, this would make total sense if their
| system also was targeting atomic clock signals rather than GPS
| itself to confuse incoming missiles or aircraft.
|
| That does raise an interesting question though - do missles
| actually depend on the standard atomic clock signals? Maybe that
| isn't how they did it, that seems like a dependency you wouldn't
| want in a weapon.
| fsh wrote:
| GPS signals _are_ atomic clock signals. The receiver
| triangulates its position by comparing the time delays between
| the signals originating from different satellites. The receiver
| itself doesn 't require a good clock since it only compares
| signals with each other.
| grotorea wrote:
| And you can even update your clock info from the GPS signal.
| So the only dependency is GPS or similar.
|
| But would Iranian missiles even use GPS? Isn't accuracy
| limited for civilian use for precisely this reason?
| avianlyric wrote:
| No. The US stopped degrading civilian GPS accuracy in
| 2001[1]. Although the US retains the ability to degrade
| civilian GPS in specific target areas.
|
| Regardless, if you're building a long range missile, you
| need some ability for it to navigate. If you're not using
| GPS, then what would you use instead? Additionally there's
| nothing preventing you from using multiple navigation
| systems in tandem and fusing the results together, which is
| almost certainly what these missile do.
|
| Sensor fusion reduces the impact of stuff like GPS jamming,
| but certainly doesn't eliminate it. The over all system
| will be less accurate with fewer inputs, and if you're the
| one faced with a high speed missile flying at you, I
| suspect you'll take every edge you can get, regardless of
| how small the impact might be.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_
| Globa...
| hollerith wrote:
| >Regardless, if you're building a long range missile, you
| need some ability for it to navigate. If you're not using
| GPS, then what would you use instead?
|
| US ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles use a
| combination of inertial and celestial navigation: in
| space of course there are no clouds to obscure the stars:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_navigation#:~:tex
| t=I...
| lupusreal wrote:
| Many cruise missiles use terrain contour mapping. In
| principle at least it seems like it should work for
| airplanes too.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| GPS Accuracy used to be limited, but that ended decades
| ago.
|
| There are rules about GPS hardware that say that they
| should cease working above certain speeds and altitudes for
| guided missile purposes. But that is a firmware issue. I'm
| sure the Iranians have figured that out if the are even
| using off the shelf hardware.
| baskinator wrote:
| A error correction technique I learned as a young land
| surveying assistant is to put a gps antenna on a known
| fixed point location. The delta between the fixed point and
| the point of measurement is cancelled out to get a more
| accurate read.
|
| We did this to trial some new (at the time) surveying
| equipment when the primary equipment was optical. It would
| save time for really long measurements through the forest
| and mountainous terrain .
| crote wrote:
| You can even subscribe to services which do this for you!
| There are a few companies with large-scale networks of
| fixed receivers, and you can get the observed offset from
| a node near you via the internet, usually via "NTRIP".
|
| Getting correction data from a node a few dozen
| kilometers away isn't quite as good as having your own
| fixed base station a stone's throw away, but it's _way_
| more convenient and for a lot of applications plenty
| accurate.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| My understanding is you just flood the spectrum at the
| frequency that GPS is operating at
|
| GPS signals are weak since they come from far away
| hylaride wrote:
| GPS (as well as most satellite) signals are weak because it's
| strong enough for line of sight even from so far away. They
| only transmit at 25W. Comparatively, an FM/TV signal will
| often broadcast at tens of thousands of watts and up.
| hylaride wrote:
| GPS signals are relatively low power (American GPS broadcasts
| at 25 watts and the signal is a tiny fraction of a mW at sea
| level). In theory, it's easy to pump out noise over it,
| especially the civilian frequencies that Iran would in theory
| be using.
|
| Depending on the receivers and what (combination?) of
| GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO/BAIDU Iran uses, you could easily overwhelm
| them.
|
| There have been cases of delivery drivers using jammers to stop
| companies from tracking them, only to interfere with airport
| landing systems, which is a concern as a lot of warehouses are
| near airports.
|
| EDIT: power at ground level is miniscule
| pbmonster wrote:
| > GPS signals are relatively low power (American GPS
| broadcasts at 25 watts and are ~10-15W at sea level)
|
| Did you lose 16 orders of magnitude for the sea level values?
| GPS signal strength on the ground is usually below -135dBm
| per square meter. That gives you a couple of femtowatts with
| commonly used antenna, if you're lucky.
|
| Easy to jam doesn't begin to describe it.
| hylaride wrote:
| Shit, you're right. I blame the time change.
| thwra wrote:
| The title is clickbait. It implies hacking the plane's hardware,
| which is not occurring.
|
| GPS jamming is unfortunate, but relying on U.S. GPS is foolish
| anyway (as the article also points out).
|
| Planes still have inertial navigation systems. It worked before
| GPS, why not now? GPS for tracking phone users should go away
| anyway. If you are in an unknown city, but a damn paper map. No
| tracking and you absorb the big picture much faster.
| yimby2001 wrote:
| GPS isn't there to track you. It's a tool for you to use to
| know where you are.
| rlpb wrote:
| > GPS for tracking phone users should go away anyway. If you
| are in an unknown city, but a damn paper map. No tracking and
| you absorb the big picture much faster.
|
| Regular GPS is receive-only. GPS receivers naturally cannot be
| tracked. Tracking happens much higher up the stack, such as
| with your map app downloading local map tiles for display.
| Technology-wise, it's trivial to have a smartphone based map
| that is tracking-free, and the privacy focused alternate phone
| OSes do this already.
| userbinator wrote:
| Planes have been flying for decades before GPS even existed, yet
| the article seems to make it sound like they wouldn't be able to
| without GPS. Unfortunately no mention of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system at all.
| bitwize wrote:
| INS accumulates error though. It comes in handy in the absence
| of any other navigation system, but generally an INS is
| supplemented by some sort of radio navigation aid such as VOR,
| LORAN, or GPS to correct it.
|
| Except guess what! Many of the VOR stations in the USA have
| been shut down, due to the high availability of GPS!
| avianlyric wrote:
| After the invention of GPS, aviation increased its capabilities
| due to the advantages GPS provides. Many modern flights depend
| on those capabilities to be economically viable, and are thus
| dependent on GPS.
|
| Simply because it's possible to fly without GPS doesn't mean
| it's commercially viable. Remember, before GPS, direct
| transatlantic flight weren't generally possible because there's
| no radar or radio coverage out there to help with flight
| navigation. Also for a long time, plane navigated by flying low
| and literally following giant arrows on the ground[1]. I doubt
| anyone is particularly keen to return to that kind of
| navigation.
|
| [1] https://www.dreamsmithphotos.com/arrow/
| marsovo wrote:
| Not to mention removal of the alternatives in favor of GPS,
| e.g. shutting down VOR beacons (see e.g. https://www.flightaw
| are.com/squawks/view/1/24_hours/popular/...)
| taeric wrote:
| It is interesting to consider how many old mysteries in
| flying came down to "pilot didn't know where they actually
| were." This isn't much different from hikers getting
| stranded, even when they are within a mile of a marked trail.
| cogman10 wrote:
| We'd definitely need new hardware and/or infrastructure to
| work without GPS.
|
| > before GPS, direct transatlantic flight weren't generally
| possible
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. Commercial transatlantic
| flight picked up after WW2 in the 50s. By the 1970s it was
| fairly common. A lot of that came from rocketry research and
| INS.
| nradov wrote:
| Nonsense. There were _decades_ of commercial transatlantic
| flights before the widespread adoption of GPS. No one painted
| giant arrows on the ocean. Airliners navigated using a mix of
| dead reckoning, ground signals, and sometimes even celestial
| observations.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-
| magazine/707-flight...
|
| GPS (and other GNSS) make civil aviation slightly safer and
| more efficient but it's hardly necessary for routine flight
| operations.
| carreau wrote:
| Well, it's just bad journalism, cause what they are referring
| to is a quantum inertial navigation system, not a clock - it's
| just thousands of time more precise. The plan happen to also
| have an atomic clock (which is used to properly integrate
| inertia through time), without having to rely on external GPS
| (which is a clock).
|
| You just have to get closer to the source and find better
| information: https://www.gpsworld.com/uk-government-tests-
| quantum-inertia...
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| Note those INS systems depend on some sort of navigational
| system to verify against due to drift and such, and those
| systems are GPS or VOR.. and VORs are being shut down or
| decommissioned as they fail (except for the ones declared
| required for national security).
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| As a particularly egregiously fragile aircraft, the Embraer
| Phenom 300 isn't certified to fly into areas without functioning
| GPS because it affects flight stability. QNS can't happen soon
| enough and hopefully the consumerization and miniaturization of
| strontium optical lattice clocks too.
| teleforce wrote:
| I think we need to separate issues here namely the threat types,
| one is jamming and another is spoofing.
|
| As of jamming most probably the new clock will not help. But for
| spoofing it probably can be prevented and mitigated with the new
| clock, but the root cause is the pseudo-orthogonality of the
| spread spectrum.
|
| To put it simply, in housing property market the main criteria
| are three namely location, location, location. Similarly in
| communication and specifically in wireless the main criteria are
| also three namely orthogonality, orthogonality, orthogonality.
|
| It's interesting to note that all mainstream GNSS systems
| including GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou are using spread
| spectrum modulation system, and they all affected by the pseudo-
| orthogonality of the spread spectrum system. There's a reason why
| the newer 4G/5G, and even Wi-Fi have moved away from spread
| spectrum modulation that's was being initially used by 3G and
| 802.11b, respectively, by fully embracing OFDM. The reverse-
| engineered Starlink modulation is reportedly using OFDM as well
| [1]. This mainly because of spread spectrum limitations but at
| the time it's not due to spoofing (security) but due to bandwidth
| scaling (performance) limitations. For GNSS on the other hand,
| don't care about the bandwidth because it's for location service
| not streaming video, but the limitations of being pseudo-
| orthogonal eventually got to them in the form of spoofing
| vulnerability.
|
| The next generation GNSS designers perhaps need to bite the
| bullet, and should employ proper orthogonal modulation (OFDM or
| others), not pseudo one like spread spectrum. Having highly
| accurate on board clock is a hacked solution at best, not a
| proper solution, and it just unnecessarily increase the upfront
| cost and maintenance complexity by being overkill and over
| engineered.
|
| [1] Reverse Engineered Signal Structure of the Starlink Ku-Band
| Downlink (2022) [PDF]:
|
| https://radionavlab.ae.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/starlin...
| ooterness wrote:
| This is entirely wrong. OFDM is necessary for WiFi etc. in
| order to maximize spectral efficiency (i.e., bps per Hz for a
| given unit of radio spectrum) and mitigate multipath.
|
| The main purpose of the GPS spreading codes is to prevent self-
| interference from the other satellites and to _increase_ the
| effective bandwidth for the cross ambiguity function (i.e., to
| get a nice, sharp cross-correlation peak in the time-domain).
| The pre-spreading data signal is only ~50 bits per second, so
| spectral efficiency is not a primary concern.
| teleforce wrote:
| >For GNSS on the other hand, don't care about the bandwidth
| because it's for location service not streaming video, but
| the limitations of being pseudo-orthogonal eventually got to
| them in the form of spoofing vulnerability.
|
| Please check my original comments as above.
|
| Granted, it's still perhaps feasible to spoof OFDM system but
| it'll be much harder to pull off compared to the pseudo-
| orthogonal spread spectrum system [1],[2].
|
| [1] Secure OFDM System Design and Capacity Analysis under
| Disguised Jamming (2019):
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07826
|
| [2] OFDM-based JCAS under Attack: The Dual Threat of Spoofing
| and Jamming in WLAN Sensing (2025):
|
| https://arxiv.org/html/2501.06798v1
| throw0101c wrote:
| Another thing that is being looked at are antennas (CRPA:
| Controlled Reception Pattern Antennas) which filter signals more,
| so that "GPS signals" that come from the ground and the sides are
| more likely to be rejected:
|
| * https://rntfnd.org/2025/02/26/faa-moving-toward-crpa-on-airc...
|
| One tripping point is that in the US, CRPAs are on ITAR, so
| exports are difficult:
|
| * https://www.gpsworld.com/first-fix-freeing-crpas/
|
| Given that GPS/GNSS comes from satellites, ignoring signals from
| not-from-the-sky seems like a quick win.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| > Given that GPS/GNSS comes from satellites, ignoring signals
| from not-from-the-sky seems like a quick win.
|
| You're right, but GPS antennas already have some rejection from
| the "bottom" hemisphere. So they're already rejecting not-sky.
|
| CRPAs (of the type contemplated by ITAR) are electronically
| steerable antennas (phased arrays), that allow you to steer one
| or more nulls to the direction of the noise source(s). That
| gives much better rejection of point-source noise.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| They're taking CRPAs off the ITAR list later this year,
| supposedly.
|
| https://insidegnss.com/crpas-to-be-removed-from-itar-list-op...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| GPS signals from low attitudes improve accuracy (to a point)
| because they provide much better triangulation. You _want_ low
| attitude GPS satellites. You also don 't want to lose signal
| every time the receiver tips, like when going up/down slight
| hills.
| Aloisius wrote:
| They don't lose signal when the receiver tips (which would
| make it useless for planes). They use antenna arrays to
| filter signals coming from directions they don't expect, too
| strong, etc.
|
| These systems have been used used in military aircraft for a
| long time.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Also, the Doppler shift of jamming/spoofing will be all wrong,
| unless they're specifically targeting your vehicle and
| accounting for its speed and direction in their attack.
|
| ... if you can get the precision to filter that out...
| kevin42 wrote:
| I have an amateur built experimental airplane, and on my first
| flight, GPS wasn't working. It was working on the ground, so I
| figured a bad coax cable or something from the vibration. When I
| landed it started working again, but later in the day it wasn't.
| A few days later I found out that the nearby Air Force base was
| testing GPS jamming, and there was even a NOTAM about it.
|
| There's a site that tracks GPS jamming: https://gpsjam.org/
| ge96 wrote:
| What is that area to the right of India?
| inejge wrote:
| Myanmar, alias Burma. They're having a hot civil war since
| 2021. (They've had tensions and insurgencies for as long as
| they've been an independent state.)
| pixl97 wrote:
| Myanmar, which is currently a conflict zone.
| ajross wrote:
| Myanmar. Unstable autocracy, recent coup, ongoing uprising. A
| huge mess, and exactly where you'd expect the ruling party to
| be trying to eliminate navigation aids.
| alphan0n wrote:
| I've never seen a map that has each locality in its primary
| language..
| biker142541 wrote:
| It's the default OpensStreetMap style, which was never
| intended as a cartographic basemap for visualizations. Its
| purpose is to facilitate editing of the underlying data...
| but it's also one of the "free" options out there and
| integrated into most map library examples. ("free" because
| it's community-supported and heavy usage is discouraged,
| https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/)
| jjwiseman wrote:
| GPSJAM had a non-free map for years that didn't have this
| issue, but as the site got more traffic I could no longer
| afford to pay for it.
| biker142541 wrote:
| That's fair! While understandably it isn't probably a top
| priority, I'd highly encourage checking out
| https://docs.protomaps.com/pmtiles/maplibre . It can be
| _nearly_ free to directly hit a single planet pmtile
| file, especially with cdn in front, and slightly more to
| put up a server in front of it (imo, not needed).
|
| Anyway, awesome site regardless, and OSM tiles are fine
| if not abusing their hosting (this isn't I'm sure).
| crote wrote:
| I wish that website had some kind of timelapse functionality.
| It would be _very_ useful to see how jamming in an area changes
| over time.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| There are multiple sites that try to infer whether jamming is
| happening.
|
| https://gpsjam.org/
|
| https://spoofing.skai-data-services.com/
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming
|
| Ukraine is of course a huge hotbed of jamming, but every time
| I've looked, there's been jamming on the US/Mexico border and
| a bit north of Texas around an airbase.
|
| There's also a lot of info available here:
| https://www.nstb.tc.faa.gov/
| jjwiseman wrote:
| The apparent interference in Texas is almost always fighter
| pilots doing training. During aggressive maneuvering the
| aircraft fuselage can mask the GPS antenna, causing the
| aircraft to lose GPS accuracy.
| folli wrote:
| Fighter jets emit ADS-B? I know it's only training, but
| I'm curious?
| jjwiseman wrote:
| I'm thinking about adding that. (Donations help, see the
| About page.)
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| This map is great,very interesting. curious that GPS is jammed
| over Gdansk, Helsinki and Tallinn.
| lawrenceduk wrote:
| It's because they're next to Kaliningrad, that weird Russian
| exclave
| bitcurious wrote:
| Another way to see that geography is as approaches into
| Russia. Gdansk borders Kaliningrad, Helsinki and Tallinn
| straddle St Petersburg.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Russia has been jamming GPS over Finland, Estonia, and Poland
| on and off for a couple years, and it's been at its peak now
| for several months. Sometimes flights have to be canceled.
| Tartu airport in Estonia was closed for a while[1] because
| the only instrument approaches it has were GPS-based.
|
| Even worse than jamming is spoofing, which Russia also does.
| With jamming, you and the aircraft's systems both know what's
| happening. Spoofing isn't as easy to detect, as the GPS
| system can report the wrong location but think it's highly
| accurate. Spoofing (and to some extent jamming) can have a
| persistent effect on aircraft systems even after they move
| out of range of the jammer/spoofer, which can lead to
| degraded navigation accuracy for the rest of the flight.
|
| It's a whole deal. Russia is messing with strategically
| important systems of many European countries, and decreasing
| civilian aviation safety, and they rarely get called on it.
| For a long time there was reluctance to even name Russia as
| the culprit.
|
| 1. https://www.heise.de/en/news/GPS-jamming-no-more-flights-
| to-...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Russia has been jamming GPS over Finland, Estonia, and
| Poland on and off for a couple years, and it's been at its
| peak now for several months. Sometimes flights have to be
| canceled.
|
| I feel like we had airports before we had GPS. If this is a
| regular thing, shouldn't we have ways of using the airport
| without hoping that the jamming is having an off day?
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_octant
| jjwiseman wrote:
| There usually are other systems (e.g. ILS), but not
| always.
|
| This post has several comments along the lines of "We
| used to fly without GPS and it was fine!" The fact is
| that aviation is so much safer than it used to be, and
| GPS is part of that. GPS helps aircraft navigate
| accurately even when they're not near an airport. It
| helps give situational awareness and avoid mid-air
| collisions (almost every aircraft these days has a
| traffic display that shows ADS-B positions of other
| nearby aircraft, and those positions come from accurate
| GPS).
|
| Loss or spoofing of GPS isn't usually a critical safety
| issue on an aircraft, but it definitely removes layers of
| safety and adds additional risk. Pilots can lose that
| situational awareness of nearby traffic. They may have
| increased workload and distraction due to having to use a
| less familiar & less accurate means of navigation, trying
| to figure out why their systems aren't working correctly,
| and even getting bogus ground proximity warning system
| alerts. ATC may now have increased workload and
| distraction because some approaches or even runways are
| no longer usable.
|
| We drove cars for a long time without seat belts and air
| bags, too.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > We drove cars for a long time without seat belts and
| air bags, too.
|
| And if we were having problems with seatbelt jammers,
| everyone would instantly respond by just not using
| seatbelts in those areas. There would be no road closures
| and no trip cancellations. What are we supposed to learn
| from this analogy?
| jjwiseman wrote:
| That aviation without GPS isn't as safe as aviation with
| it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I don't even think that's true. Seatbelts are an
| improvement in safety regardless of context. But what
| you're arguing here is that a system that's designed to
| rely on GPS availability, and gets it, is safer than the
| same system during a GPS outage, not that GPS
| availability will make any airport management system
| safer.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It makes it safer to run aircraft closer together. Most
| airport capacity increases these days come from
| optimizing airspace, not from new runways or airports,
| which are time consuming, expensive, and controversial.
| We used to operate without them but we were also
| generally operating a lot fewer flights back then.
|
| The more apt analogy is what would our roads look like if
| all traffic signals stopped working? People would still
| drive, but it would have to be at lower speeds, with more
| congestion, etc.
| epistasis wrote:
| What do you mean "if" of course we do? Relying on older
| methods means narrowing the acceptable conditions for
| landing. It means reduced economic activity, reduced
| opportunities.
|
| How about we treat enemies as actual enemies, rather than
| rolling over and letting them make our lives more
| difficult?
|
| In comparison to the US's power, Russia is an annoying
| pipsqueak, but instead we are letting Russia boss around
| on everything. It's shameful and embarrassing.
|
| Why in the world should we have to rely on inferior
| methods?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > How about we treat enemies as actual enemies, rather
| than rolling over and letting them make our lives more
| difficult?
|
| Treating someone as an actual enemy means accepting that
| sometimes they're going to do things that are
| inconvenient for you.
|
| > Why in the world should we have to rely on inferior
| methods?
|
| Well...
|
| treating someone as an actual enemy means accepting that
| sometimes they're going to do things that are
| inconvenient for you.
| epistasis wrote:
| And they are going to also experience "inconveniences"
| for random bullying.
|
| Ignoring what a bully does has predictable consequences.
| ithkuil wrote:
| They are surely doing that because they want to divert NATO
| expansion westward /s
| nradov wrote:
| Is it common practice to go flying without checking for a NOTAM
| that might impact your intended route? (I'm not trying to
| insult you or anything, I'm not a pilot and don't know the
| standard procedures for dealing with those.)
| jrockway wrote:
| Should you brief the NOTAMs? Yes. Is it common to miss one?
| Also yes. Go look at the ATC YouTube channels and you will
| find lots of people being intercepted by fighter jets even
| though they use Foreflight.
|
| Another problem is NOTAM spam; it seems like, in some areas,
| there are a bunch of NOTAMs that aren't very important but
| that you still have to read through to see if they're
| relevant. "We're testing GPS jamming" or "we will send a
| fighter jet if you fly into this rectangle" look a lot like
| the more common "taxiway T at Middle Of Nowhere Municipal
| Airport is out of service until 1/1/2038".
| jameslk wrote:
| Could be a good opportunity for using an LLM to summarize
| and extract anything important?
| buildsjets wrote:
| Here's a critical NOTAM that was missed. Translated, it
| means, if you fly here, the Russians will shoot your ass
| down. And so they did. But nothing encodes that
| information in the NOTAM so there is nothing for an LLM
| to summarize and extract. Expecting an AI to compensate
| for poor system design is magical thinking.
|
| A1492/14 NOTAM Q) UKDV/QRTCA/IV/BO /W
| /260/320/4822N03807E095 A) UKDV B) 1407141800 C)
| 1408142359EST E) TEMPO RESTRICTED AREA INSTALLED WITHIN
| FIR DNIPROPETROVSK BOUNDED BY COORDINATES : 495355N
| 0380155E 485213N 0372209E 480122N 0370253E 471352N
| 0365856E 465018N 0374325E 465900N 0382000E 470642N
| 0381324E THEN ALONG STATE BOUNDARY UNTIL POINT 495355N
| 0380155E. RESTRICTION NOT APPLIED FOR FLIGHTS OF STATE
| ACFT OF UKRAINE. F) FL260 G) FL320)
|
| Besides that, would the developer of the LLM accept
| liability for accidentally filtering out important
| NOTAMS, or hallucinating NOTAMS that did not exist?
| dmd wrote:
| "One lamp out of 18 on this radio tower is operating at 75%
| brightness" repeated every day for years
| buildsjets wrote:
| NOTAMS are a bunch of garbage that no one pays any attention
| to. That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of former NTSB
| chairman Robert Sumwalt. I'm sure the GPS NOTAM was buried
| somewhere in the 27 page NOTAM list and it probably said
| something like this actual current GPS NOTAM: !GPS 03/022 GPS
| NAV PRN 08 U/S 2503061847-2506050001
|
| https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-
| aviation/20...
| alexpotato wrote:
| Wanted to highlight how GREAT the FAQ section is on that page.
| It feels like each question on that list is one that the author
| actually received and answered in an easy to understand format.
|
| Makes me wish for the early days of the Internet where FAQ
| writing was good practice and writing a great FAQ was
| considered something worth celebrating.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Thank you! I haven't updated that page in a long time, and
| there are a few things I should add. Some possibilities:
|
| * Does this map show spoofing? No.
|
| * How come sometimes I see aircraft flying over Ukraine?
| That's GPS spoofing.
|
| * [Add Myanmar & Kashmir to the list of conflict zones.]
| mvip wrote:
| Shameless self-plug: I had Ken Munro from PTP on my podcast [1]
| in the episode 'Hacking airplanes, ships and IoT devices with Ken
| Munro' where we dove into GPS hacking and spoofing at length.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkhCN7taMK4
| lawlessone wrote:
| There is solution to this called the ARM (Anti Radiation Missile)
| csense wrote:
| If you can't receive signals from the GPS satellites because some
| country's military is jamming them, how does having an accurate
| on-board clock help?
|
| Are they somehow able to determine position via dead reckoning?
| How does that account for errors from wind, vibration, etc. and
| compounding of errors over time? (I'm pretty sure dead reckoning
| is not a closed-loop system)
|
| "Miniaturize a very accurate clock" seems like a fairly
| straightforward engineering challenge. "I can give you clocks as
| precise as you need, now design me a system that can give your
| coordinates in thick fog without GPS or any other external radio
| signals" seems like a much harder one.
| brohee wrote:
| It's not white noise jamming it's replaying with a delay, so
| the receiver is getting a meaningful signal.
| Salgat wrote:
| Technically both techniques can be used for gps hacking. It
| also seems you can fake a gps signal altogether, because the
| public signal is not cryptographically signed, which
| surprises me (the only thing that makes sense to me is that
| the gps protocol doesn't have room for adding a signature, so
| it'd be a breaking change to the protocol).
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Indeed. The article is a bit confusing on details. At the end
| it talks about accelerometers and gyros, but aircraft have been
| using laser ring gyros for decades. They now use gps because it
| is much more accurate.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Historically ships at sea could determine latitude through sun-
| sighting or stars, but longitude was impossible because they
| did not have a clock which was accurate enough
|
| I doubt they're navigating using the sun an stars, but if the
| airspeed indicator is accurate, and you know you're heading,
| all you need is an accurate clock to determine absolute
| position since the last known good position.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| But quartz is accurate enough for that, let alone a properly
| calibrated oscillator. So why is the article focused on
| giving planes atomic clocks?
| Salgat wrote:
| The article does a poor job explaining, but seems to imply that
| they are working on replacing GPS altogether with a local
| system that relies on an atomic clock and quantum engineering.
| From what I can find, there are many approaches to this,
| including quantum gravimetry, quantum accelerometers, etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_sensor
| brohee wrote:
| Galileo can use TESLA (no relation), see RFC 4082, to mostly
| protect from the issue. Getting away from GPS is actually the
| simplest way.
|
| An explanation of how it works here:
| https://www.euspa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/expo/osnma_p...
| Salgat wrote:
| Mind you this only helps to tell you if the signal is
| authentic, you're still without that navigation system at that
| point, hence the search for a localized alternative.
| hylaride wrote:
| Also, the Russians have been playing around with
| rebroadcasting legit signals with slight delays as well. The
| Ukraine war has been a very interesting time to observe these
| tricks.
| brohee wrote:
| If you have a good local clock (e.g. rubidium), you can now
| detect the signal is from the past and correctly conclude
| you are jammed and trust INS, starnav or whatever
| instead...
| cyberax wrote:
| TESLA encryption is resistant against rebroadcasting. The
| idea is to use a PKI infrastructure to digitally sign the
| timestamp stream at fairly granular intervals.
|
| This way, you'll be able to find a set of satellites that
| are not getting jammed.
|
| Another option is to use the low-orbit satellites in
| addition to regular sats.
| hylaride wrote:
| This is true, but the Russians have demonstrated that
| combining this with jamming they can make this still
| possible (along with other tricks). Obviously there's
| going to be some back and forth movement via
| countermeasures and updates, but the west has only very
| recently woken up to these threats.
| cyberax wrote:
| Encryption is not widely used right now, so I don't
| believe it's been defeated.
| lxgr wrote:
| Can't an attacker still start meaconing the original
| (i.e. locally captured) signal and then slowly
| selectively delay/advance each individual satellite
| component in the time and frequency domain?
|
| Not sure how much latency that would introduce and how
| feasible that is in terms of tricking a receiver
| sensitive to any jumps/outages, and its definitely a
| weaker attacker capability than "simulate any time and
| location you want".
| metalman wrote:
| be interesting to see, what just caused two large ships to
| collide off the English coast, in a known and busy area ships on
| fire, more than 30 rescued so far
| biker142541 wrote:
| Hacked doesn't seem like the right term. It's jamming, being
| overwhelmed, not infiltrated in any way. Curious if others use
| this term in such a way?
| jotux wrote:
| The term used in industry is typically "spoofing."
|
| https://www.u-blox.com/en/blogs/tech/gnss-spoofing-new-secur...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Spoofing is different from jamming. Spoofing is when you
| trick the receiver into thinking the position is one you fed
| it vs jamming is you preventing it from acquiring a signal at
| all. Jamming is much easier while spoofing can be more
| difficult if there's encryption on the signal. Unfortunately
| I think commercial signals aren't signed with a private key
| to completely prevent spoofing but I'm not 100% sure.
| logifail wrote:
| > Hacked doesn't seem like the right term
|
| ... and this term only appears in the headline, not (anywhere!)
| in the body text. Wonder if the author of the article intended
| that term to be used, or whether the (sub)editors put it in to
| help get more clicks?
| biker142541 wrote:
| lol, good point. I wouldn't doubt this as a cause.
| asynchronousx wrote:
| The vast majority of people don't know that GPS is only a one-
| way transaction anyways. They think most devices talk back to
| the satellites somehow.
| diggan wrote:
| > They think most devices talk back to the satellites
| somehow.
|
| To be honest, I don't think most people realize GPS is coming
| from satellites in the first place. Most people simply don't
| think about how/why at all when using things.
| ck2 wrote:
| Are GBAS also affected by GPS hacks?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNSS_augmentation
|
| What happened to that attempt to use Starlink as a GPS system?
|
| Not that we should build anything else that relies on it
|
| But only two other sat networks are OneWeb and PlanetLabs with
| one tenth the sats
|
| https://www.datocms-assets.com/53444/1666338747-every-satell...
| Frederation wrote:
| To replace the INS system we have now, for when GNSS spoofing etc
| is done? That clock?
| shannonclaude wrote:
| Magnetic-anomaly based navigation (MagNav) is a real thing that
| can solve this problem, and has been shown to work with the
| accuracy of a few hundred meters. Perhaps the government and
| defense contractors should look into this technology more. With a
| few more years of funded R&D and FAA-certification, I think its
| pretty likely that we'll see some of these systems on planes
| soon. The military is already flying with it during their
| exercises.
|
| disclosure - I do work on a team developing MagNav, but much of
| the seminal research has come out of the Air Force Institution of
| Technology. They performed it on an F16, paper results shown here
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9506809
| mmooss wrote:
| > Air Force Institution of Technology
|
| I've never heard of that - what is it? What's it like to work
| with them (if you did)?
| shannonclaude wrote:
| It's the Air Force's higher ed institution. They offer
| masters and PhDs. They have their own labs doing R&D.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's not uncommon to fuse magnetometer with other sensors. We
| did that for indoor navigation at Apple. In fact, we had
| prototypes that used only magnetometer and it worked fairly
| well for what it was but the low update rate and poor
| resolution meant that it worked to like 10-30 meters which
| wasn't usable for indoor by itself. Of course, for indoor there
| was a lot more "texture" indoors for the commercial
| magnetometer of the time to pick up whereas outdoor it gets
| trickier. Is that similar to how MagNav works just with higher
| quality more sensitive magnetometers?
| shannonclaude wrote:
| So the role that magnetometers play in sensor fusion w/ IMU
| data is for yaw/heading/magnetic north estimation. In short,
| it aids your orientation (RPY estimate). However, with
| MagNav, they play a large role in supplying information that
| allows you to decrease your drift rate.
|
| https://www.sagemotion.com/blog/how-does-imu-sensor-
| fusion-w...
| mrandish wrote:
| I find these sorts of alternatives to what I'll call
| 'adversarially contested technologies' super interesting.
| Jamming drone control and video links is another similar
| instance where alternatives like MagNav could prove useful by
| allowing autonomous fallback operation in the case of signal
| loss. I assume viable solutions will probably require a fusion
| of approaches like MagNav, optical terrain following, laser
| altimeter, etc
| shannonclaude wrote:
| We're working on making MagNav a one stop shop backup for
| GPS. I think to cover ALL cases however, you'll need other
| technologies. TERCOM, visual, and celestial all have their
| niche use cases.
|
| But for most cases, MagNav should do the job. Happy to answer
| more
| reflexe wrote:
| The article is a bit strange. While GPS can be used to receive
| accurate timing (phase correction once per second), for gps less
| navigation, even a picosecond accurate atomic clock wont really
| give any additional benefit compared to a wirst watch.
|
| Using an accurate clock, you might be able to detect spoofing (by
| detecting small "jumps in time"). However, the same should be
| possible even with a non accurate clock (a few ppms) by detecting
| conflicts between the different satellites timings (since the
| "fake" transmitter is on earth, it will never be able to
| accurately simulate the real satellites' airtime delays from
| space to your specific reception location).
|
| On the other hand, if you pair a very accurate clock with a very
| accurate gyroscope, you might be able to replace gps altogether
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system) But
| from my knowledge, these kind of gyros are not really available
| for sale (but this is already outside of my knowledge, so maybe
| something changed).
| Animats wrote:
| Detailed summary from Ops.group, which is for pilots and flight
| planners.[1] It's really bad. They write:
|
| Typical indications of Spoofing
|
| Unlike jamming, a GPS signal is present, but it has fake
| information. False GPS position, time, and date information will
| be processed by the GPS receiver as being valid. As soon as this
| is fed to other systems, failure messages will begin.
|
| * Rapid EPU or ANP increase
|
| * GPS position and IRS or FMS position disagree caution message
|
| * Aircraft Clock time changes, or difference between Capt/FO
| clocks
|
| * Transponder failure: EICAS/ECAM "ATC FAIL"
|
| * Autopilot turns aircraft unexpectedly
|
| * ADS-B Failure/Warning
|
| * Synthetic Vision reverting to blue over brown
|
| * Loss of enhanced display, such as display of terrain on PDI
|
| * Wind indication on ND is illogical or has a major shift -
| erratic groundspeed
|
| * GPS position symbol on ND drifts away from the FMS and the IRS
| symbols
|
| * Datalink (CPDLC, ADS-C) failure warning
|
| * GPS information on sensor page shows unusual values: altitude,
| etc.
|
| * Handheld GPS (e.g. Garmin, iPad) disagrees with aircraft GPS
| position
|
| * EGPWS audible warning ('Pull Up")
|
| * GPS 1 and 2 dramatically different i.e. more than 100 meters,
| which may also give an ECAM/EICAS GPS miscompare warning.
|
| * Spoofing Alerting app e.g. Naviguard gives alert
|
| * ACARS message from ground/ops advises of spoofing (based on
| aircraft downlink message with unusual values)
|
| [1] https://ops.group/blog/crew-guidance-published-by-gps-
| spoofi...
| epistasis wrote:
| Don't worry everyone, we have shut down our Russia cyber defense
| efforts:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/trump-russia...
|
| Which implies that we _don 't_ need to worry about Russia jamming
| GPS on our planes, they are just trying to help. Just flow with
| it and stop panicking.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Replace the light beacons on radio towers with a line of sight
| laser triangulation system.
| manosyja wrote:
| Of course they called themselves Time Lords, what else would
| British scientists call themselves? The Kings of Lower
| Frequencies?
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