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FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

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21–30 of 134 posts

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#21
post #2

What kind of deranged person messes with GPS risking to crash an airplane?

I think it’s for military protection. I had a flight canceled due to GPS jamming. I think it was to protect a U2 flight. Putin also flies around with GPS jammers.

Wouldn't that mean that Putin's flights can't use GPS to navigate? But maybe he worries more about someone intercepting his plane than he does about crashing due to a navigation mistake. And his risk assessment may in fact be accurate...

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DoD wants to ensure their forces can operate if GPS is down. This requirement should be reasonable to most people who aren’t pacifists. So I think the real question is, why aren’t senior level DoD and FAA bosses doing more to increase safety during the planned outages?

You can always disable GPS at the edges. Or almost always. And, for the rest, yes, they should at least be talking to each other and publishing NOTAMs when possible (and ensuring the FAA has it covered when it's a surprise drill). OTOH, would it be possible to have other location services such as Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou available as backups (or letting they all vote on your position)?

I would hope GPS denial tests also include the alt-GPS systems. Who knows what hardware might have unknown dependencies (one would assume military hardware has all been audited, but assumptions make for poor battle plans.)

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#23
post #14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "The Pentagon uses its more remote military bases, many in the American West, to test how its forces operate under GPS denial."

Wouldn't it just make sense to tell them not to use GPS?

Is “them” civilian pilots or the soldiers? Because the military may have all sorts of equipment that has black box GPS functionality they can’t easily control (think of GPS guided munitions for example).

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#24

Can someone more familiar with the situation explain why they jam GPS at all? You'd think the vast industry around the military could replace actual jamming with training aids. Even if the bespoke training tools are expensive, I doubt they're as expensive as an airliner wandering in to an active missile range. Not to mention the economic disruption to air traffic throughput.

The signal GPS uses is actually very very weak and can be jammed pretty easily just by spewing a bunch of noise in the general area of the spectrum where it lies. Military grade receivers have some countermeasures that civilian equipment doesn't (e.g. the military signals have much wider bandwidth to work with, and you can also do some antenna magic), but jamming is still a problem for them too and it's a pretty active area for R&D.

https://www.afcea.org/content/jam-proof-signals-guide-naviga... is a good read on the subject.

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shall consult the expert team at 4chan /s But seriously "We've been told we can't ask to stop jamming, and to just put everyone on headings." ... people inbound not ready for this can run out of fuel. Maybe the right passive aggressive response could have been to simply set a really large diameter TFR to keep civilian aircraft away assuming people check NOTAMs.

simply set a really large diameter I'm not particularly familiar with aviation, so is the radius in this comment (445NM at FL400) considered large? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28833002 )

Yes that is very large however that is just an advisory not a TFR. [1] Only those with special permission and Harrison Ford may enter into a TFR.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_flight_restriction

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#26

Are there NOTAMs regarding GPS jamming operations? It's not a fix, but maybe it would allow pilots - specially ones without sophisticated avionics like those founds in airliners(who don't rely on GPS in flight) - to prepare and/or avoid the issue.

It would be if flight plans using tango routes through those temporary areas would be rejected.

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s for military protection. I had a flight canceled due to GPS jamming. I think it was to protect a U2 flight. Putin also flies around with GPS jammers.

Wouldn't that mean that Putin's flights can't use GPS to navigate? But maybe he worries more about someone intercepting his plane than he does about crashing due to a navigation mistake. And his risk assessment may in fact be accurate...

You can jam 99.99% off the time except when your software takes a reading. So you get clear signal everyone else can’t.

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#29
It really annoys me how far into an article you have to read before it becomes clear that they're only telling one, disputed side of the story.

> The US Army takes the safety of its operations extremely seriously. Calls for a cease buzzer are taken seriously and range control has not denied or ignored any cease buzzers.

Re: FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

#30
post #24

Can someone more familiar with the situation explain why they jam GPS at all? You'd think the vast industry around the military could replace actual jamming with training aids. Even if the bespoke training tools are expensive, I doubt they're as expensive as an airliner wandering in to an active missile range. Not to mention the economic disruption to air traffic throughput.

The signal GPS uses is actually very very weak and can be jammed pretty easily just by spewing a bunch of noise in the general area of the spectrum where it lies. Military grade receivers have some countermeasures that civilian equipment doesn't (e.g. the military signals have much wider bandwidth to work with, and you can also do some antenna magic), but jamming is still a problem for them too and it's a pretty acti…

The article makes it seem like they're testing the capability of field personnel rather than doing R&D.

For the actual R&D stuff, I can see why they'd need to do something in the field to see how it behaves. But I would also imagine that sort of testing to be fairly infrequent with long experiment cycles.

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