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FAA Fumbled Its Response to a Surge in GPS Jamming

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

#71

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

takk309 wrote: post #66
andrepew wrote: post #19

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.

Remember, GPS is a military tool first. Civilians get to use it at the militaries discretion. They could turn the selective availability (which was turned off in 2000) back on and remove a lot of civilian accuracy. Maybe civilian pilots are the ones that need to training aids more than the military. It seems to me that they should be able to navigate without gps in a safe manner. Edit: fixed term for selective availa…

Didn't they actually remove selective availability from the new sat's that were launched.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080113123316/http://pnt.gov/pu...

> In September 2007, the U.S. Government announced its decision to procure the future generation of GPS satellites, known as GPS III, without the SA feature. Doing this will make the policy decision of 2000 permanent and eliminate a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide for some time.

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

#72

Post by toast0 »

takk309 wrote: post #66
andrepew wrote: post #19

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.

Remember, GPS is a military tool first. Civilians get to use it at the militaries discretion. They could turn the selective availability (which was turned off in 2000) back on and remove a lot of civilian accuracy. Maybe civilian pilots are the ones that need to training aids more than the military. It seems to me that they should be able to navigate without gps in a safe manner. Edit: fixed term for selective availa…

> They could turn the selective availability (which was turned off in 2000) back on

I'm not sure if they can, if I've got the right info, block IIF and block III satellites don't have the hardware for selective availability; and those make up 16 out of 30 operational satellites (and one out of 4 reserve).

But I'm sure if they can't enable SA, they could likely just disable the civilian frequencies or something if needed. OTOH, there's GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou; the US can administratively deny GPS and probably Galileo, but not the other two, which makes SA less useful.

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

#73

Post by roognarook »

asdff wrote: post #69
sklargh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half-joking that Uber and [Tech Major]s' Map products are among the greatest government subsidy stories of all time. Those satellites are expensive!

I wish I could use my phone on GPS only. Somehow the damn thing still needs a cell connection despite having the hardware allegedly.

You can, you just need to download the maps for offline use. Google maps makes it easy:

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838

It's very useful for navigating crowded touristy areas, remote nature preserves, sports/music events that jam the towers, etc.

Some more specialized apps also support doing the same thing with other types of maps, like USGS quad sheets.

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

#74

Post by dkarl »

takk309 wrote: post #66
andrepew wrote: post #19

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.

Remember, GPS is a military tool first. Civilians get to use it at the militaries discretion. They could turn the selective availability (which was turned off in 2000) back on and remove a lot of civilian accuracy. Maybe civilian pilots are the ones that need to training aids more than the military. It seems to me that they should be able to navigate without gps in a safe manner. Edit: fixed term for selective availa…

> Remember, GPS is a military tool first. Civilians get to use it at the militaries discretion.

That's a bit like saying Java could have dropped sun.misc.Unsafe at any time because it was a private API. Once the civilian economy started relying on GPS, the military had to consider the cost of turning it off. Not to mention that the U.S. military has traditionally been deployed to promote and safeguard American commercial interests, and if it started disregarding them, that would amount to a shocking political revolution.

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

#75

Post by asdff »

roognarook wrote: post #73
asdff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could use my phone on GPS only. Somehow the damn thing still needs a cell connection despite having the hardware allegedly.

You can, you just need to download the maps for offline use. Google maps makes it easy: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838 It's very useful for navigating crowded touristy areas, remote nature preserves, sports/music events that jam the towers, etc. Some more specialized apps also support doing the same thing with other types of maps, like USGS quad sheets.

I wish you could download a lightweight map of the entire country. The way the selector rectangle works in my city makes it awkward to capture it well since its kinda longer east west rather than north south. If a garmin from 2002 could hold maps of the entire country, surely my iphone with 512gb of storage should be able to do it too.

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

#76

Post by bdash »

anyfoo wrote: post #54
ryandrake wrote: post #36

> "Aircraft are greatly affected by the GPS jamming and it's not taken seriously by management," reads one report. "We've been told we can't ask to stop jamming, and to just put everyone on headings." This is the military practicing, but I would hope that civilian airline transport operations are also robust to GNSS unavailability or denial. Even private pilots in little Cessnas are taught to navigate using radio-nav…

Are they still taught to do NDB approaches? I thought that's been phased out, too. In fact I was told the other day that the US officially tuned off the NDBs? Does not apply to VORs then, but as you say, the fact that they get phased out more and more is concerning.

Most VORs are being phased out as well, with only a minimum network left in place to support routing flights on instrument flight plans to airports with non-GPS approaches (i.e., ILS) in the event of a GPS outage.

[1]: https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/airports-and-airspace/navigati...

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

#77

Post by loeg »

ceejayoz wrote: post #68
loeg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instrument failures are rare and might impact a handful of aircraft; GPS jamming impacts every aircraft in the vicinity. ATC might have capacity to plan low fuel-consumption flight heading paths for a small number of aircraft, but not 100%?

ATC / radio failures happen. If ATC can't plan a route for you, you're still the pilot in command and responsible for finding a diversion airport and getting down safely, and for having had enough fuel to deal with traffic while doing so.

Sure -- I don't think the concern is literally falling out of the sky, so much as having to divert to another airport that isn't being jammed (inconvenient). But we're speculating on the basis of a vague complaint.

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

#78

Post by minetest2048 »

asdff wrote: post #75
roognarook wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, you just need to download the maps for offline use. Google maps makes it easy: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838 It's very useful for navigating crowded touristy areas, remote nature preserves, sports/music events that jam the towers, etc. Some more specialized apps also support doing the same thing with other types of maps, like USGS quad sheets.

I wish you could download a lightweight map of the entire country. The way the selector rectangle works in my city makes it awkward to capture it well since its kinda longer east west rather than north south. If a garmin from 2002 could hold maps of the entire country, surely my iphone with 512gb of storage should be able to do it too.

Use OSMAnd instead, it can download entire country map with a click without dragging rectangles around

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

#79

Post by loeg »

mywittyname wrote: post #49
loeg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military serves the taxpayers.

That doesn't entitle them to access to military systems, either individually or as a collective. And surely citizens of other countries are not entitled to access to military systems.

Surely it entitles the citizenry to access military-funded systems that do not benefit from secrecy, like GPS or the internet.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #75
roognarook wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, you just need to download the maps for offline use. Google maps makes it easy: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6291838 It's very useful for navigating crowded touristy areas, remote nature preserves, sports/music events that jam the towers, etc. Some more specialized apps also support doing the same thing with other types of maps, like USGS quad sheets.

I wish you could download a lightweight map of the entire country. The way the selector rectangle works in my city makes it awkward to capture it well since its kinda longer east west rather than north south. If a garmin from 2002 could hold maps of the entire country, surely my iphone with 512gb of storage should be able to do it too.

[deleted]
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