71–80 of 81 posts
I wouldn't consider this "hacking" or even very impressive. If you deliver enough power to the right antenna with the right carrier frequency you can jam any wireless communication. It's the same concept as "whoever yells the loudest will be heard".
This is part of the clever and gradual propaganda campaign to increase drone funding/sophistication significantly. A new article intended to nudge the reader toward that conclusion is released about every 6 months.
so likely the simplest answer is correct, it's not a giant conspiracy after all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The exact opposite actually. Apparently airliners, like our mobile phones, can only receive GPS signals to track their own position, but they can't report that back to the control towers - position is calculated from ground radars, which only reach up to 200 miles from shore. That's why the location of AF447 couldn't be pinpointed quickly after the accident, for example, there are only estimates for location while ou…
Do you know why the pilots of that plane didn't use GPS to determine their altitude and speed? I read that it's suspected they slammed into the sea because they didn't know their altitude and speed, due to frozen-over measuring devices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why aircraft normally have multiple INS units. INS has been used as primary nav for endurance missions (>24hrs) in the US military for decades. Citation: Myself, I worked on a variety of systems including INS and GPS in the military.
But redundant INS units protect against failure of LR gyros. They don't protect against the case where an extremely slow turn by the plan can induce drift in an LR gyro. In that case all your redundant systems will all drift together. LR gyros are also limited by physics to a certain limit of precision, and this is the specific mechanism by which they can drift (from what I understand though building larger gyros mig…
I wouldn't consider this "hacking" or even very impressive. If you deliver enough power to the right antenna with the right carrier frequency you can jam any wireless communication. It's the same concept as "whoever yells the loudest will be heard".
Your argument just makes this more serious. It's a (possibly easy) exploit with serious consequences.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But redundant INS units protect against failure of LR gyros. They don't protect against the case where an extremely slow turn by the plan can induce drift in an LR gyro. In that case all your redundant systems will all drift together. LR gyros are also limited by physics to a certain limit of precision, and this is the specific mechanism by which they can drift (from what I understand though building larger gyros mig…
Why is this HN thread the only Google result for "LR gyro" ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why aircraft normally have multiple INS units. INS has been used as primary nav for endurance missions (>24hrs) in the US military for decades. Citation: Myself, I worked on a variety of systems including INS and GPS in the military.
But redundant INS units protect against failure of LR gyros. They don't protect against the case where an extremely slow turn by the plan can induce drift in an LR gyro. In that case all your redundant systems will all drift together. LR gyros are also limited by physics to a certain limit of precision, and this is the specific mechanism by which they can drift (from what I understand though building larger gyros mig…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know why the pilots of that plane didn't use GPS to determine their altitude and speed? I read that it's suspected they slammed into the sea because they didn't know their altitude and speed, due to frozen-over measuring devices.
Apparently the entire issue came down to a junior pilot pulling back on the control stick, causing the airplane to stall and fall. It seems commercial airlines usually operate in a mode where it is impossible to stall -- pulling back all the way just ascends as fast as the plane can. But, the plane reverted to another mode of operation and the pilot did not understand this. Additionally, the Airbus control system has…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But redundant INS units protect against failure of LR gyros. They don't protect against the case where an extremely slow turn by the plan can induce drift in an LR gyro. In that case all your redundant systems will all drift together. I'm am pretty sure this is very wrong, although I'm not an expert enough to downvote you. Having multiple systems allows one to average out (statistically independent) drifts; it's no…
As I understand it with LR gyros, if you rotate them sufficiently slowly so that they move less than half a wavelength in the time the light transits, they re-lock on the new orientation without interference. This is a limit based on quantum physics and it's why I said that larger gyros might reduce the problem.
I think the real problem is that INSs are simply to bulky and heavy for drones, rather than anything to do with drift.
This is part of the clever and gradual propaganda campaign to increase drone funding/sophistication significantly. A new article intended to nudge the reader toward that conclusion is released about every 6 months.
Other people read this and say it is a clever propaganda campaign to promote the danger of using drones that can be turned against us by hackers, etc.... so likely the simplest answer is correct, it's not a giant conspiracy after all.
The article sets the stage for easy agreement with the idea that US drone tech needs an overhaul. Even if the first appropriations toward this go to a small subset of current military drones, that gets the ball rolling.