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Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

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Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#181

Post by gpm »

merely-unlikely wrote: post #167
gpm wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value here is pretty simple, the frequency at which windows are rendered useless due to weather. Yes, the change we are undergoing and that the current administration seems to be doing their best to accelerate includes an increase in heavy precipitation across north america.

That's good news for the data centers.

More destructive weather events are good for expensive pieces of infrastructure? Higher temperatures are good for things that struggle to cool themselves? I don't see it.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#182

Post by ifwinterco »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #107
K0balt wrote: post #17

GPS is not essential to air navigation. It’s nice to have, and there are some approaches that legally require it to be operational in order to fly them (IFR procedures) but aviation has other systems in place to guide aircraft under conditions where visual flight navigation is impossible. In this case, IMHO, the pilots had become complacent and lax in their navigational rigor because of the fact that GPS makes a lot…

> GPS is not essential to air navigation. It’s nice to have, and there are some approaches that legally require it to be operational in order to fly them (IFR procedures) but aviation has other systems in place to guide aircraft under conditions where visual flight navigation is impossible. This has not been the practical reality for many years for IFR flights (arguably not for VFR flight either but some of the good…

This approach is wrong though, as we’re now seeing.

GPS is comically easy to jam or spoof and assuming it will work all the time is just a silly, dangerous assumption.

We just happened to live through a brief period where you could believe that

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#183

Post by jolmg »

shevy-java wrote: post #152

Well, only solution really is to not depend on other countries here. Mexico is large enough to use their own satellites and if they want to do it not alone they can possibly on-board Brazil, Canada and so forth. It is tragic that the USA is so ruthless here that civilians suffer, but at the end of the day the question is how much dependent one wants to be on an increasingly selfish and aggressive USA. Canada understo…

This story doesn't involve Mexico at all. New Mexico is a US state.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#184

Post by jjwiseman »

jjwiseman wrote: post #179

I run GPSJAM.org, have been studying and tracking the effects of GPS interference on aviation for the past 5 years, and I was a source for this article. I'm not a pilot and I don't work for any aviation agency. I'm very curious to see what the final NTSB report says, but their preliminary report along with commentary from other analysts seems to show that this was a crew that made bad choices and died because of it.…

There are sooo many GPS interference exercises NOTAMed! Here's an animation I made of GPS interference NOTAMS in effect on any given day in the U.S. from 2022 to 2023: https://x.com/lemonodor/status/1722275349554487750

And they affect thousands of aircraft--Here's a thread where I analyze an earlier exercise at White Sands, called NAVFEST: https://bsky.app/profile/lemonodor.bsky.social/post/3ml7afb2...

  * Approximately 4000 aircraft experienced significant GPS interference
  * 90% of which were commercial jets
  * The military appears to have been jamming outside the posted NOTAM hours
    2750 aircraft jammed during the window, 1250 jammed outside the window.
  * Used to be called JAMFEST but "the Joint Spectrum Center became
    uncomfortable with the idea of associating its RFAs with events with the
    word 'jam' in their names."

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#185

Post by LorenPechtel »

bri3d wrote: post #169
gpm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that after the pilots said that they could go visual the preliminary report documents the following > The ARTCC controller subsequently cleared the flight to SRR, cleared the flight for a visual approach, and informed them they could cancel IFR in the air above 9,000 ft msl or they could cancel their clearance via the flight service station after landing. The flight crew acknowledged the clearance and responded…

That's not how this works, at all. Visual approach is a specific IFR procedure. It's basically designed to expedite and simplify the landing process in situations where the pilot can see the airport and traffic allows - instead of flying a detailed set of waypoints provided by an approach plate (via RNAV/GPS, ILS/VOR/DME, or vectors), the pilot and ATC both agree "hey, you can see the runway and/or traffic, you got t…

This whole thing has me thinking of that midair a while back, the helicopter avoided the wrong aircraft and flew right into the they were supposed to be avoiding.

What if they actually never had a visual on the runway? It was a long ways away and they were off course--what if they had a visual on what they thought was the runway but was something else entirely?

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#186

Post by gosub100 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #119
gosub100 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The automated weather service was also out. This made it difficult or impossible to use the ILS because they can't set the local altimeter. This was a swiss cheese chain of events. It was a moonless dark night so the mountains weren't visible.

What is the normal fallback for local weather service failure? Divert to an airport with working service? Proceed, using the "nearest working" information? How much does air pressure vary over a region, and how quickly does it change?

I think it would be "fly vfr" but the main issue there is the wind direction, not the altimeter setting. In daytime you can read the wind sock while airborne but not possible at night.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#187

Post by boscillator »

K0balt wrote: post #102
jillesvangurp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the weather. A lot of approaches to airports are GPS only these days. If GPS doesn't work and you are not in VFR weather, you can't fly those approaches. In bad weather you'd be diverting to an airport that still has ILS. Vectoring by the controller to a visual or ILS approach still works but they'd be juggling a lot of planes. And while lots of the bigger/older airports still have ILS, many VORs and DMEs…

lol the very first paragraph of my comment. But yeah, IFR is getting more dependent on gps approaches… which is incredibly stupid because it becomes trivial to disrupt air navigation. It’s a bit better with newer chipsets that support GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou… but I’d venture that when the military is jamming I’d does them all. I can buy a jammer that will take out GPS over about a kilometer for less than $1…

I believe that their are no multi-GNSS receivers certified for aviation, so Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou are out.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#188

Post by idlewords »

mrngld wrote: post #15

When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday occurrence along my path, it became boilerplate. I experienced it a few times. One moment the GPS thinks you're plodding along next to Ocala, next moment it thinks I've teleported a thousand miles away, and then it'd just quit. But that's what we train for. Th…

The highest mountain summit in Florida is 105 meters above sea level.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#189

Post by CodeWriter23 »

jjwiseman wrote: post #179

I run GPSJAM.org, have been studying and tracking the effects of GPS interference on aviation for the past 5 years, and I was a source for this article. I'm not a pilot and I don't work for any aviation agency. I'm very curious to see what the final NTSB report says, but their preliminary report along with commentary from other analysts seems to show that this was a crew that made bad choices and died because of it.…

Interesting how neither you nor the article affirm or deny if they plane was flying in restricted airspace either before or during the crash.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#190

Post by Magicrafter13 »

aftbit wrote: post #166
Magicrafter13 wrote: post #163

If the sky was clear, as the article states, then lack of GPS is not a good enough excuse for a trained pilot to crash into a mountain, unless the cockpit has no windows. It's not fun to lose GPS, but, a trained pilot ought to have been able to handle this situation fine. All instruments can fail, but weather notwithstanding, no instruments are required to land a plane back down on a runway (implied in my statement i…

I thought this at first, but then read farther and realized the flight started at 11pm on a moonless night. An unlit mountain is hard to see at night.

That's valid. I wouldn't call that a clear sky, personally, but I suppose it can still be considered one.
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