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Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

wsj.com

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Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#7
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I saw some rumblings (can't find an article) that there's interest in restarting LORAN to provide an alternative to GPS for this reason.

LORAN can be jammed.

Well certainly, no one thing is impervious. But if you have GPS, LORAN, VORs, NDBs, astronavigation, etc. you have many more options at your disposal and present a much more complex attack target.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#9
Whats really sad for aviation is there was already an extensive network of ground based navaids. As GPS has proliferated, they've slowly been decommissioned as they age out to save on cost. I'm specifically referring to VORs which provide azimuth and range to station.

GPS is fantastic and as a primary source everyone loves the benefits it brings. However, in a century of aviation, everyone has kinda sorted out that you can't have too many backups to critical items... unless you let the accountants and bureaucrats run the show.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#10

Whats really sad for aviation is there was already an extensive network of ground based navaids. As GPS has proliferated, they've slowly been decommissioned as they age out to save on cost. I'm specifically referring to VORs which provide azimuth and range to station. GPS is fantastic and as a primary source everyone loves the benefits it brings. However, in a century of aviation, everyone has kinda sorted out that y…

VOR is extremely short range and requires an extraordinary number of transmitters to provide any volume of coverage. Additionally it cannot provide coverage over oceanic areas. We USED TO have a nearly global long-range land based navigation system called LORAN, which only required one master station and a few remote stations to provide continent-scale coverage. But it was decommissioned in a cost savings move after it was determined that it could be replaced by GPS. It worked perfectly fine until it was decommissioned in 2010, not that long ago.

In the '90s I used to fly light aircraft back and forth between Seattle and Alaska. You were frequently out of range of any VOR transmitters, but that LORAN always worked. NDBs? That didn't work so great for Ron Brown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C

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