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Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

flightradar24.com

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Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#171

Post by Nition »

traceroute66 wrote: post #74
lxgr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No data" cells are grey on that map, but western Australia has a couple of red ("high interference") cells.

> but western Australia has a couple of red ("high interference") cells. Erm mate, have you tried looking at different days ? Those cells you find so suspicious in Australia are not there on other days ! Seriously, given the largely community-based nature of FR24 data I would not expect too much in term of accuracy.

If green or "no data" areas randomly turn red sometimes, I'd expect to see them elsewhere in the world sometimes on different days as well. But I've checked every day that's available and I never see them appear in e.g. that big empty space in eastern Russia.

I don't really see any other evidence that low data areas can turn into red areas when there's no actual interference.

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#172

Post by keithflower »

jjwiseman wrote: post #151

I've been working on mapping GPS jamming using ADS-B data for a couple years, and I'll try to address questions and points brought up here based on what I know. Relevant previous posts on HN: 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245346 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37868106 (From my comment on that 2023 post: "Why haven't FlightRadar24, FlightAware, or any of the other flight trackers done this?"…

John, I've been following your work for years (including back in the old lemonodor years). I just wanted to say thank you here, for sharing your expertise for all on this topic, and for all the other tremendous work you've done. What an inspiration.

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#173

Post by michaelt »

Reason077 wrote: post #153
adolph wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do aircraft systems really only use GPS and not the full constellation of navigational satellite systems? Besides GPS, the GNSS currently includes other satellite navigation systems, such as the Russian GLONASS, and may soon include others such as the European Union’s Galileo and China’s Beidou. https://www.terrisgps.com/gnss-gps-differences-explained/

Modern phones use all the available navigation constellations, and have done so for years. But aviation is much more conservative due to its safety-critical nature. Galileo was only just recently (2023) certified for use in aircraft systems by ICAO: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Navigation/Galileo/Galileo_...

In the specific case of jamming, it seems unlikely anyone would jam GPS and not also jam the other public GNSS services.

The redundancy of multiple independent GNSS systems is a fine thing for dealing with unintentional failures, of course.

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#174

Post by jjwiseman »

barryrandall wrote: post #26
wyldfire wrote: post #6

I wonder why there's some jamming near a small section of the Texas/Mexico border?

You're not the only person: https://web.stanford.edu/group/scpnt/gpslab/pubs/papers/Liu_... TL;DR: It's weak signal, not jamming. The weak signal reports come from military training aircraft carrying out maneuvers that cause temporary signal loss.

That's a good link (that I should have posted). I suspect that some of the yellow (maybe even red) hexes in the U.S., and maybe some in Europe too, are due to that effect.

For people doubting that aircraft maneuvering can affect navigation accuracy as reported by ADS-B, I found a fun example. Around 1300 UTC today (0800 Texas time), 4 T-38s took off from Laughlin AFB for what looks like training, with lots of maneuvering. This link shows what it looks like when mapped in 2D: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adffc3,adfff9,adffd2,ae...

Here's a 60 second segment of the track of one of those jets, STEER21, that captures a steep turn and dive: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfff9&lat=30.067&lon=-...

If you click on the track, you can inspect the ADS-B data at that point in time in the sidebar on the left. If you scroll to the bottom of that sidebar, there's an "ACCURACY" section, that shows the Estimated Position Uncertainty (EPU). You can see it change from better than 18.5 km(!) uncertainty as it performs the maneuver.

I made a video that shows how to see those values, and also shows the maneuver in a 3D viewer so you can see how steep the dive is (it's steep!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHlpnEdHxw

(The viewer uses a generic aircraft model, FYI, don't be distracted by that.)

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#175

Post by tommymanstrom »

jjwiseman wrote: post #167
jjwiseman wrote: post #151

I've been working on mapping GPS jamming using ADS-B data for a couple years, and I'll try to address questions and points brought up here based on what I know. Relevant previous posts on HN: 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245346 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37868106 (From my comment on that 2023 post: "Why haven't FlightRadar24, FlightAware, or any of the other flight trackers done this?"…

I'm not a NATO strategist or anything, so I'm adding this as a child comment, but I think the big story in the GPS/aviation world these days is probably Russia's n̵e̵a̵r̵-̵c̵o̵n̵s̵t̵a̵n̵t̵ frequent jamming of GPS over Poland, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, and Lithuania. Degrading and even neutralizing strategic infrastructure in EU and NATO countries, significantly affecting commercial aviation at the least, is a big dea…

OSINT by Markus Jonsson (https://x.com/auonsson?s=21&t=L_vyKMe6Kz1tXjeWTeGk3g) has been tracking this for some time now.

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#176

Post by blitzar »

lxgr wrote: post #57
kube-system wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this map doesn't show jamming. It shows weak signals, of which jamming is one potential cause. An airplane pointing their GPS receiver at the ground will also cause a weak signal.

How does an airplane "point their GPS receiver at the ground" (for an extended period of time since a combined GNSS/INS positioning solution, which is what all airliners use at this point as far as I know, will need an extended signal loss to report decreased accuracy)?

It happens when you are giving the bird.

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#177

Post by MOARDONGZPLZ »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #169
jjwiseman wrote: post #151

I've been working on mapping GPS jamming using ADS-B data for a couple years, and I'll try to address questions and points brought up here based on what I know. Relevant previous posts on HN: 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245346 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37868106 (From my comment on that 2023 post: "Why haven't FlightRadar24, FlightAware, or any of the other flight trackers done this?"…

Who is jamming around Tallinn area? Also is GPSIII just as susceptible to jamming? Hawkeye + SAR data would be pretty interesting for ship tracking. I think I've seen some papers here before, but nothing interactive like your site. I think open SAR data is not quite realtime yet, but hope soon is.

Search and Rescue data? How does that help here? And is there a repository of SAR rescues somewhere?

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#178

Post by tamimio »

jjwiseman wrote: post #151

I've been working on mapping GPS jamming using ADS-B data for a couple years, and I'll try to address questions and points brought up here based on what I know. Relevant previous posts on HN: 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32245346 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37868106 (From my comment on that 2023 post: "Why haven't FlightRadar24, FlightAware, or any of the other flight trackers done this?"…

> but my understanding is that most aircraft are still using GPS.

GNSS, GPS plus other constellations depends on the receiver. Even drones or consumer ones support that these days, some bigger drones even support L5 bands.

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#179

Post by cft »

themoonisachees wrote: post #147
terryf wrote: post #139

Interesting - as I'm in the middle of one of the red blobs on the map and just used my phone with google maps to drive around. It worked fine. All the local services that rely on positioning via phones seemed to work fine as well. I wonder how the jamming works - is it just for higher altitudes or maybe it only affects GPS and my phone also uses GLONASS or something?

Google maps (and your phone's location services) seldom rely only on GPS. For one, accelerometer-based location has become pretty good. You can usually get by for a few kilometers on the average road. For two, Google maps is aware that you are driving, and this it sticks to roads, especially ones that are on your itinerary, because of your GPS registers as the middle of a field, it's more likely that you're experienc…

Does accelerometer-based location algorithm integrate the acceleration readings to get the phone displacement? Is it a part of the phone operating systems ?

Re: Flightradar24's new GPS jamming map

#180

Post by jjwiseman »

lxgr wrote: post #72
kube-system wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably something like this https://youtu.be/Ynvoriv09Ks?t=105

Ah, is this Ryanair's plan to divest from their all-Boeing fleet? :) It should be pretty simple for Flightradar24 to exclude non-commercial aircraft from the data through, which would solve that problem. There's also tons of data available in the ADS-B signal that should help distinguish between aircraft-motion-induced outages and actual jamming: https://mode-s.org/decode/content/ads-b/7-uncertainty.html

Unfortunately some of the data that's most directly applicable to determining aircraft attitude, like roll, is optional and rarely sent by aircraft, but yes I'm sure you could do a decent job of inferring maneuvering from change in heading and vertical rate (especially if you're looking at ADS-B data with high temporal resolution vs., say, every 10-60 seconds.)
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