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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

#51

Post by pigbearpig »

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.

Probably the same reason Netflix used/uses Chaos Monkey to actually cause problems, rather than just relying on training aids.

You need to find the problems you didn't anticipate.

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

#52

Post by topspin »

gh02t wrote: post #24
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.

The signal GPS uses is actually very very weak and can be jammed pretty easily just by spewing a bunch of noise in the general area of the spectrum where it lies. Military grade receivers have some countermeasures that civilian equipment doesn't (e.g. the military signals have much wider bandwidth to work with, and you can also do some antenna magic), but jamming is still a problem for them too and it's a pretty acti…

"and you can also do some antenna magic"

Just thinking about what that would involve. Very high gain antennas could track individual GPS satellites and probably defeat jammers. A phased array system (similar to Starlink's 'dishy', but probably larger due to the much lower frequency) might also work. Either solution would make many if not most uses of GPS either physically impractical and/or too costly.

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

#53

Post by RattleyCooper »

ceejayoz wrote: post #31
LinuxBender wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shall consult the expert team at 4chan /s But seriously "We've been told we can't ask to stop jamming, and to just put everyone on headings." ... people inbound not ready for this can run out of fuel. Maybe the right passive aggressive response could have been to simply set a really large diameter TFR to keep civilian aircraft away assuming people check NOTAMs.

> people inbound not ready for this can run out of fuel Shouldn't you always be ready for a GPS (or other instrument) failure?

Would you be ok with a commercial passenger flight operating with 1 of the 2 engines completely disabled? It's technically designed to fly with 1 engine, so what's the problem?

Knocking out a pilot's GPS gives them one less tool in the event that other instruments fail. It's like saying "shouldn't you always be ready for backup hydraulics to fail?". Taking a backup system offline isn't an ideal situation.

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

#54

Post by anyfoo »

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.

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

#55

Post by topspin »

pigbearpig wrote: post #51
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.

Probably the same reason Netflix used/uses Chaos Monkey to actually cause problems, rather than just relying on training aids. You need to find the problems you didn't anticipate.

We've got submarine crews that can't avoid smashing nuclear powered warships into sea mounts. Switching off the crutches seems like a very necessary training approach.

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

#56

Post by omegant »

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…

We still have inertial and radio beacon navigation(VOR, ADF, ILS) , you are always able to disconnect the gps data from the computer.

Obviously GPS is allowing much more precise route and approach navigation, all without ground equipment.

New rules and rutes have been developed the last 15 years to take advantage of GPS precision and global availability.

But current airplanes still keep all the old systems in place and we train with them.

Removal of ground stations could become a problem in the future.

I agree that it is important that alterantive navigationsystems are available.

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

#58

Post by sklargh »

outworlder wrote: post #8

Are there NOTAMs regarding GPS jamming operations? It's not a fix, but maybe it would allow pilots - specially ones without sophisticated avionics like those founds in airliners(who don't rely on GPS in flight) - to prepare and/or avoid the issue.

Not constantly but often.

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

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

RattleyCooper wrote: post #53
ceejayoz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people inbound not ready for this can run out of fuel Shouldn't you always be ready for a GPS (or other instrument) failure?

Would you be ok with a commercial passenger flight operating with 1 of the 2 engines completely disabled? It's technically designed to fly with 1 engine, so what's the problem? Knocking out a pilot's GPS gives them one less tool in the event that other instruments fail. It's like saying "shouldn't you always be ready for backup hydraulics to fail?". Taking a backup system offline isn't an ideal situation.

> Would you be ok with a commercial passenger flight operating with 1 of the 2 engines completely disabled?

Yes. They are designed for that, and have procedures in place for when it happens, just as they do for a GPS failure.

(Specifically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS)

I would not be OK with a pilot who didn’t plan for the possibility of engine failure.

If you run out of fuel because your GPS is jammed, there’s a good chance you’d have run out of fuel if it failed in another more normal fashion.

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

#60

Post by sklargh »

joncp wrote: post #27
rbanffy wrote: post #2

What kind of deranged person messes with GPS risking to crash an airplane?

Well keep in mind that US GPS was developed by and is owned/operated by the US military. They're just letting us use it.

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