A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible
Russia is suspected of launching a record-breaking 63-hour-long attack on GPS signals in the Baltic region. The incident, which affected hundreds of passenger jets earlier this month, occurred amid rising tensions between Russia and the NATO military alliance more than two years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“We have seen an increase in GPS jamming since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and allies have publicly warned that Russia has been behind GPS jamming affecting aviation and shipping,” a NATO official told New Scientist. “Russia has a track record of jamming GPS signals and has a range of capabilities for electronic warfare.”
Russia is really stretching this out, aren’t they. Maybe they need some proper ass kicking to fall back in line.
At some point the west has to react.
Never mind Russia, I’d be happy with anyone making a “special military operation” on Putin’s whereabouts. NATO doesn’t have to fight Russia. They only need the head of the snake.
don’t think that this will work. Russia is rotten to the core and there is always another head.
we are fighting a hydra not a snake.
Anyway, we should start at the top and work downwards. It’s a waste of ammo to kill all the involuntary cannon fodder. If the top goes, Russia would have to reconstruct, however that might turn out.
Russia would have to reconstruct, however that might turn out.
Balkanization boogaloo?
Yes, I’d take that over the status quo.
Likely not. Everyone who wanted to leave Russia did so in the 1990’s
Middle out
Like tip to tip? No thanks.
A state can’t fight like that though. Needs to be a non state actor.
Except Putin’s behavior isn’t sane even by oligarch standards. Another corrupt leader would just take Putin’s place, but they might not be inclined to continue with Ukraine. They could just blame it all on Putin and quietly retreat the military. It’s not the best outcome, but at least Ukraine would be safe.
But doing it suddenly will create a power vacuum, which usually gets filled by the most ruthless people
Doesn’t Russia have lines of succession?
In theory
“Oops! All Putin!”
In what world would Putin allow anything other that a yes-man be his official backup?
It’s not just Putin, and it’s not all of Russia. The Kremlin+oligarchs are the problem.
Humanity really needs to figure out how to handle corrupt people in power.
We have. It’s just against the ToS on most forums.
Is it that thing that Korea did after the fall of the Dai Nippon Empire? How is that going for them?
Or maybe we could use some Middle East examples, like Iran or Afghanistan? Are those good examples of handling corrupt people in power? South America might have a few examples…?
Yep, can’t ever improve anything, world has to suck this much in these ways.
We did, we must get murdered by shitty people in power when we say it too loud.
Short version: don’t have these huge power differentials.
Oh we know how, it’s just not pretty.
Oh we know how, it’s just not pretty.
Lol, okay, that’s my fault. When I wrote that I was thinking in a non-violent sort of way, legislatively/investigatively. A system of governance that would prevent somebody from warping the system and becoming all powerful and above the system.
The problem with what your advocating is it doesn’t solve the problem, it just punts the ball down the field, and then sooner or later the same scenario problem comes back again.
Well, you could say that with nearly any solution besides peace… which is hard to maintain too. So, pick your poison.
I blame the French Revolution for giving these romantic notions. On the surface, it looks like people overthrowing the rich. But when you read into what followed, it was a violent power struggle where yesterday’s new leader was next up at the guillotine tomorrow.
And what came of it in the end? Napoleon, another powerful centralized ruler.
While this is true, I think it’s more likely than not that a successor doesn’t share the same amount of Soviet fetishism. Putin is kinda out there and doing things that aren’t great for Russian business. You only have to be slightly less mad than Putin to realize that.
But not the same shitty, abd since they’re not Putin, they can disown this whole shit show and shut it down without looking weak.
So let the other heads see what happens when you fuck around too much.
Like many things political, you start doing outside political killings from another country, pretty soon you can find yourself dead as a political leader. It’s playground tit-for-tat rules.
Plus, unless you are prepared for a “You break it, you buy it” situation, can and always will get something worse. See: the Middle East at this moment in time.
So the actual people need to be the ones to do this.
It really would be better for future stability if the people of Moscow did it anyway.
See: the Middle East at this moment in time.
Or pretty much any point in time in the last several decades.
That’s why none of them will do it.
There is no way to convince me that the CIA, MI6, and/or Beijing couldn’t take him out if they wanted him gone, which makes me wonder why they wouldn’t, I guess World War III but it’s not like that’s not already a possibility
There isn’t a replacement in place for Putin that would be any different. Everyone that thinks and acts different is kept away from power in Russia. Pushed out of windows, deaths in prison or the aircraft falls out of the sky. There is a possibility that he is replaced by someone worse.
It’s much better if he is removed from power by Russians. The next leader has to be different and havs the support of the people. Intelligence services taking him out won’t achieve this. Your likely to get an extremists that tries to escalate the war in Ukraine.
That remains true as long as he doesn’t start a nuclear exchange. If he starts really leaning in that direction I would expect a change in calculus
The CIA attempted to assassinate castro between 8 and 634 times
Different world between then and now, any claim of an attempt after the fall of the USSR is as sus as an Alabama national championship prior to 2000. Also I meant as mostly coordinated effort
Yes but he was a communist, not an oligarch, and by most accounts a pretty okay dude. So killing him was okay.
Because then Russia will try to assasinate US leaders
And that would be… Bad?
Presumably for like reasons or something?
Aside from the instability and resource pit this would cause, if you were making these decisions and you were to be the target of the retaliatory assasinations you can see why it would not be in your best interest to go down that path.
Yeah I see why they wouldn’t do it, but I don’t hate the idea. I could see a politicians name in the news, and feel some glimmer of hope.
I’m mostly pointing out (maybe elsewhere in this convo) that millions are dying to make some octogenarian kleptocrat shit heads whose raison fucking d’etre is grinding the young into a bloody paste by the millions to no tangible benefit.
Yeah I feel you
Yea they even got OBL murdered when they wanted. It seems that they just don’t want Putin gone for now, profits or “escalation” as a reason.
Nah. These are all state actors. They don’t want to break the taboo on assassinating world leaders when they do atrocities, because they may want to do atrocities later.
So millions of poor fuckers die in the mud.
There are smart people in Russia who need better things to do. This bullshit is out of control.
There needs to not be a ‘Russia’ after this. Split it up. Try to keep the regions peaceful and shit, but absolutely divide them politically, so one cannot say ‘Russia’ is a meaningful entity.
Yeah, we know how it went with Africa. Sure. You’d like to do that from the comfort of your home, right?
Africa was carved up with the intent to be exploitable, with minority regimes that needed colonial support in power and intentional ethnic and resource conflicts aplenty.
Don’t be a dick about it, carve it up based on extant cultural regions with balancedish resources, and it could work. At least closer to ‘works’ than having a ‘Russia’ is right now.
Oh that sounds easy and like it surely would backfire spectacularly /s that’s how you get a nuclear war or similar.
You can’t convince me Russia’s nuclear arsenal works for shit, much less the missiles.
And even if one or two get through; still a net gain on human life over another year or ten of meat grinder warfare.
And if you put a bounty on Russian warheads…
Russia will be paying back for these years, for decades to come.
Or just carve up Russia so no part us big enough to pull this shit again, and people there are less under the thumb of a handful of shit heads in Moscow/st Petersburg.
I don’t know really… carving up Africa, did not really work too well. Although it does make sense to divide it into smaller independent regions, I don’t see this happening to other mega countries like China, USA, India etc.
It basically has in the united states. I will be killed if I go to the CSA, but I’m only gonna get social murdered here on the west coast. I’d be pretty okay splitting off.Lotta people here would. Biggest problem is water, abd that’s going to shit anyway.
I’ve read some of your posts, and you seem a hell of a lot more murderous and psychotic than anyone I’ve ever met in the south.
Bring back Novgorod.
“…and Russia is thought to be responsible.”
Nooooooo… Russia? Really? They would neeeveeeer?
Isn’t that kinda pathetic? Jamming GPS is not hard, nor impressive. It’s just annoying.
Seems like a message is being sent.
I love to be a fly on the wall behind the scenes, as far as what’s going on between the two sides, that they actually decided to do something as annoying as this.
Its on par with bringing the dog out when merkel was visiting. Thats all they have.
As if being impressive is the goal of these attacks.
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I dont think they are doing it to impess.
looks to be pretty effective to me
And that effect was…???
Threatening the lives of EU citizens and commerce in an effort to force the European nations to withdraw support from Ukraine.
It was GPS spoofing. The navs fucked up.
Don’t pilots still learn to work with a compas or stars? Radio guidance? Like, nothing that uses GPS is new.
It was just really inconvenient for a bunch of people.
Inconvenience is the point.
So, what, order a bunch of pizzas? Spam everyone with dick pics? I’m not seeing it. This just looks impotent, unless there’s more to it.
You’re missing the point.
Maybe they were just testing reaction time
On a mostly civilian system with known fallbacks?
Edit: fuck em. You don’t have to fight Russia, you just have to fight Moscow. If they manage to provoke Europe, they lose. Badly. They’re barely managing to hold against supported Ukraine.
I thought GPS had been kept restricted from civilians for ages for its military uses, I may be wrong though
Yeah but at this point that’s all redundant, right? any military planner worth shit knows this can happen.
How much more will we allow these assholes to get away with? When does it stop?
When the West decides it’s willing to risk flash dessication.
As shitty as Putin is, I don’t think he has a death wish.
I think we’ve made it clear we know where he is at all times. First reply we send is on his head.
What if putin was going to die soon from something?
dessication
desiccation
I’m not sure what flash dessication is, but I’m willing to bet Putin would bring the world down with him if cornered.
Nuclear blast, where I focused on the heat and excluded the long, painful radiation deaths that would also occur.
Edit: radio - > radiation
It is highly likely that exactly zero Russias nukes work. Nuclear maintenance is extremely expensive, and there is a zero percent chance that corruption that we witnessed in tank maintenance and other areas of their military did not spread to their nuclear program. It has also been 34 years since they successful a launched a nuke.
Russia as a country has never launched a nuke (USSR did) so it’s seriously debatable if they even have the capability.
And I’m not advocating for war, but Russia needs to have consequences for their actions, and the world needs to respond resolutely and immediately before this gets any worse.
It stops only when they are forced to stop and not a moment sooner. Who has the will or the ability? In the U.S., conservatives are on Putin’s side, so as long as conservatives have any power (like they do now), they will back him.
The EU is sounding the alarms, but only France is stepping up to the plate ready to fight. As usual, the EU will just hope France will protect the rest of them.
Yeah I’m not gonna go to war over gps spamming attacks lol
…because that’s the only thing that russia has ever done to Eruopean countries…
/s
You volunteering to be cannon fodder?
No, it’s your turn.
You want war so bad you can be the cannon fodder.
You’re fucking nuts if you think people want war.
I’m talking from my perspective
oh I don’t live there so it’s not my problem
First, they came for my friends, and when they asked for help I said, ‘it doesn’t affect me.’
Then, they came for my direct neighbors, and when they asked for help I said, ‘not my house not my problem.’
Then they came for me, and there was nobody to ask for help.
Why are you not yet volunteering in Ukraine then?
Well the taxpayer’s money goes towards funding Ukraine.
And that’s the same as going to war yourself? I never said I have a problem supporting countries fighting Russia monetarily.
Guess it’s time to dust off those VOR navigation skills, then…
And, as ususal, fuck Putler and his cronies.
I’m assuming there’s a European backup to GPS, is there?
Europe is using same or similar systems. Also Europe has Galileo satnav system. But it has the same drawbacks as GPS.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but VOR can be jammed just as easily? It’s effectively just ground based GPS.
There are actually devices, that can to a certain extent resist jamming by rejecting signal coming from some direction while amplifying signal from other. Typically they amplify signal from space and reject signal from ground where the jammers would be. So in a way GPS is more resilient against jamming if you can use this device. But AFAIK they are only used for military purposes.
That device is called a CRPA (pronounced serpa). They are very effective at anti-jam.
As far as VOR jamming, those use a VHF omni-directional antenna, so it can be jammed. It might be hard because of the omni-directional part and the numbers of them, but definitely doable.
Might have to break out the ole INS
Inertial systems are good enough for rockets going to Mars, so why not a plane flying in a straight line?
So I read about it on Wikipedia and apparently they’re still the main navigation tool for modern airliners. GPS is just used to maintain the accuracy of the INS.
They are used for planes. The problem is the usable ones are stupidly expensive and/or classified millitary hardware.
According to wikipedia all modern aircraft should be equipped with an Inertial Navigation System. A system that gives the position of the aircraft by using a buch of accelerometers and gyroscopes.
The GPS is just there to adjust the position given by the INS.
IRSs drifts like crazy. If anything irs is the backup to GNSS currently.
Hopefully a few VOR and DME approaches left in the chart book.
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Drone pilots are going to have to learn how to fold paper maps!
death to poopin
I love this picture of Obama talking down to Putin
Lol, can’t even see where poot poots heels end, there could be 3-4 cm of extra lift hidden under those pantaloons!
Ah, the good old Desantis boot trick!
Is this where the beginning g of the end of free open GPS starts?
Been wondering when we’d have to start paying for the privilege to use an encrypted private GPS service.
It wouldn’t matter against jamming though. You just need a jammer that screams louder
Yup. As long as you’re transmitting via radio waves, if something on that frequency “screams” louder, you won’t get the original signal. That’s why the FCC has strict rules against radio interference. About the only way you could get past that would be some sort of laser guided/optical communications, but would be damn near impossible given the number of planes and weather conditions.
Luckily the louder something screams the more easy it is to pinpoint.
I mean, doesn’t matter. We pinpoint russia and then what. Sure, we can retaliate and block their comma, and radio communication doesn’t work for both of us. We can always invade, but a load of political capital is needed, and the west doesn’t exactly have the most ammo ever right now.
Finally, I think the true source is this
It’s nice that they “scream” there. It’s the way you know that they are hiding their ammo and weapons routes there. Instead of complaining, we should target these routes. Hey… they are outside russian borders… so…
“Our system is unjammable! Just make sure this laser receiver has clear line of sight with three satellites way up in geosynchronous orbit at all times.”
“You’re fucking with me, right?”
No . That’s how it would work. That’s why we don’t use it, because of things like weather, birds, space debris, and other planes. its more secure but technically very difficult.
thatsthejoke.jpeg
It would matter if they chose not to jam certain frequencies due to some agreement.
Thinking only of GPS-like services, there are multiple suppliers who could take advantage of Russia jamming other services. GPS is only one, owned by the American air force. Other suppliers might be more open to making agreements with Russia. Money can make things happen.
I’m not saying it’s like that, only that it is possible for bad actors to benefit from playing on both sides in a jamming war, just like any other kind of war.
In a war like this they jam everything and anything they can. No commercial solutions would be loopholed out of it.
… unless money.
Unless they are on a different wavelength from GPS, which is what Xona is doing.
Ok, then they just block that one
Do you think country-wide jamming of a high-power radio signal is easy? The magnitude of difference between jamming a building and jamming at airline altitudes or at long distances is massive. You don’t just go out and buy a jammer that blocks GPS for a country.
I don’t think that for an individual it is easy. But for a country as large as Russia (even with a somewhat pathetic economy)
I work developing the next generation GPS satellites, and half of my job is dealing with defeating jamming. Without giving specifics that can only be shared in a SCIF, jammers are for small regional use, not for large scale usage. RF power drops off at 1/r^2, so doubling the distance requires 4 times the power. A normal person can buy a jammer that handles a few hundred feet around their house or car. It is 100x harder to cover a city block of buildings and is mostly restricted to governments (my math could be off on that, since RF isn’t my specialty). Going from jamming a city block of government buildings to jamming flight traffic in a small neighborhood is roughly 100 times as much as that power. Going from that small neighborhood to blocking a very small country is 100 times as much as that power (or 10,000 as much as the power of a big jammer). Doing the same thing but with multiple RF signals is even harder.
I can’t talk about Russia’s specific capabilities, but even for Russia it wouldn’t be easy outside a small region.
That will not fix this, unless your private service flies their own satellites with more transmitter power
Xona is out there planning their own satellite constellation in their own band of the spectrum (so not jammed at the same time as GPS), and is fully encrypted.
Russia could just as easily jam two signals at once.
Not just as easily. Broad-spectrum jamming is more difficult, so they either develop one of those with enough power to jam both signals (not as easy) or the build twice as many jammers (not as easy).
Not as easy for individuals. Still relatively easy for a state actor. It’s not a magnitude difference, just a difference in degree.
That’s not how jamming works
Explain how jamming works. The person isn’t saying encryption overcomes jamming, just that encryption will be used to make the new system private and paid instead of free to use. Not being GPS will make it avoid GPS jamming.
It doesn’t matter if you encrypt it, it still has to make information out of communication with satellites. Jamming saturates the band range that something is attempting to communicate across. So no sensible information is available because it’s all noise
Did you not read what I said? I said “the person isn’t saying that encryption overcomes jamming, just that encryption will be used to make the new system private and paid.” At no point did I say or imply that encryption helps overcome jamming. I did say that since they don’t transmit on the same frequency as GPS then jamming GPS won’t affect it (depending on how close their L-band range is to the GPS L-band range).
I design GPS satellites for a living. I understand how jamming works.
You asked how jamming works, I simply discussed that.
Even if the new system is encrypted and on another spectrum, that doesn’t make it invincible from jamming, the jammer just needs to be adjusted to target it.
All I’m saying is encryption and subscription does not defend from jamming.
Tactics like signal hopping and multi signal parallel processing / handshake help with jamming (plus highly focused and shield directional antennas)
that’s… not how gps works, y’know?
the satellites only send out signal, they don’t care about the ground
You are talking about Xona. Private company, fully encrypted signal, paid service, not jammed at the same frequency as GPS.
EDIT: I would love for one of the people who down-voted me to explain what was wrong with my completely factual description of a company who is doing exactly what this person asked about.
If enough people are using this new system, Russia could easily pivot to target it as well. Jamming is not inherently hard, especially if a nation is attempting it.
Jamming in the US will bring the FCC down your throat. The stronger the signal, the faster they will show up. Russia transmitting a jamming signal from Russia doesn’t have to worry about such things. A jamming device is not hard to find, but on sovereign soil it’s still untouchable short of war.
Not the point of the post I replied to or my post. I develop GPS satellites for the Space Force. I understand jamming quite well and know what capabilities Russia has.
The person didn’t say that this hypothetical private system couldn’t be jammed. They said that if GPS is jammed then it opens up a niche for a private company to sell their own service. I said that exact thing is happening. That isn’t to say that service couldn’t also get jammed, but Russia is mainly jamming GPS because it affects military missions. Since the military wouldn’t be using this private company, then Russia is unlikely to jam their signal.
How does Russia jamming GPS open a market for a private GPS service? Russia can just jam the private network alongside the government operated one. So now people in the Baltics are gettinf blacked out of a service they are oaying a subscription to instead of one they are poggybacking off of for free.
At best they are talking about something completely unrelated to the news article.
I’m someone who works developing new GPS satellites and has to understand jamming. Even for Russia it isn’t easy to jam GPS in a very large area. It’s not impossible but also not as easy as just putting some jammers out there. In small areas it isn’t so bad for a nation. In buildings, even corporations can do it. Jamming at large scales gets very hard very fast.
So doing it for two different PNT services, one of which isn’t being used by any military, wouldn’t be something Russia would do.
If anyone died that would’ve been article 5. Are they nuts?
Russia already shot down a passenger jet and nothing happened.
That’s quite different than attacking directly over the airspace of NATO members.
Also arguably an accident.
Yes, but only if it can be proven it was absolutely Russia. And then it has to be proven that it was approved by their government as an official act, not just some vodka-soaked hackers somewhere in Siberia…
Might be worth some degree of suspicion around including GLONASS as a part of GNSS. Russia could create worldwide issues if they decided to fuck around with their constellation.
It would probably be easier for them to mess with it and not affect themselves than it is with GPS and Galileo.
All right, we’re Jammin’
Jammin’ in the name of the lord.
I was always a fan of Log Jammin
I feel like these planes should be able to fall back on other GNSS. Like Galileo, GLONASS, or even BeiDou.
I would guess this is a matter of the media talking about all GNSS as “GPS” rather than the planes only supporting the US military’s navigation system.
GLONASS
Fall back to the Russian GNSS constellation to defend against Russian GNSS manipulation?
I mean hey, why not?
Let’s be real, they probably aren’t jamming themselves?
Who am I fucking kidding, they probably are with how the war has been going.
I’m betting on Russia being the culprit
How do you stop a jammer like this, short of turning off the transmitters responsible for it?
As others have said, you can’t passively bypass GNSS jamming. The signal more or less has the same amount of power as a 60 watt light bulb, transmitted from a satellite out in Medium Earth Orbit. You throw enough energy at the same frequency as the signal and it’s over. There are ways to improve the receivers resilience by giving it more signals to connect to (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BeiDou) or several signals being transmitted by the same constellation (L1, L2, L5).
Also, many different systems occupy pretty much the same frequencies, just with different characteristics which makes all the signals more susceptible.
You can’t. Think of it like two radio stations that are too close. It doesn’t matter how good of a receiver you have it will only ever pick up the signals being transmitted. And when there is noise on the frequency then that is what it will pick up.
Well there’s always the option of outcompeting each other in signal intensity, but I guess that that’s not really possible in this case.
Best way to mitigate is have an inertial system. It’s a calculator that, based on where you are and where you’re heading, keeps track of your updated position.
The math is not that crazy, but with enough time the sensors errors crop up and you’ll be slightly off course, then a bit, then a lot.
I would suggest HARM Missiles launched from F/A 18 Aircraft. That will teach the effing russians to mess with GPS
Destroy our otherwise turn off the source of interference.
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