GPS Jamming Is Screwing With Norwegian Planes (wired.com) 64
An anonymous reader shares a report: From the ground, northeastern Norway might look like fjord country, peppered with neat red houses and dissected by snowmobile tours through the winter. But for pilots flying above, the region has become a danger zone for GPS jamming. The jamming in the region of Finnmark is so constant, Norwegian authorities decided last month they would no longer log when and where it happens -- accepting these disturbance signals as the new normal.
Nicolai Gerrard, senior engineer at NKOM, the country's communications authority, says his organization no longer counts the jamming incidents. "It has unfortunately developed into an unwanted normal situation that should not be there. Therefore, the [Norwegian authority in charge of the airports] are not interested in continuous updates on something that is happening all the time." Pilots meanwhile, still have to adapt, usually when they are above 6,000 feet in the air. "We experience this almost every day," says Odd Thomassen, a captain and senior safety adviser at the Norwegian airline Wideroe. He claims jamming typically lasts between six and eight minutes at a time.
Nicolai Gerrard, senior engineer at NKOM, the country's communications authority, says his organization no longer counts the jamming incidents. "It has unfortunately developed into an unwanted normal situation that should not be there. Therefore, the [Norwegian authority in charge of the airports] are not interested in continuous updates on something that is happening all the time." Pilots meanwhile, still have to adapt, usually when they are above 6,000 feet in the air. "We experience this almost every day," says Odd Thomassen, a captain and senior safety adviser at the Norwegian airline Wideroe. He claims jamming typically lasts between six and eight minutes at a time.
I come from the pre-GPS past (Score:1)
and I can confirm that a world without GPS is survivable. In fact, you may take comfort in the fact that no GPS denies Googles the ability to track your location.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't about cell phones or your weird hangups with Google.
Re: (Score:2)
I was referring to planes being able to fly without GPS, not just cellphones.
Re: (Score:3)
GPS jamming is dangerous and spoofing even more so. I
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Airports also have NDB's, VOR's and ILS, and these are NOT being decommissioned for the simple reason that multiple redundancies are maintained in order to ensure safe civil aviation. No one system is infallible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, you can survive it, but things you take for granted go away or become impractical or expensive. I lived through the transition working on systems that introduced GPS and GIS to things like public health and municipal services, and that was a story of suddenly being able to do things you'd only have dreamed of before.
Take something like municipal snow removal. Transmitting a snow plow's position and whether the plow is up or down allows you to create a real time map of which streets have been plowed,
Re: (Score:3)
It's become extremely important for timing information too. Synchronization of radio transmitters down to tens of nanoseconds, and many other uses.
Re: (Score:2)
Even worse, electrical grids throughout the world synchronize their line frequency using GPS signals. Shut down GPS and the frequency of different sections of the grid will start wandering. I've seen a video of what happens to equipment when that happens, it can be impressive. Much if not most of the old pre-GPS equipment has been replaced with new and considerably more efficient kit.
This does not bode well for our civilization if there's another Carrington Event.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah I hate it when Google tracks my plane's location (side note, Google doesn't need GPS to track YOUR location).
The issue here is planes are using GPS to navigate so if it becomes unreliable, they need to use another less efficient method. Same way if someone start spoofing VORs then planes wouldn't be able to reliably use them and would need to navigate using some other technology
Re:I come from the pre-GPS past (Score:4, Insightful)
a world without GPS is survivable
Depending on your conception of "survivability", a world without electricity is survivable.
Re:I come from the pre-GPS past (Score:4, Funny)
Depending on your conception of "survivability", a world without electricity is survivable.
My wife and I have occasionally dreamed of homesteading. We're very unlikely to actually make the plunge, but it's a nice fantasy when tech burnout sets in.
Anyway she once asked me if I wanted a hypothetical fantasy off-grid homestead to have electricity.
I told her that electricity leads to circuits
Circuits lead to logic gates
Logic gates lead to ALUs
ALUs lead to CPUs
CPUs lead to ethernet
Ethernet leads to the Internet
The Internet leads to Twitter
IT'S A SLIPPERY SLOPE!
Best not risk it
Re: I come from the pre-GPS past (Score:5, Informative)
"In fact, you may take comfort in the fact that no GPS denies Googles the ability to track your location."
What? No, it absolutely does not.
If you are in range of two cell sites your location can be determined within a surprisingly small area through DTOA, which is basically GPS in reverse.
Re: (Score:2)
Good for you buddy. How difficult is it finding whale oil for your reading lamps?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually that's only true in that they can't track your exact location, they still purchase all the data about which cell towers your phone connects to and when so they can locate you to within a few hundred meters.
Re: (Score:1)
and I can confirm that a world without GPS is survivable. In fact, you may take comfort in the fact that no GPS denies Googles the ability to track your location.
Well over a decade ago I picked up an Apple iPod at Best Buy for interop testing. It had no internal GPS or cellular modem yet when I turned it on it knew my exact location via crowd sourced WiFi triangulation. Somehow I highly doubt availability of GPS system denies Google or anyone else the ability to stalk you.
So do something about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those signals are strong and have almost certainly been triangulated by American satellites with images being taken of the source.
If it's abandoned jammers, destroy them. If it's saboteurs, catch them. If it's Russians in international waters, fire an anti-radar missle.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's Russians in international waters, fire an anti-radar missle.
and start WW3.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Sometimes you have to punch a bully in the nose.
Maybe they come back tomorrow with a gun and kill you. Usually they just back down after you stand up to them, but it is always a risk.
The question is what kind of a person are you? The kind that takes bullying as their due? Or the kind that stands up to the bully?
Re: (Score:2)
I agree punching the bully on the nose is somewhere on the flow chart, but that's not necessarily the automatically best first move for every situation even though it always feels that way. It's error-prone to reason from analogy to an emotion-charged memory from your middle-school days. Cold sober game theory type reasoning is really more appropriate in international relations where the price of escalation is measured in lives.
But looking at maps of the interference, it appears likely this is a land-base
Re: (Score:2)
Certainly. The world of international politics is more complex than middle-school recess.
Some things are handled openly, with brinksmanship. Some are handled diplomatically, with words. Some are handled silently, with quiet teams under cover of darkness doing things that neither side acknowledges.
Re: (Score:2)
That's what submarines are for. You sneak up on the ship, fire a torpedo, and then because it's Russian ship they assume it was taken out by a careless smoker or falling debris.
Re: (Score:2)
Too late. It started a while ago. Vladimir Putin vs The World. Have fun.
Re: (Score:2)
Attacking things in other countries, even "abandoned" things, is generally considered an act of war. So is blowing up military vessels in international waters.
Legally, Russia would be within its rights to issue a proportional response, blowing up some military asset of the country that attacked it. Do we really want that?
Not clear from the summary (Score:4, Informative)
The summary doesn't quote a really important part of the article, namely the part that tells us Russia is doing the jamming. To be fair though, the article itself is poorly written in that it doesn't mention this early enough in the text.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What you meant to say is the people of Ukraine kicked out the Russian-installed simp. The people did this, not another country. They were tired of living under the boot heel of oppression.
and installed a neonazi one that did ethnic cleansing, murdering and maiming Roma and other minorities.
Which of course never happened. Not a single word of what you said is true and you know it. What you did say is exactly what Russia was doing and
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed they do. That is. however, irrelevant, if you look at a map that includes the relative locations of Ukraine, Norway, and note the LACK of airline pilots complaining about GPS jamming in between.
It's Russia.
No problem (Score:2)
Just follow the reindeer with the red nose.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GPS JAMMING and SPOOFING should be easy to fix... (Score:3)
One just puts GPS + GALILEO + SBPNTP (when available) + IRNSS , and, if you are not averse to Russia and China, GLONASS and BEIDU and do a majority rule. This will get rid of the SPOOFING part, as spoofing every single SNS in existance to signal exactly the same position is EXTREMELY HARD.
Fixing the JAMMING part is harder, and relies on the method above + innertial guideance (in the case of planes and missiles) + Ground based location beacons (Like Loran in the USoA).
While JAMMING every single SNS system in existance is relatively easy, it also denies YOU of SNS capabilities, and, on top of that, if you KNOW that the adversary is also using innertial and Land based backups, makes it a pointless excersice...
Alas, the nowegians (along with the French) shut down their "Eurofix" transmitters on Dec 31, 2015, forcing their remaining partners (the UK and Germany) to shut down as well. I guess they are thinking about reviving the partnership now...
Having said that, retrofitting the enhanced receivers everywhere, including all the validation and certification of whorthiness for purpose (for example FAA + EASA + CAAC + others approval in the case of planes) is devilishly complex and hard.
Re: (Score:2)
This has become a norm since Russians were banned from EU airspace and EU countries banned from Russian in retaliation. They just randomly jam GPS near border intermittently. Ground based beacons are devilishly expensive to maintain in low population regions, since there's very little road infrastructure in place. And since Russians don't really need GPS near border since they're banned from flying over it, they seem to just randomly fire up the jammers on their side, jamming their side and to some extent o
Re: (Score:2)
This has become a norm since Russians were banned from EU airspace and EU countries banned from Russian in retaliation. They just randomly jam GPS near border intermittently. Ground based beacons are devilishly expensive to maintain in low population regions, since there's very little road infrastructure in place. And since Russians don't really need GPS near border since they're banned from flying over it, they seem to just randomly fire up the jammers on their side, jamming their side and to some extent on the other side of the border.
This is by far the biggest problem for aviation, since aviation has become extremely reliant on GPS for so many things. But it's also quite a bother for locals living near the border.
A lot of Asian carriers can still overfly both EU nations and Russian Federation, so bulk of air traffic going over Russia is various Asian carriers at this point, flying routes between much of Asia and Europe.
One wants to fix this sooner rather than latter, not because of the cojuntural situation between the EU and Russia, vis-a-vis Ucraine, but rather, in anticipation to a world where this things become more and more common, and we become more and more reliant on SNS. Also, this happened in the past, the most prominent case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
One just puts GPS + GALILEO + SBPNTP (when available) + IRNSS , and, if you are not averse to Russia and China, GLONASS and BEIDU and do a majority rule.
You'd think this should be easy, but you still don't seem to understand it.
When they say "GPS" on the topic of Navigation, what they are referring to is using all of GPS, GALILEO, and GLONASS.
It's arguably been that way for over a decade.
Initially referring to using mainly GPS and the other satellites to improve GPS accuracy.
Currently because GPS is easier to say and there's no reason to differentiate between non-existent GPS-only receivers and the GPS/GALILEO/GLONASS receiver that is the only thing available.
Point being the jamming is still successfully happening under your "proposed fix" that's been in place all this time.
Are you trying to tell me that all those 747 freighter planes that STILL use 3.5" Floppy drives ( https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com] ) to load firmware and map data were updated to use GPS+ Galileo + GLONASS , and yet the floppy aspect was ignored? After all, SD card Adapters that emulate a floppy have been available for decades now.
You see my dude/dudette, In your/my consumer electronic thingie, were liability is low, and is sold worldwide, having GPS + GALILEO +GLONAS + all the others is easy.
But when you
Re: (Score:2)
The UK's eLORAN system is still running. It's being used for timing rather than for location services. At work we are evaluating some new timing hardware from Microchip, but it's having issues. I just got assigned some work related to it, in fact.
It will probably never be as good as GNSS systems, but it might be good enough to be useful.
Re: (Score:2)
The UK's eLORAN system is still running. It's being used for timing rather than for location services. At work we are evaluating some new timing hardware from Microchip, but it's having issues. I just got assigned some work related to it, in fact.
It will probably never be as good as GNSS systems, but it might be good enough to be useful.
Glad to hear that! no sarcasm there.
Now, is only a matter to convince Britain's OTAN (not euro, they brexited) friends to put a few EuroFix stations all around in order to re-establish the system.
Given what is happening in the north, it should be relatively easy.
Re: (Score:2)
They might be tempted if we can get it working for timing applications, but they have Galileo and apparently think it's anti-jamming technology might be adequate.
Keep the VORs and NDBs running! (Score:3)
Can't believe the US is retiring all those, not sure what their status is in Norway...It is very short sighted to entirely rely on GPS/GNSS systems
Worth mentioning it's Russia (Score:4, Informative)
It's notable that Norway doesn't border Russia except at a small strip of land near the north pole. If the map in the article represents a typical day, Norwegians are unaffected unless they are flying way up north near that border. Finland is affected dramatically more, but isn't mentioned until the second half.
While most people are ignoring the Ukraine war, Russia--in its propaganda to its own people, anyway--treats the situation as if they're in an all-out war with the entire Free World and its "nazi" leaders ("First to Kyiv, and then to Berlin [x.com]"). The GPS jamming is just a token of that. Vandalism of subsea internet cables is another. [atlanticcouncil.org] Their increase to military spending has been enormous--$140 billion this year alone, with plans to increase it 25% again next year. They have allied with Iran and North Korea to attack Ukraine with numerous Iranian and North Korean weapons (especially Iranian Shahed drones and NK 152mm artillery), and in the past week they've taken the next step by sending thousands of North Korean troops into Ukraine and also along Ukraine's northern border.
Ukraine has been left to fight this battle alone with a "trickle" of aid--I know that the U.S. $60 billion military aid package sounds like a lot, but that came after a 6-month period when there was no aid (because Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was blocking it), and in purchasing-power parity (PPP) terms, Russia's $140 billion budget goes as far as $300 billion or so. On top of that, Russia is fighting mostly with Soviet weapons stockpiles, and it costs much less to send 1960s-era and 1970s-era tanks to the front line than to build new tanks. At current rates of destruction, Russia will run low on tanks in decent condition late next year, [youtube.com] but until then, Ukraine is fighting against the entire Soviet stockpile of weapons plus Russia's $300-billion PPP equivalent, 80% of their electric grid has been destroyed, and now they face North Korean troops to boot.
I hope people will pay more attention to this war and ask their representatives to give Ukraine more weapons. The percent of people living in "electoral democracies" or better is lower than it has been in 40 years, [x.com]. If Ukraine can't hold off the Russians, the Free World will shrink even more. And can you imagine the size of the refugee crisis if Russians achieve a breakthrough and Ukrainians are forced to flee west? And seriously, listen to what the people who want to take over Ukraine have to say. Their cultural genocide rhetoric sometimes crosses the line into actual genocide. [x.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Ukraine is totally fucked for decades because of this stupid US and NATO adventure.
No, Ukraine is "totally fucked for decades" because Russia's Little Spymaster decided to invade a sovereign country for his own selfish purposes, followed by him deciding to send hundreds of thousands of young Russian men into the meat grinder once Ukraine showed they actually could and would resist his invasion. He's fucking up his own country pretty badly as well - not that he really cares about that.
Re: (Score:2)
6/7'ths of the world population couldn't give a shit about the US. Does that make it OK to commit atrocities against the US population?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The North Koreans are there to learn how to storm South Korea creating their own version of meatgrinder.
GPSJam (Score:2)
Really a map of airplanes reporting low accuracy of navigation via ADSB