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A comment on USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red Flag Air War Exercise.

Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by matheweis on Saturday January 27, 2018 @02:21AM (#16245223)
They do this all of the time.

I subscribed to the FAA alerts a couple of years ago after learning that the GPS interference tests were one of various causes of so-called “flyaways” (unexpectedly losing control of a GPS guided drone).

Anyway, since then I’ve gotten an alert about these tests almost every month or so for the last couple of years.

Not sure why a big deal is being made about this particular one...

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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by 0xfaded on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:36AM (#16245982)
As I understand it the military wants to prevent the FAA from decommissioning radio NavAids and secondary radar. The FAA had counted on $100 billion from the decommissioning after the introduction of ADS-B. Jamming GPS signals forces aircraft to rely on the old systems, so it has become part of a politics game.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by criley2 on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:48AM (#16246020)
Interesting. I was under the impression that GPS was made available to Civilians by Reagan after the Soviets shot down a South Korean plane that strayed into Soviet airspace. Their tools and training were ineffective at guidance and they got shot down.

Reagan made GPS open to international civilian use because there was literally no other tool that could accurately help planes not get murdered by the Russians, etc.

But now you're suggesting that the older tools were effective enough and should remain in place 30 years after civilian GPS?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by gbacon on Saturday January 27, 2018 @08:55AM (#16246217)
Redundant systems are almost always good in aviation. The ICAO report[0] indicated either a system failure or user error resulted in the A/P’s INS mode failing to activate and instead remaining in HDG mode.

Yes, the old systems are effective. A lowly candidate private pilot must demonstrate proficient VOR navigation to obtain a certificate — not sure about light sport, recreational, or gliders — along with commercial pilots and airline transport pilots (ATPs). GPS is not mandatory equipment. Even if so equipped, the GPS can fail.

Yes, at least some of the redundant ground-based radio navaids should remain in place as backups.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#In...

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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by qubex on Saturday January 27, 2018 @02:12PM (#16247578)
My father got an 18 metre 1970s-vintage yacht in 1994 or thereabouts. I remember learning to plot accurate fixes using LORAN signals and hyperbolic TD lines. Getting good at that and coming up with (what I thought) were really clever transformations between Euclidean maps with hyperbolic curves to straight lines on a curved surface served me very well (at least in terms of intuition) when later I learnt of non-Euclidean geometries.

(I also remember looking through ancient manuals and building up an intuition for troubleshooting and fixing a thermionic valve-based RADAR, at least once in high seas with almost zero visibility as howling winds and lashing rain was pushing us towards a rock face. Fun times.)

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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by danielvf on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:55AM (#16246034)
No - it's more of an issue that there should two tools under US control, so that if one goes down, life goes on and nobody dies.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by NotSammyHagar on Sunday January 28, 2018 @04:24PM (#16253603)
But there's now glonass (russian gps) and galileo (eu gps) and I just learned that India and Japan have systems. I want my receivers to use as many of those as possible. they can go out and be spoofed and when the next big one comes, who knows what will be working.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by wyager on Saturday January 27, 2018 @08:17AM (#16246106)
Civilian GPS was also intentionally heavily degraded until 2000. https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by rahkiin on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:54AM (#16246033)
On top of that: isn't the solution for USAF to stop jamming a widely civilian used protocol? Forcing others to keep using old tools and not realy on newer and better tools just so they can jam it at will seems counterintuitive
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by gbacon on Saturday January 27, 2018 @08:56AM (#16246219)
The Air Force is jamming GPS. What if an adversary did?
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by marcosdumay on Saturday January 27, 2018 @10:25AM (#16246511)
Civilian equipment is often not prepared for dealing with an unexpected war. I don't think this is a problem to be solved.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by dmix on Saturday January 27, 2018 @11:07AM (#16246683)
There's still thousands of planes in the sky whose safety needs to be considered in such a (predictable) event.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by chiph on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:55PM (#16249022)
It's not a civilian protocol - it's run by Air Force Space Command (the 2nd Space Operations Squadron) primarily for the benefit of the military, but as a matter of policy, the DoD also makes it available for civilian use. The key point is that military use comes first.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by otp124 on Saturday January 27, 2018 @06:24AM (#16245793)
Where can I subscribe to this? I've had a drone fly away once..
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by gbacon on Saturday January 27, 2018 @09:10AM (#16246259)
Check the Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) for nearby airports before you go flying.

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/

https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/

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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by matheweis on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:12PM (#16248886)
Create an account on https://www.faasafety.gov/, and then set up your subscriptions from there.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by briandear on Saturday January 27, 2018 @03:51AM (#16245417)
Getting NOTAMs is fun — a ton of interesting things happening all over the US at any given moment.
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by atm0sphere on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:20AM (#16245938)
how do you get them?
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Re:USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red ... by gbacon on Saturday January 27, 2018 @07:59AM (#16246046)
https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/

https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/

[ Parent | on HN ]