This affects particularly small airfields that don’t have tower operations. Because they rely on GPS-based systems. The larger airports have backup systems in place.
I’m not entirely sure what you are talking about, but most backup systems are Plane based.
GPS is mostly used for something called RNAV, however, RNAV can work without GPS. RNP approaches need GPS, but all airports (regardless how small, because without it would only be an airfield) have different approaches for both pilots and ground personnel to choose from. GPS always has the possibility to fail, for the simple fact that the US military can just turn if the civilian frequencies. GPS is more or less an addition and not a crucial system (except for GPWS - while most planes have radar altimeters, they can’t react fast enough in some cases)
For those interested, here’s a Video where GPS gets jammed and there’s an explanation on what they do and what happens, when it gets spoofed www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dG_Whxzdkk
the US military can just turn if the civilian frequencies.
If you’re talking about selective availability, that’s basically gone. It started getting phased out by Clinton in 2000 and newer satellites don’t even have that capability.
My understanding IFR is completely (or mostly?) without GPS, and uses plane-based instruments for direction, heading, speed, altitude, anything else? And like ground-based radio objects, such as localizers, I don’t know the terms or if there are multiple systems?
This has been happening on and off for months in Lebanon, the pilots have all been landing without GPS lately in case it cuts out again while they’re mid-landing. Utter chaos when it first happened, delivery drivers especially were very lost, and people in general had a tough time dealing with the loss of GPS. We don’t have a rigorous address system so sending locations to each other’s phones is really important here.
I think “sounds more like” is a weird thing to say though for this kind of thing
Fucking wild that I forgot about that. So much bullshit has gone on since then that it got pushed to the bottom, I guess. Should have been an assstomping on Crimea right then and there.
That’s the thing about international whatever. Nobody is willing to step up to the plate to enforce it unless it specifically affects them. The Geneva Conventions are a load of bullshit without anyone to back it up.
I pity the fool who sleeps soundly at night thinking Putin is going to suffer for his war crimes.
Possibly, but also keep in mind article five doesn’t say that any hostile act leads to automatic full scale war in response:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Emphasis on “such action as it deems necessary,” meaning a country can individually respond with its own discretion on what it thinks is a proportional response. Though in practice any response and individual contributions would be heavily negotiated within NATO. Theoretically a country could say it deems no action necessary even if article five was invoked. Just another reason why electing pro Russian leaders like Trump, Orban, or now Fico in Slovakia are dangerous and threaten the existence of NATO, even if they don’t technically leave NATO.
It’s particularly tough with kalingrad because the proportional response is bombing their jammers and air defenses, but kalingrad has a whole metric shit ton of air defenses, a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and support against such an attack would overfly poland so even that has a very high chance of leading to nuclear war.
So, first off. There is no reason for GPS jamming to cause a crash. Modern airliners have other ways to navigate.
Now it is possible to target a single aircraft with GPS "spoofing" potentially, but both GPS and Galileo have ways round this (Navigation Message Authentication). I would like to think aircraft navigation systems should be using this system. But, even if not, I'd bet it's still quite hard to reliably spoof a specific location to a moving aircraft.
I had a look on the Galileo website and wiki page because you don’t hear about it much. Anyway it looks like the secure version isn’t open to businesses though maybe an exception for airlines would be prudent.
Still though, planes flew long before GPS was a thing and were fine so should be fine today too. GPS was only released to the public after the USSR shot down a passenger plane that had gone off course.
Historical context: the KAL007 incident immediately followed the intrusion and activity of a USAF Boeing RC-135 recon plane that was in literally the same spot earlier that day. This aircraft has the same radar signature as KAL007.
The Soviets, in a hurry to shoot the spy plane signature hundreds of miles off civilian air routes while it was still in their territory (the second time the unresponsive KAL007 crossed it during the flight), shot it down.
Yknow, as regularly and justifiably happens with spy balloons today.
Russia does enough bad shit without the propaganda, going full onion just makes it seem laughable (not saying you are, this is just an extremely common take).
Yes tensions were high at the time but it was a gigantic series of fuck ups that it vaguely sounds like you’re trying to excuse?
The radar signature wasn’t an issue. They flew right up to it, knew it was a passenger plane (albeit possibly disguised), lied their asses off about various aspects of it, held back the flight recorder after they recovered it and initially denied having done it at all.
Later we began to lie about small details: the plane was supposedly flying without running lights or strobe light, that tracer bullets were fired, or that I had radio contact with them on the emergency frequency of 121.5 megahertz.
All (proper) Airlines have a simple solution for that, they just turn off GPS. Most of the time the ADIRS/ADIRU (bit too much to explain what it is here, the Wiki article is pretty good) does it automatically as well.
For those interested, here’s a Video where GPS gets jammed and there’s an explanation on what they do and what happens, when it gets spoofed www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dG_Whxzdkk
With the inertial reference navigation, they're not accurate enough for approaches like RNAV aren't really viable.
Some airports only have this as the instrument approach option with complex way points without radio navaids, and as such the flight may need to perform a visual approach or divert if jammed during the approach phase.
In short, it's not as bad as people might think, but can cause some problems.
For those interested, here’s a Video where GPS gets jammed and there’s an explanation on what they do and what happens, when it gets spoofed - so basically what those problems can be: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dG_Whxzdkk
MH17 was shot down by a Russian Buk system given to the separatists, and likely with polite green ‘advisors’ nearby to set up and operate the SAM. Once they realized their fuckup they rushed it across the Donbas and back to Russia, but it was spotted several times en route both ways.
If that didn’t count, why would much harder to prove jamming trigger A5? NATO forces (yes, even Poland) are not risking escalation on their territory, even if that means Russian helicopters and cruise missiles can ‘temporarily get lost’ in NATO airspace.
if one of these crashes, wouldn’t that be considered an act of war and trigger Article 5?
Article 5 is, ultimately, triggered by action within the EU. If Europeans want to treat this as another Boeing nosedive rather than a military action, they’ll wave it away.
As it stands, Vlad has been growing support within Southern European parliaments - Italy, Greece, France, Spain - and that might make invoking Article 5 more difficult than pointing at a downed airliner and proclaiming “Russia did this”.
I’m gonna copypaste what I said in another reply to my comment (because I think it applies):
Not being in support of Ukraine is not the same as being in support of Vlad. Not at all. The only ones that MIGHT be pro Vlad, and I am not 100% sure of their position, are Vox.
There are a million reasons not to meddlr in these external affairs. Veing anti-war, our country not being precisely well economically, recognizing Ukraine is neither on NATO nor the EU, so interfering is riskier.
Global morals are all good and well, but the representatives should look for the well being of their voters, not everyone in the Globe.
Not saying they should say “fuck Ukraine”, we have received a lot of Ukrainian refugees in Spain. But that doesn’t mean we should get involved in their war.
Not being in support of Ukraine is not the same as being in support of Vlad.
I agree in theory. But, in practice, not supporting Ukraine against Russia is a bit like not supporting Biden against Trump. To use an old Bushism, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”
Global morals are all good and well, but the representatives should look for the well being of their voters, not everyone in the Globe.
The counterargument in favor of supporting the Ukrainian side of the war is that Russia is an existential threat to Europe. And, to borrow another Bushism, “We need to fight them over there so we’re not fighting them over here.”
Not saying they should say “fuck Ukraine”, we have received a lot of Ukrainian refugees in Spain.
I agree here wholeheartedly. The first and foremost mission of any serious relief effort should be refugee relief and resettlement. But that’s another thing the pro-war wings of big western states tend to be against. For all their hawkishness, the British and Americans have been the most stingy when it comes to absorbing refugees. Meanwhile, the more peacenik members of the EU - your Polands and Hungarys and Romanias - are taking on the lion’s share.
Not being in support of Ukraine is not the same as being in support of Vlad. Not at all. The only ones that MIGHT be pro Vlad, and I am not 100% sure of their position, are Vox.
There are a million reasons not to meddlr in these external affairs. Veing anti-war, our country not being precisely well economically, recognizing Ukraine is neither on NATO nor the EU, so interfering is riskier.
Global morals are all good and well, but the representatives should look for the well being of their voters, not everyone in the Globe.
Not saying they should say “fuck Ukraine”, we have received a lot of Ukrainian refugees in Spain. But that doesn’t mean we should get involved in their war.
Ukraine alone can’t face Russia, nobody disagrees with that. Russia doesn’t need support to win, they only need Ukraine to not have. You can’t be really neutral if the conflict is so uneven.
Wether you like it or not, inaction is support for Russia. Right after the first attack some independents in Spain, the ones constantly asking for international sorry support, said we should not get involved in Russia’s invasion, which is ironic to say the least and very suspicious. This isn’t only Vox, a lot of the left (
I’m also not sure it’s on our best interest, economical or otherwise, to let Russia gobble up Ukraine and all it’s natural resources. Even from a completely selfish point of view, Russia controlling all of Ukraine is also risky.
What are you expecting NATO to do? Going to War^tm^ over one measly airliner and a few 10’s of random people isn’t an option here and all the parties understand that. Are you willing to see and be a part of the millions of deaths that the War^tm^ would bring? Because you know SOMEONE would push the Button^tm^ and Armageddon would happen.
I just want to note here that airliners do not rely solely on GPS for navigation, in fact GPS is usually just one form of backup for navigation instructions received from air traffic controllers.
That’s only true around landing and takeoff. For the most part their navigation relies on hybridized data from their inertial, air data and GPS, with several redundancies in place for bad readings and cumulative errors. Among all of this autonomous measurement apparatus, the GPS is the only part that doesn’t require numeric integration from speed or acceleration data to yield a position reading, and thus it is the only one that doesn’t drift over time. It’s actually fairly important, and it’s why using the gnss jammers you can find on amazon is super illegal
Among all of this autonomous measurement apparatus, the GPS is the only part that doesn’t require numeric integration from speed or acceleration data to yield a position reading
My point is that in the airspace we’re talking about, GPS is not the only source of accurate positional information. ATC radars and transponders can and do provide reliable position information all over that area, and it is ATC that’s responsible for routing and separation in those specific airspaces, not the pilots. ADS-B does rely on GPS, that’s true, so if there was a complete outage of GPS in an area, that might mean delays due to additional separation requirements, as ATC won’t get accurate secondary information back from the airliners’ GPS units.
All I’m saying is that while losing GPS would be a bother, European flight control won’t start losing airliners and as a pilot you won’t end up in Malmö instead of Helsinki just because GPS is down. Worst case scenario is congestion and delays at the destination airport, and possible diversions because of that.
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