Most people don’t know how unbelievably fucked the world would be if Russia did this on a consistent basis. The entire stock market runs on GPS for nanosecond timing of trades. Shipping, trucking, trains, planes all use GPS. Sure, all of them CAN operate without GPS, but the delays would be enormous because of how efficient GPS is and how automated a lot of things are. Communications systems use GPS for timing to sync up. Farms use GPS for accurate planting and picking of vegetables.
My dad w his drawer full of old road atlases: “WHATS UP NOW MOTHERFUCKERS!!?”
I watched a video on this recently. Really interesting, especially how the researchers figured out it was a Russian satellite in a really high orbit. All it takes is a low-power burst to overwhelm the GPS network because it runs on such low powered, sensitive signals. They theorize the Russians were testing for very brief windows to see how well it world work. They could jam these signals anywhere over the Earth. Same for other nations too.
I watched the Veritasium episode on it just yesterday! The other theory is that it was actually being used for covert signals and the disruption was secondary.
Considering the impact of these tests, that doesn’t seem likely. You wouldn’t be sending covert messages in a way that would be so heavily scrutinized. I know it was a theory presented during the video, but that’s just journalistic integrity.
And ultimately, even if they were covert messages, now they also know they can disrupt gps
I think the point was less about making the messages undetectable as it was about making them unjammable. In order to stop their transmission, we would have to essentially shut down GPS for the entire EU. So you might use that frequency to send critical, must-have messages.
Especially once a second signal was noticed that was almost exactly the frequency used by the Chinese GPS system, as mentioned in the Veritasium video.
Yes, that’s the video I watched. Good stuff.
Trains don’t need gps, do they?
I mean, neither do cars or planes.
“GPS” would mean GNSS satellite systems like GPS, as well as terrestrial systems like AGPS and base-station-based triangulation. Given that modern train control systems involve transponders alongside the railway line, these can be used as well. Railway lines running through tunnels in particular would rely on non-satellite systems.
Rail lines use multiple redundant navigation and safety systems. GPS is one of them.
Russia and Iran stole a drone a few years back. They did it by jamming and spoofing gps signals
They aren’t the only ones.
