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$30 GPS Jammer Can Wreak Havok
An anonymous reader writes "A simple $30 GPS jammer made in China can ruin your day. It doesn't just affect your car's navigation — ATM machines, cell phone towers, plane, boat, train navigation systems all depend upon GPS signals that are easily blocked. These devices fail badly — with no redundancy. These jammers can be used to defeat vehicle tracking products — but end up causing a moving cloud of chaos. The next wave of anti-GPS devices include GPS spoofers to trick or confuse nearby devices."
But the idea of abandoning radar as if GPS were a time-tested system is a little scary.
It is time tested. It works very well. It's just more vulnerable.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What competent engineer would design an important system that depends on GPS, with no backup? The satellite signals are very faint, and can be disrupted for seconds or hours by lots of different causes, including entirely natural causes like solar flares.
The competent engineer with the incompetent boss.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!