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North Korea Forced US Reconnaissance Plane To Land
First time accepted submitter ToBeDecided writes "A U.S. military reconnaissance plane was reportedly forced to perform an emergency landing during a major military exercise near the North Korean border in March. As revealed by the South Korean defense ministry, a strong signal transmitted from the north disrupted GPS in the area surrounding the position of the RC-7B aircraft. Without information about their position, the pilots were forced to abort their mission and return to South Korea. This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."
the US has special units and weapons that specialize in destroying radars and anything else that emits electronic signals
LightSquared?
They need to get at least 2G and a sane government before they can be trying for terrestrial 4G that runs roughshod over GPS signals!
This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."
This says nothing about fragile equipment, this is about a jammer putting out a signal stronger than what is coming from the satellites above. The signal from the satellites is well known, and thus figuring out how to jam it is just a matter of signal strength and what type of jamming they want to do. Do they want to just bury the signal in noise, or are they trying to send false data to lure US and ROK units into NK air and sea space?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Unnews_kim_hair.jpg
Table-ized A.I.
It's believable that the GPS system got disrupted, but it's hard to believe that this somehow forced them to land. If they were doing recon, then GPS is pretty critical so that they can exactly pinpoint what they're surveying. However, even the lowliest pilots can navigate without GPS (this is required to pass any level of flight school, let alone military-level). I can understand the mission being scrapped due to this type of disruption, but I can't believe that they were in any sort of danger.
Nah, they're just holding their iSpy wrong
Table-ized A.I.
"This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."
What an amazingly stupid statement. All kinds of things to consider:
1) Rules are different for peace time and war time. You are more careful in an exercise than in combat. Planes have other navigation systems, like inertial navigation, however they aren't as precise. During a drill, you take the careful approach, abort, and back out. In combat, probably not.
2) The reason precise positioning is so important in this case is because they need to make sure to not cross the border. This matters less in wartime. There are things that call for precise positioning but not ever flight needs it all the time.
3) They managed to get one plane to land. Oh wow, that would be useful if the US had 2 planes but they don't, they have thousands. Does the system work so well against that many?
4) Anything generating a signal is a target. Lock on the signal and blast it. There are even missiles for that sort of thing called AGM-88 HARMs. Their design is to nail radar facilities but it wouldn't take much change to make them nail GPS jammers, and the US may already have models for that.
5) How well is this going to work if you don't know the planes are even there, like say the B-2Bs, which they can't detect to target, and yet which can carry tons (literally) of precision munitions?
While I'm sure the US isn't pleased about this and it doesn't help, it isn't as though this would suddenly stop US craft from functioning. All it can do is stop precise navigation in whatever area it is effective in. It also can only do so as long as it can transmit. Anything hostile that broadcasts a signal had better be able to move fast and defend itself. If not, it will go 'asplode in a big hurry.
Gee, whatever did we do in the days before GPS? I know, we had maps and Inertial Navigation Systems - which we STILL use.
Fragile equipment my ass.
Easily solved with a 30+ year old INS system...
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
This raises the question of 'How did they do this in World War II, before we had GPS?'
Fancy modern crap breaks sometimes. This is why we have amazing technology called 'maps'.
I bet you cant even begin to count the times we have sent planes over hostile territory on a monthly basis , but you can count the failures with your fingers
its just a law of statistics now learn how to navigate without GPS, people have been doing it for generations
The U.S. Army is the most powerful fighting force in the history of the world. An M1A2 tank is not fragile. The U.S.S. Enterprise in not fragile. The U.S. Marine Corps is anything but fragile.
Every time U.S. forces have come up against Soviet-doctrine troops and equipment in a regular battle (as opposed to a counterinsurgency campaign) after the Korean War ( a draw), the U.S. has soundly kicked their asses. The more technologically advanced the equipment, the less likely it has been to break down. "Smart" weapons of the 1970s were finicky and prone to failure; today's smart weapons are remarkably robust in comparison.
When U.S. forces went up up against the largest and best-equipped Arab army in the first Gulf War, they wiped them out. Read up on The Battle of 73 Easting, where U.S. 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment went up against the Iraqi Republican Guards (and their "robust" Soviet equipment) and absolutely destroyed them.
Lake of GPS would be a serious disadvantage...right up until the AGM-88 HARM took out the jamming stations. Which would probably be less than a hour after the strike packets were launched. If the U.S. can't rely on GPS, there are fallbacks (terrain mapping and getting coordinates from JSTARS come to mind).
With GPS, the U.S. military is the most formidable fighting force in the world. Without GPSstill the most formidable fighting force in the world.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
> This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."
In the event of war, the pilots won't exactly care about not straying into North Korean airspace...doing so would sort of be the idea after all.
These aren't jet jockeys, these are the "guys in the van". Had they tried being heroic, they'd have probably crashed or been shot down over NK and then they'd have created a huge publicity stunt for North Korea to use in their own favor. There's no reason to give NK free hostages just because the GPS radio didn't work correctly.
Reentering warheads are completely ballistic
Jamming GPS doesn't make them bulletproof. Lack of GPS was a matter of the standing orders being to abort in the event of GPS failure, not even a matter of the navigator being able to use/trust their inertial systems alone.
-- Terry
In a peacetime exercise, the most important thing other than not crashing is to not violate an unfriendly nation's airspace. You need to be quite certain of your exact position. If navigation is less than perfect, it's just not worth the risk.
In a wartime mission, violating the unfriendly country's airspace is implicit. You need navigation good enough to make a sighting of your target.
I'm inclined to believe there's more to it than what's in the story. Military aircraft do not rely solely on GPS for guidance. Perhaps drones and missiles do, but piloted military aircraft have redundant systems for guidance, including a sextant. Why do you think all aircraft other than a few fighters have a pilot and copilot? The copilot can act as navigator, and most tactical aircraft also have a navigator in addition to the two pilots.
Of course, this being just a drill, they may have said "screw it" and just landed. Any real reconnaissance mission would have be continued using redundant systems.
Or, they may have wanted to give that dike looking Kim Jong-il a big head and make him think he made a state of the art US military aircraft run for the boarder.
Any way you look at it, unless he zapped the plane with an EMF pulse strong enough to knock out the avionics systems, there is no way he could have done anything electronically to make them have to perform an emergency landing.
Ditto for the military naval vessels. The civilian naval vessels, yeah, it's possible they don't have anything other than GPS.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
GPS should be supplemented with inertial guidance.
Sig: I stole this sig.
US Military pilots have other means of navigation than GPS. During times of actual conflict, these systems are used in order to prevent just these sorts of situations.
During peacetime, though, there's the possibility that the military's use of these resources could interfere with civilian flights--so unless there's an actual war going on in the area, they'll stick with the peacetime stuff.
That's not to say that these other methods are jam-proof--but anyone attempting to jam them will have to work hard enough to make themselves a target for an anti-radiation missile.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Not really. The plane did not crash.It returned safely. To me that means it was able to fly.
To be sure that it was as vulnerable as a paper plane, we must also be sure that in peace time and in ware time, the same precautions are taken. For all I know during a war time mission, they would say 'Turn of the GPS and use other things to get where we drop our bombs'. While now they say 'Hey something goes on, this is not a critical mission, let's go back'.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That was the procedure in Iraq. Listen for anything broadcasting on GPS frequencies and hit with laser targeted bombs. Once they were quiet move back to GPS.
Not currently an option for North Korea at the moment, so turning around and flying off is probably a good call.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Seriously, what an inane comment.
I responded to the guy's flaky reason, not to the questionably accuracy of the article. He was right for the wrong reasons.
All your points are valid as long as they would be directed towards the article.
Isn't it a bit odd we're outright questioning an invasion when both sides have been maintaining peace for over 50 years?
This is all coming from one story from Agence France-Presse. More info is needed. The US DoD says they don't have a record of this happening.
It's possible that it might be a South Korean plane of a US type, not a USAF plane. If someone was just up on a routine training flight, they might choose to land due to a GPS failure. With no mission to complete, there's no reason not to. Wait for Aviation Leak to cover the story.
All major USAF aircraft have inertial navigation capability, and have for decades. Everyone assumes GPS will be jammed. Even "smart bombs" have a low end inertial navigation system, one that gets its initial fix from the much better INS in the aircraft and only has to guide for about a minute.
What could possibly go wrong?
Maybe the crew was playing with an RC car on board the aircraft and that jammed the signals. Obviously too embarrassed to confess such an act, the crew hastily created some excuse about North Korean jamming equipment.
Monstar L
The US is denying this happened, and I'm inclined to believe them. Pilots have to learn to navigate without instruments, including gps. Jamming a gps system wouldn't force anyone to land. Also, this gps jamming signal is a giant target. In an actual conflict it would be a giant sign saying "DROP BOMBS ON ME".
First because of all the claims "I've got a friend who..." has to be the least reliable form of evidence ever. Sorry, but the amount of made up shit out there is legendary, and gets worse in each retelling. It isn't just a story, it is hearsay of a story.
Then there's the fact that military radars don't work at 2.4GHz. If the S band was in heavy use for that, there would be problems with interference with other 2.4GHz devices. Military radar is mostly X band (8-12GHz). If you think that these things can't be designed to sniff for different ranges, you are kidding yourself.
Then there's signal strength. A microwave's magnetron is 1000 watts or so, and is not designed for directional transmission. Military radar is an order of magnitude above that or more. It is also steered directionally towards what you want (either mechanically or by phased arrays) to keep power dispersion down. A microwave would not show up at all the same as a military radar.
Finally there's the fact that, well, it clearly didn't do much even if it happened. Yugoslavia lost, rather badly, to nothing but an air war. They left Kosovo. It wasn't as though the NATO planes were befuddled and they had to send in ground troops. It was the first war where airpower alone did the trick.
Back on topic, that kind of thing would do jack and shit for the North Koreans with regards to GPS jamming. Not only does the signal need to be much more powerful, but it is the wrong band. GPS works in the L band. Building high power, L band decoys might work... But then those are probably effective jammers so no real difference.
They landed normally. It wasn't like the thing dropped out of the sky, they broke off and landed back at their base. They had to navigate to do that.
As I said in my other post, I'm sure it was for safety reasons and not crossing the border reasons that they called it off. Why take risks you don't have to in training?
MdrTaco is gone less than a month and the site editing goes totally to shit. well done. /. is sadly finished, all of a sudden you make 4chan look professional.
Don't they teach navigation in flight school anymore?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Also, just so we're clear: Google the plane model.
This is what we're talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_Dash_7
F-22 level, custom-built airframe, notsomuch.
Why should the plane demonstrate whether it has ability to navigate under a certain type of jamming? I lived close to the inner-german border at cold war times and i saw the funny patterns which were flown, obviously to test the enemy radar capabilities and confuse them.
The article mentions that the jamming signal came from two North Korean cities so I wonder if GPS is routinely jammed in North Korea and if the jamming signal was accidentally on purpose leaked across the border.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I do wonder if the reason they aborted was simply because it was the easier thing to do. If North Korea are being dicks, it's far easier and less risky to just let them get on with it - so long as they're not doing anything more than just being a PITA.
I'm sure the crew of an RC-7B is actually more than capable of navigating without GPS, if they needed to. Pilots managed it for decades before GPS was invented. Sailors managed it for millennia.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Modern equipment rely too much on electronics. Since 1970s, the battlefield became a place of immense variation of electromagnetic emissions of all kinds - from targeting systems, radars in all vehicles to radios, encrypted ciphers, electronic counter measures and electronic counter counter measures. and then gps got added to the mix. and it gets worse every day.
see, the deal is, despite all these equipment are able to perform in conjunction THEORETICALLY, and they were tested in training exercises participated by many nations, they were never tested in a real war environment against a capable enemy which uses same kind of equipment. iraq, afghanistan were all against sources that could not equally retaliate with hi tech equipment and all the mumbo jumbo it brings. iraqis even had some last generation rolands, and their and other low altitude air defense systems' effectiveness basically instantly and decisively killed the 'tree top flying radar evading strike aircraft / cas aircraft' nonsense that was MUCH touted in between 1970 and 1990, and many aircraft was built over that concept (from tornado to a10), and they fielded some russian and french airplanes of late generation (which were never enough in number to make any presence) and that was that. nothing to put on a real conflict. actually, even the fact that the 'tree top flying radar evading strike aicraft' bullshit, which was so much touted and funded got totally invalidated in its first conflict by scattered air defense systems should tell us a lot - there is A LOT of untested shit in modern military technology.
now imagine a real battlefield with capable enemies. both sides will turn the space in conflict zone to an electromagnetic hell with all their equipment, unwittingly. from radios to ecms to radars it will be a em wave hell. leave aside the effect of ecms and eccms, what effect would the very presence of huge electromagnetic random noise in variation and magnitude make on electronic equipment is totally unknown.
this is a simple example. a simple em wave, forced a recon aircraft (which is something that is very well equipped with ecm and eccms for recon duties btw) to totally lose its bearings and have to land.
Read radical news here
Lately, I've been thinking about what a conventional, all out, no hold barred, war between major nations in the future might play out. Let's say we have the US on one side and some bad guy of Uncle Sam. One scenario is the enemy doing a pre-emptive strike without the US expecting (think Pearl Harbour style). The enemy decides to target orbital satellites that directly affect GPS, whilst cutting under sea Internet backbone connection around the world, simultaneously. Sophisticated yes, do-able absolutely. This would cause allied nations to be isolated from each other and the fog of war just got much thicker. Imagine trying to google for information on what the hell is going on only to find it is unavailable outside of the US. How much and how long would this crippled US defense capabilities, minutes, hours, days? Dunno, but maybe enough time for the enemy to have the edge and cause a real headache. Would the US have to resort to old school intelligence gathering by sending out soldiers, whether by aircraft, navy vessel or even by foot? No more nice satellite photos from the comfort of an air-con room.
US forces routinely patrol the DMZ.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Screw you guys, I'm going home. Talking with Kim Jong Il is where I draw the line!
This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."
Let's assume that the incident really did happen. The US has already denied it, but less assume it happened. Jamming is all about blasting a very loud signal that drowns out other signals. During a military operation GPS jamming the US is a pretty ineffective technique for a number of reasons.
First, there are a number of methods of navigating and targeting without GPS. GPS is easy and accurate, but if all of the GPS satellites fell out of the sky, they US military would still happily navigate its planes around and drop bombs. The US military is designed to go toe to toe with Russia and China. Go ahead and assume that the idea that their GPS satellites might be denied to them has crossed their minds. The US doesn't build stealth bombers to kill sheep herders. The US military might be good and killing sheep herders, but it is designed to fight a modern military.
Second, if you are dumb enough to turn on a GPS jammer powerful enough to knock out a plane's GPS navigation during a time of conflict, you pretty much deserve the missile that is going to fly up your arse a few minutes later. Jamming is done by blasting a very powerful signal out into the air. A very powerful signal is trivial to track. You might as well paint your GPS jamming equipment bright red and leave it out in an open field with arrows pointing to it. The first thing the US does in any sort of air war is to level anything that transmits. Normally, this is for taking out radar stations to blind air defenses, but it also applies to any attempts to jam. You really don't want to try and get into an ECM battle with the US. If you are screaming at the top of your long loud enough to jam GPS, you are being more than noisy enough for a missile to follow the signal back to the source.
Third, the airplane was not 'forced down'. If the story is true, what happened was they aborted their mission. That seems like a pretty legitimate thing to do if the mission isn't critical. I am sure they could have carried on if they wanted to, but they decided to play it safe. They were flying close to hostile territory doing a mission that will be fine if it waits a day or two longer. Hell, they might not even known they were being jammed until after the fact and were just concerned that their GPS equipment was malfunctioning. Delaying a signal flight for a couple of hours is hardly a stirring victory. If those plans had been sent to do something hostile, GPS jamming wouldn't have worked. The jammers would have been quickly destroyed or the plans could have navigated and hit their targets without GPS, or more likely, both would have happened. The jammer would have been destroyed and the plans on a mission would have merrily carried on without waiting.
This whole article is sensationalist crap.
I doubt it was near the border, more likely the U.S. plane completely disregarded the border and the U.S. government is lying about the whole thing.
When I made my military service in the Swedish air force in the early 1990's, several NATO spy planes passed over Swedish air space every week. Since there was no point in letting U.S.A. know that the Swedish defence system was able to see them, Sweden only complained about a very small number of the really slow or clumsy ones and then got some lame excuse that they had navigated wrong. Since U.S./NATO had many moles within the Swedish Armed Forces, they likely knew that Sweden knew anyway, they also likely knew that we could have taken down at least 1/3 of them while they were still inside Swedish air space, even if the passovers usually took less then a second. The planes was way to fast, well camoflaged and agile to be civilian aircraft’s, there were never any doubt that they were military or that most of them came from NATO (unless NATO allowed foreign spy planes to land on their military bases and air craft carriers). [ Biting my lip to not expose anything that could still be a Swedish military secret ]
There were occasional Russian spy planes passing over Sweden too, but at the time I made my military service, the Warsaw pact and the Soviet Union had just ceased to exist and the Russian government was more focused on what happened inside their country then spying on foreign nations. At least at that time, Russian spy technology was also still more advanced then the NATO one, so they could likely get the same information as the NATO spy planes without flying into foreign territory.
P.S. Most of the NATO spy planes likely didn't spy on Sweden, but on Russia and other former Warsaw Pact countries, most of the spy planes passing over Sweden flew into such territories or turned just before they reached their borders, Sweden just happened to be in between. NATO/U.S. had easy and cheap direct access to that kind of Swedish military secrets through all their moles within the Swedish armed forces, no need to send expensive air planes.
actually, during war, it's "Anybody who turns on a radio that isn't ours gets HAARM'd".
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
With the exceptions of help in the case of a natural disaster (as if the North Koreans would accept that), we can safely assume that any large-scale military action by the US in NK would either start with covert operations or areal bombardment.
To answer the question in the summary: yes, of course, the US military would be able to perform operations in NK.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/arl.htm
It appears to be a comint prop-job. :) The fact that it got hit by what apparently was a UWB signal is interesting, given the Air Force's interest in that area of emissions the last decade or so. Let's not get too hasty in crowing North Korea "electronic warfare kings" just yet, though. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Not really so funny, even 2 years ago and in context.
"We should all also agree that most vessels even have some protection for such violent attacks."
Actually, no. There are very few aircraft that are armored. Some aircraft have a few "hardened" points within the craft, ie, the cockpit on commercial craft have locking hatches nowadays. Armoring an aircraft just enough to protect against a near miss from a fragmenting missile is prohibitively expensive, in terms of fuel and maneuverability, not to mention the cost of the aircraft.
Even ships aren't armored. Take a typical destroyer, in any of the world's modern navies. A high powered sporting rifle can penetrate the hull in most places. Those places impenetrable by such a rifle aren't exaclty "armored" - they are just stronger sections of the hull, made necessary by the ship's size, design, and the forces that act upon the ship.
You might experiment a little bit. Go buy an old junker of a car, and get a .22 rifle. Start trying to armor your car so that the .22 can't penetrate it. By the time you're finished making that car impenetrable, you'll have tens of thousands of dollars invested, and the car will weigh between 3 1/2 and 5 tons. Kiss performance good-bye!
BTW - don't do that little experiment in the US of A. Most certainly don't perform such an experiment within several miles of an airport, military installation, or government office. You're likely to end up in Guantanamo bay, as a guest of the US government.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Anyone ever considered the fact that military uses an encrypted GPS shot to prevent jamming?
"I'm sure the US isn't pleased about this"
Or maybe the U.S. *wants* North Korea to think that the U.S. is not pleased.
Although... North Korea showing their hand by jamming a signal in peace time is a pretty stupid move. Maybe North Korea *wants* the U.S. to think that North Korea is pleased about jamming a U.S. plane, when infact they have a much more powerful jammer which they didn't use. Hmm....
I know this is B.S. The military uses encrypted GPS shots.
Inertial guidance is nothing new, it was developed in the 1930s, German V1 and V2 missiles used it.
Two problems: it's less accurate and much more expensive than GPS. If you want military superiority you need both, Inertial guidance is for situations where GPS is jammed.
There are several other types of guidance systems, the US military has them all. One wonders about the wisdom of so much research on weapon systems, but it's a fact that it provides useful side-effects on civilian systems.
But why are they there - is there oil in North Korea?
The Battle of Britain was in the summer of 1940. The first V-1s were launched shortly after D-Day in June 1944. The first V-2s were fired operationally several months later.
With budget cuts near, this is just meant to help justify US defense spending.
Maybe they shouldn't, considering what "DMZ" means?
Oh, I forgot, in US "No-fly zone" means "Americans are flying there, and bombing everything they can find".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110910/wl_nm/us_usa_korea_jamming
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. defense official denied on Saturday that a military reconnaissance plane was forced to make an emergency landing in March because of North Korean GPS jamming, as reported by a South Korean newspaper.
"We have no indication that any aircraft at the time of, or in the vicinity of, this alleged incident was forced to land on an emergency basis," the defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity."
Suppose this is true as stated. When not in a state of war, if you are not certain about your position, you avoid if possible violating the other side's airspace - especially in a trigger-happy zone such as the Korean DMZ. So, I think that they probably did the right thing.
Now, suppose there had been a state of war. In that case, they wouldn't have been concerned about which side of the DMZ they were on, and having GPS jammed doesn't mean you can perform your missions (one of the first of which would presumably be to take out the GPS jammer radiating away down on the surface).
well, thats ok then .. its not like NK is a paranoid state or anything is it, and so flying recon over the place is a completely .. but hey .. if i were cynical i'd prob say something else, and use the word ' provocation ' and imperialism. ..
honest and sane thing to do
- its not like the US and its drinking buddies are screwing around with anyone else;s affairs,or lives is it . oh wait a minute
1. Post some horseshit summary of a story
2. Wait for the reactionaries to post immediately
3. Wait a bit longer for those with critical thinking ability to point out how retarded the post is
4. wring hands with fiendish glee while watching everyone take the bait and fill up the story with emotional responses
6. Profit!
7. Retarded Timothy keeps his job.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Sounds like you don't have a whole lot of military experience. Just peruse Wikipedia about the relevant topics and you'll find what you're missing.
a strong signal transmitted from the north disrupted GPS in the area surrounding the position of the RC-7B aircraft.
Source? It doesn't say anything about what kind of aircraft it was in TFA. And why isn't the US rebuttal in the summary? From an anonymous DOD employee:
"We have no indication that any aircraft at the time of, or in the vicinity of, this alleged incident was forced to land on an emergency basis," the defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
Peacetime, loss of primary navigation -> abort mission. Last thing you want to do is
loose an aircrew for no good reason. These people tend to be very careful and
in cases like this do things by the book.
They should have used the beer can trick.
wow, that is some wicked hair. thanks for the laugh. :)
This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be.
Sure, like other enemies would refrain from jamming signals on the base that it just isn't the way a gentleman should behave.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
One reporter asked how effective the Russian GPS jammers were and the General (?) giving the briefing said something to the effect "lets just say we hit the jammers with GPS guided bombs".
I'm not sure how these bombs are designed, but I would imagine that it would be possible to make a bomb that not only navigates by GPS, but could just as easily home in on a GPS transmitter. You already have a receiver that is capable of precise timing differentiation from multiple satellites, I suspect a tweak or two you could build a receiver that can differentiate the signal from multiple antennas and use that potentially as steering correction.
These planes always have inertial nav systems as well as GPS.
The inertial nav works without reference to ANY outside signals,
and is extremely accurate.
Not sure why the article is implying that the plane was "forced"
to land because it was unable to resolve its position, because anyone
with knowledge of the avionics on such planes knows that GPS is
only one of several available nav systems and there is no way the
plane was unable to know its position if GPS was jammed.
So much for the accumulated "expert" knowledge on this increasingly ...
irrelevant website
Apparently a world spanning radio tower triangulation mapping project was performed during WWII with the registration beginning at Compass Point W Virginia, crossing from South America to Africa and up to & through Europe. This was needed to properly locate towns and targets since maps were inaccurate, sometimes by 10s of miles. And even if you triangulated yourself from "home" beacons, there was no certainty about where that meant you were.
When Berlin fell, the Russians rushed the city first and apparently made off with the German radio accurate maps. Combined with the US mapping, this meant that during the Cold War, Russia had radio accurate city locations, suitable for ICBM targeting and the US had practically nothing. This fuelled and gave cause to the arms race and US aerial spy programs, in order to map the Soviet Union. (Buckminster Fuller - Critical Path)
"....This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be."
Piffle. You can make a broad-spectrum jammer with nothing more than a big, honkin' amplifier and a spark plug, and it'll jam everything for miles around.
Fine. Now let's talk about the survivability of such a system in battlefield conditions. Firing-up a jammer on a battlefield is like standing on the 50-yard line of a blacked-out football stadium full of snipers, and lighting a road flare. Surprise! Your lifespan is now measured in seconds.
Now go away, lest we mock you some more.
Regards;
In fact they tell you to be sure to do a calibration run after changing front tires as the inertial navigation also needs a distance signal from the wheels. People seem to be failing to notice that this is a bit more of a problem with aircraft.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
nothing more than a big, honkin' amplifier and a spark plug
So your $100 GPS jammer needs a $1M of specialised missile to knock it out. That's OK if you're just talking about 1's or 10's but with that sort of asymmetry in the costs my money would be on the side of the cheap but disposable countermeasure.
NK would only need to spend $1M to make the cost of merely the first phase of an act of aggression far to expensive to continue with. Even if american actually had enough missiles (and the ability to fire them all without taking unacceptable casualties) in the first place.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This raises the question whether the U.S. military would be able to perform operations in North Korea given how fragile their equipment seems to be.
a) this is retarded because you can take out the jammer with ease
b) stealth UAV recon drones and stealth UAV attack drones or just a stealth UAV recon drone and a b2 bomber.
this isn't rocket science.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They didn't "force" it to land. The signal jammed some equipment, so the plane ABORTED, and landed. The plane wasn't "forced" to land. The idiot article makes it sound like some "death ray" almost caused the plane to crash.
The Russian missile "Scad" used inertial mechanism in order to arrive to
its target.
When you plan a safe process, you have to introduce backup mechanisms.
This just goes to show that we rely way too much on technology and not enough on the actual person.
Sure its great when things work and makes our lives easier and can do more with it working, but if we have to scrub a basic mission due to losing it, then we are screwed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...and why are they flying so near the border in the first place?
If you play with fire.......
The reason why China's military is a threat is because there is a possibility we will *again* be killing Chinese soldiers on Korean soil. I'll hazard a guess the North Korean equipment was Made in China. Have no doubt: if the Korean War Part Deux comes, the main US threat will be Chinese military personnel and equipment.
Tommorow Never Dies + Die Another Day = North Korean GPS jamming
I doubt this is true. Even tanks have inertia navigation systems that are used parallel to gps. Planes would obviously have this tech as well.
they only aborted to avoid an international incident by violating north korean airspace. without GPS there is a slightly increased chance of the plain flying a few miles off course into the North's territory.
I doubt it significantly compromise the mission readiness of the plane
<quote><p>confined to North America</p></quote>
There was also something called the Philippine War of Independence, part of the white man's burden.
Thank you N Korea for letting us know military capacities! We never guessed you coudl do that :) Now we know..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
the worst that things become. The Military should consider bringing back production to the states, or at least to NATO for all of their equipment. The idea that we are using equipment made in China is just plain twisted. Next, we will be picking up equipment made by AQ (if it is not already).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There are some non-radio based replacements for GPS around. They should be unjammable but are they accurate enough. http://www.trexenterprises.com/Products%20and%20Services/Sensors/opticalgps.html
Aborting its mission because of navigational uncertainty is not the same thing as making an emergency landing
Its a recon aircraft used to locate NK forces. If the aircraft's sensors don't know precisely where the aircraft is, then they are not able to determine the location of the "enemy" signals that they detect, hence the mission is no longer possible and there is no reason to continue flying it.
You don't mean to imply that NK's ruling class are intellectually children, but I would say the results speak for themselves.
I'm fairly conversant with the situation, having actually been to South Korea, learned a fair bit of the language and history (I got to see the Nandaemun gate before some fuckwit burned it down, sadly did not realize how precious it was and failed to get a good pic). I was coincidentally visiting the tourist attractions at the 38th parallel the day Kim decided to launch his fizziles, erm, missiles at the US in 2006.
And I've got to say, the "leadership" in North Korea has done virtually nothing you would expect a mature, reasonable, sane adult to do. At some point you just have to quit giving them the benefit of the doubt -- the Kims are a cult of personality ruling family, and their isolation from any responsibility or consequence for their actions has strongly encouraged infantile, churlish behavior.
One of these days (and I think it is coming very soon) there is going to be a dreadful day of reckoning. I pity the citizens of North Korea. I don't know of any way they get out of this insanity unscathed (even more than they already are).
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
It is that they wanted to be absolutely certain that the plane didn't fly over North Korean airspace accidentally. This was most likely a calculated move on the part of NK to try to get the US/SK to violating its territory, so that it can leverage that for political gain.
why is the usa here?
Again, is that what we can expect from /. now? Inflammatory time wasting crap? A forced landing is quite different than what happened here.