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."

Comments

Bad summary (what else is new)

[dwillden]

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?

Calling it an "emergency" seems sensational

[SwabTheDeck]

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.

Re:any signal can be found and killed

[Narcogen]

That eventuality is presumed within the question of "whether the US military would be able to perform operations in North Korea". The question being asked is whether or not, should the need arise, the US military would be able to function in or near North Korea given the situation described above. The "need arising" means war. So, yes, presumably in peactime North Korea is able to disrupt the navigation systems of US recon planes in the area, and removing that capability would be an act of war.

Should hostilities start, presumably those capabilities would be disabled (or at least such disabling would be attempted) and whether or not that would be an act of war would be a moot question-- else why is there a need for the US to "conduct operations" in North Korea?

Has to be more to it.

[bjwest]

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.

Re:No it doesn't

[bungo]

Indeed. I would go so far as to say that this was actually a success.

The U.S. military now have better knowledge of the North Korea's capability and tactics. They now know that in the even of war, before the drop any GPS guided munitions, they now have the exact location of a target to take out.

This is no different to the old Soviet days, when US planes would test Soviet defenses, provoking a reaction to gain intelligence.

I'm going to have to call bullshit

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:any signal can be found and killed

[Hognoxious]

We've always been at war with North Korea.

Re:any signal can be found and killed

[sycodon]

Without information about their position, the pilots were forced to abort their mission and return to South Korea

My, what did pilots do before GPS?

Instead of being "forced to perform an emergency landing" it was probably more like they had the intel they needed and were done for the day.