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

No it doesn't

[Sycraft-fu]

"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.

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:I'm going to have to call bullshit

[shutdown -p now]

GP's anecdote seems to be a folk exaggeration of the story of Zoltan Dani, the "I've shot down an F-117" Serbian guy. Quoting Wikipedia:

Lt. Col. Dani made it a strict field rule that the SA-3's UNV type fire control radar could only be turned on for a maximum of 2 x 20 seconds in combat, after which the battery's equipment must be immediately broken down and trucked to a pre-prepared alternative launch site, whether or not any missile has been fired. This rule proved essential, because other Serbian AAA units, emitting high-frequency radiation for any longer periods or forgetting to relocate, were hit by AGM-88 HARM missile counter-strikes from NATO aircraft, suffering radar equipment and personnel losses.

Radar sets obtained from confiscated Iraqi MiG-21 planes were planted around the SAM sites to serve as active emitter decoys, which diverted some anti-radiation missiles from the actual targets (dozens of Iraqi MiG-21/23 warplanes, sent to Yugoslavia for industrial overhaul, were seized in 1991, after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.) Retired SAM radar sets were used as optical decoys, left at well-known military bases to lure NATO planes waste munition on worthless targets. Owing to these measures, Dani's unit evaded 23 incoming HARM missiles, all of which impacted off-site with insignificant or zero damages.

This was probably overlaid on top of other factual stories of Serbs using decoys for their military equipment to curtail damage. Also from WP:

Most of the targets hit in Kosovo were decoys, such as tanks made out of plastic sheets with telegraph poles for gun barrels, or old World War II–era tanks which were not functional ... At the end of war, NATO officially claimed they destroyed 93 Yugoslav tanks. Yugoslavia admitted a total of 13 destroyed tanks. The latter figure was verified by European inspectors when Yugoslavia rejoined the Dayton accords, by noting the difference between the number of tanks then and at the last inspection in 1995.

Similar figures are there for other equipment. So Yugoslavia did not suffer significant military damage or casualties - most of NATO bombings disrupted civilian infrastructure (which NATO has conveniently redesignated as "dual-purpose", leading to events such as Grdelica train bombing), and most victims of them were civilians. But the way Serbia avoided decimation of its military was, effectively, by dodging the open fight.

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.