Slashdot Mirror
North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea
Fluffeh writes "North Korea has been looking for new and inventive ways to mess with South Korea. It seems that their missile launch fizzled a bit though, so those wacky folks from the North have bought a few GPS jamming trucks from Russia and are now blocking GPS signals around their city of Kaeson. While Kaeson is around 60 Km inside their borders, the jamming circle is around 100 Km, so it actually covers good parts of South Korea including the airports at Inchon and Gimpo. While no accidents have been caused as yet, it has caused quite some disruption and has made ocean going craft suffer as well due to their heavy reliance on GPS signals."
Well I have no idea about such a law, but if you find a way to make North Korea actually follow an international law, pleas let the world know ASAP.
FCKGW 09F9 42
The Korean War never ended.
International law only works if backed up by threats of punishment if you don't comply. It works well for bullying small non-nuclear nations. When you have a huge army, nukes, and an appearance of "just crazy enough to push the red button" nobody will stop you from being a pest.
International law does not seem to apply to any state powerful enough (i.e. nuclear armed, and/or large conventional forces), as proved many times by the US (and probably others, but I can't think of any examples off the top of my head), and they are considered rational actors that will only use nukes as a last resort.
Hell, NK has shelled islands belonging to the South, and is believed to have been behind the sinking of a South Korean Navy Vessel. Lives have been lost due to this, both of which constitute acts of war, yet nobody responded.
I think jamming GPS is rather low on the "pest" scale, so I don't think anything major will be done about it (regardless of whether there is a law on the books against it).
While no accidents have been caused as yet, it has caused quite some disruption and has made ocean going craft suffer as well due to their heavy reliance on GPS signals.
It's amazing how many pilots/captains have completely lost the ability to navigate their vessels without electronics and the problem is made worse by the fact that the infrastructure you need to navigate without it has been neglected or even systematically dismantled in many countries. I have sometimes wondered what effect it would have on a major NATO military maneuver if you specified half way through the war-game that: "The enemy just knocked out several of our GPS satellites, please simulate this by not making any use of your GPS equipment nor any GPS enabled munitions except those that have a fallback mode".
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
We're jammin':
I wanna jam it wid you.
We're jammin', jammin',
And I hope you like jammin', too.
The US does not jam GPS signals, you're thinking of Selective Availiability which is currently disabled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Availability#Selective_availability
GPS includes a (currently disabled) feature called Selective Availability (SA) that adds intentional, time varying errors of up to 100 meters (328 ft) to the publicly available navigation signals. This was intended to deny an enemy the use of civilian GPS receivers for precision weapon guidance.
SA errors are actually pseudorandom, generated by a cryptographic algorithm from a classified seed key available only to authorized users (the U.S. military, its allies and a few other users, mostly government) with a special military GPS receiver. Mere possession of the receiver is insufficient; it still needs the tightly controlled daily key.
Before it was turned off on May 2, 2000, typical SA errors were about 50 m (164 ft) horizontally and about 100 m (328 ft) vertically.[5] Because SA affects every GPS receiver in a given area almost equally, a fixed station with an accurately known position can measure the SA error values and transmit them to the local GPS receivers so they may correct their position fixes. This is called Differential GPS or DGPS. DGPS also corrects for several other important sources of GPS errors, particularly ionospheric delay, so it continues to be widely used even though SA has been turned off. The ineffectiveness of SA in the face of widely available DGPS was a common argument for turning off SA, and this was finally done by order of President Clinton in 2000.
The power requirements are different.
To jam a signal you need to transmit noise that can drown the original signal, so that the receiver cannot figure out what it is. To transmit fake information, you need a much stronger transmitter because you not only need to drown the original signal but also have your signal be strong enough so that the receiver does not get confused when it receives both signals (the original and yours), otherwise you are just jamming.
Also transmitting fake information requires more complex electronics instead of just a noise generator and a big transmitter.
International law only works if backed up by threats of punishment if you don't comply.
And this is why American foreign politics are not taken seriously.
Let's not be naive here. NK is a bandit state that follows and discards laws and regulations on a whim and in a seemingly irrational manner to an outside observer. Still, smaller countries (Scandinavian countries for example) have seen great successes in frequency allocation agreements through such organizations such as HFCC against a number of larger countries. I remember the Norwegian delegation some years ago negotiating away -China- from a critical allocation they both needed. This was done through careful diplomacy, some clever alternative arrangements and generally both parties being interested in a solution even if they were miles apart on the issue to begin with. The next year, they did it again, this time fending off Russia. Anyone suggesting that Norway has anything to threaten Russia and China with is an armchair general not to be taken seriously.
Whether the same could be arranged with NK... I remain sceptical but to dismiss it off-hand is foolish. You seem to have a very ingrained mental image of NK being the very soul of evil and the US being the shining city on the hill, never acting in bad faith. This image is incorrect on both accounts.
Personally, I'd think an invitation into HFCC and serious negotiation from equal parties is the best option likely to succeed. If not, and NK would be bluffing, THEN you would be in the situation where other options could be considered.
tl;dr - You're too gung-ho. There ARE institutions to handle this sort of thing. I've served on several and we've done some very good and difficult work deemed "impossible" by the US State Dept. because they only really have a hammer and not every problem is a nail.
if you find a way to make North Korea actually follow an international law, pleas let the world know ASAP.
International law does not prohibit a nation state from building nuclear weapons, missiles etc., nor does it regulate what form of government nation states should have. They may be guilty of crimes against humanity, but for their actions to fall into that class, it would have to be shown that the actions were the result of a systematic policy of murder, genocide, torture etc. rather than these being individual acts. Some lawyers have made the case that North Korea has a policy of genocide and infanticide, both of which would qualify. On the other hand, people have made similar allegations of forced abortion and infanticide against the government of China, and yet very few have argued that constitutes a crime against humanity.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is far from new. My brother is an Apache pilot and has had two tours in Korea. The North periodically jams GPS along the border. They also provide false navigation signals (including encoded identification) for both NDB and VOR near the border. They get a hard on for the potential to create an international incident. They would love to declare the US violated their airspace. Should it happen, of course they would claim their border was violated and neglect to tell you they also caused it.
Pilots receive specific training there so as to double check all navigation signals and to cross check against maps. They are not allowed to use GPS for primary navigation. They're not supposed to use it for primary navigation anyways, but in Korea, along the border, the realistic need is brought to the forefront.
So basically, this is the same stuff they've been doing for two decades. Seriously, nothing new here...aside from the fact that perhaps civilians are hearing about it.
Now that he's finished "Dark Shadows", and in the spirit of "Mars Attacks!", and Edward Scissorhands etc., we really need Tim Burton to do a movie about North Korea. I think he could capture the ethos.
Gently reply
In the US, the FAA is planning to discontinue VORs and omnirange stations, the non-satellite navigational aids that have run aerial navigation for decades. The Coast Guard discontinued LORAN C in 2010. This was done with the concurrence of the Department of Homeland Security, which said it was "not needed for GPS backup."
GPS is a very weak signal, and easy to jam. Satellites put out only 500 watts, spread over half the surface of the planet. LORAN C was transmitted at power levels from 100KW to 4MW, with huge antenna farms. That kind of power is difficult to jam at any distance. VORs and omnis aren't as powerful, but they're usually located at airports, so that when you're close to an airport and need to find the runway, the signal is at its strongest.
Don't worry, every newly elected US president since WWII has started a war within the first 12 months of his presidency.
No, I didn't fact-check that. Know why? I was told this somewhere during Dubya. We then tried top of our heads to invalidate this statement.
It didn't do wonders for anyone's mood that every Presient we threw out there (without internet in reach) at least plausibly started a war within 12 months.
I'd try and hope Obama didn't, but I have no need to have any more illusions shattered today.
(Oh, and while the statement was indeed 12 months, an example where it was 14 months will not lift the mood either).
That is a very interesting observation, so I put a timeline together to see if it's true. President Carter is the only exception. But if you only count direct military action as "war" (in bold), the observation breaks down a bit more (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter). With that said, looking at the timeline is rather disenheartening, especially if you look at the dramatic rise of 'international police'-like activity starting with Reagan. The bolded actions in the timeline look like they're rising exponentially. Also, I don't see any correlation between time in office and military activity. (No math was done, just visual estimation.) I leave the decision, dear reader, up to you.
TIMELINE OF AMERICAN MILITARY ACTIVITY AND US PRESIDENTS AFTER WORLD WAR II
Presidents inserted before first action which started during their presidency. Presidents are indented and in italic. What I see as direct military action is in bold.
WORLD WAR II 1941-45 Naval, troops, bombing, nuclear Hawaii bombed, fought Japan, Italy and Germay for 3 years; first nuclear war.
Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
IRAN 1946 Nuclear threat Soviet troops told to leave north.
YUGOSLAVIA 1946 Nuclear threat, naval Response to shoot-down of US plane.
URUGUAY 1947 Nuclear threat Bombers deployed as show of strength.
GREECE 1947-49 Command operation U.S. directs extreme-right in civil war.
GERMANY 1948 Nuclear Threat Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin Airlift.
CHINA 1948-49 Troops/Marines evacuate Americans before Communist victory.
PHILIPPINES 1948-54 Command operation CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion.
PUERTO RICO 1950 Command operation Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce.
KOREA 1951-53 (-?) Troops, naval, bombing , nuclear threats U.S./So. Korea fights China/No. Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in 1950, and against China in 1953. Still have bases.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
IRAN 1953 Command Operation CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah.
VIETNAM 1954 Nuclear threat French offered bombs to use against seige.
GUATEMALA 1954 Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat CIA directs exile invasion after new gov't nationalized U.S. company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua.
EGYPT 1956 Nuclear threat, troops Soviets told to keep out of Suez crisis; Marines evacuate foreigners.
LEBANON l958 Troops, naval Army & Marine occupation against rebels.
IRAQ 1958 Nuclear threat Iraq warned against invading Kuwait.
CHINA l958 Nuclear threat China told not to move on Taiwan isles.
PANAMA 1958 Troops Flag protests erupt into confrontation.
VIETNAM l960-75 Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; one million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in l968 and l969.
John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
CUBA l961 Command operation CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY l961 Nuclear threat Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
LAOS 1962 Command operation Military buildup during guerrilla war.
CUBA l962