FAA Warns of GPS Outages This Month During Mysterious Tests On the West Coast (gizmodo.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a Gizmodo report: Starting today, it appears the U.S. military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. We say "appears" because officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the U.S. Navy's largest installation, China Lake, Californi -- home to the Navy's 1.1 million acre Naval Air Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. And the Navy won't tell us much about what's going on. The FAA issued an advisory warning pilots on Saturday that global positioning systems (GPS) could be unreliable during six different days this month, primarily in the Southwestern United States. On June 7, 9, 21, 23, 28, and 30th the GPS interference testing(PDF) will be taking place between 9:30am and 3:30pm Pacific time. But if you're on the ground, you probably won't notice interference.

Comments

Redundant Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing they're trying so hard to eliminate VOR, LORAN, NDB, etc, because GPS is 100% reliable!

Re:Redundant Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

When a war between first world powers happens and the GPS satellites are destroyed on the first day, my sextant will continue to function. Good luck with your now useless GPS unit though.

Anyway, even in the 1960's experimental LORAN modes had accuracies under 6 meters, which is comparable to modern GPS. Money was not put in to develop this to wide deployment, but there was no major technical limitation. Some LORAN-C stations were still online as recently as 2 or 3 years ago, to serve as redundancy since GPS is easy to jam or destroy outright.

Re:Redundant Systems

[kimvette]

Eliminating VOR and LORAN was dumb... because the first major solar storm we see on the scale of the Solar Storm of 1859 will wipe out most if not all of the GPS constellation. GPS should have been designed to integrate LORAN and VOR from the beginning.

Re:Redundant Systems

[ShanghaiBill]

GPS, on the other hand, needs a $500/yr jeppersen subscription, courtesy of a Garmin's vendor lock-in.

Why can't you just use your cellphone? Isn't there an app for that?

Re:Redundant Systems

[SCPaPaJoe]

Time to dust off the sextant. My father insisted that I learn celestial navigation when I started sailing long distances when I was a teen, but that was back in the early '90's. I also read recently that the US Navy is bringing sextant training as well. Now if I could only find some new charts...

Re:Redundant Systems

[blindseer]

I agree. The US GPS, Navstar, is quite durable but it still requires a very extensive system to keep functional. It's also quite likely very expensive too but given it's capability the cost to benefit likely still falls in Navstar's favor over any ground based system.

The problem with a satellite navigation system is that if anything goes wrong that can affect many satellites, like the solar storm you mention, the means to repair or replace it is limited. We cannot simply fly up to a satellite and fix it. The only thing we can do is launch a replacement. If the satellite is truly dead then we'd lack the ability to re-orbit or de-orbit it and get it out of the way of the replacement satellite. It will be a hazard to subsequent satellites for 10,000 years. Launching satellites is limited to the number of spares on the ground and/or the rate in which they can be manufactured, as well as the rate in which they can be launched.

There are a number of ground based systems that augment or assist satellite navigation, WAAS is one that comes to mind, but they rely on satellite signals to operate. I assume it would be relatively trivial to allow these systems to operate autonomously but I've seen no effort to do so.

LORAN, VOR, and other ground based navigation aids are quite valuable in that being land based they can be repaired and replaced with much greater ease than anything in orbit. If there is an extended outage of satellite navigation then I'd expect ground based systems to get put into use relatively quickly but when talking about replacing an entire constellation of satellite navigation aids "relatively quickly" can still mean months, or even years. In the mean time we'd likely see many flights cancelled or put on longer routes because of reduced navigation capability. This would no doubt come at great expense and inconvenience. Had the US designed Navstar to integrate with ground based systems from the start then we'd never see this threat since the value of ground based navigation would be much more obvious and we'd not see systems like LORAN lose interest, and then funding, and then get destroyed.

Given the way that governments operate we'll see funding for ground based navigation fade to nothing until something happens to the satellites. At which point large sums of money will be allocated quickly with all the waste and corruption inherent with that panic. At which point, if we are lucky enough to have some smart people get paired up with some politically connected people, we just might get a very durable navigation system that integrates ground and satellite navigation seamlessly.

I doubt we'll be so lucky.

Re:Redundant Systems

[93 Escort Wagon]

Time to dust off the sextant. My father insisted that I learn celestial navigation when I started sailing long distances when I was a teen, but that was back in the early '90's.

Let me guess... you actually mean early 1490s, and your dad was Christopher Columbus.

Re:Redundant Systems

[Dutch Gun]

My brother is in a commercial fleet, and he was required to learn how to do navigation by manual methods (charts, compass, sightings, etc) to pass whatever certification exams he was taking at the time (and there's a *lot* of them). I'd have to imagine Navy navigators have to pass the same sort of standards as civilians sailors. It definitely seems like a good thing not to rely too heavily on technology, not just in case it fails, but as a way to sanity-check the computer systems that nearly all modern vessels rely on.

Mysterious ways of the government

[jovius]

First they launch the satellites and then they try to jam their signals. It would have been more efficient if they didn't launch the satellites in the first place, me thinks.

Re:Mysterious ways of the government

[The Grim Reefer]

It's funny because you think the US is the only one with GPS satellites.

Technically they are. Russia has GLONASS and the EU should have Galileo fully operational by 2020. China, Japan and India (Beidou, QZSS, and IRNSS) all have their own versions that function regionally, but none are called GPS.

At the moment only GPS and GLONASS are global. Both China and the EU systems should also be global in 2020.

Re:Mysterious ways of the government

[blindseer]

Technically the GPS created by the USA is called Navstar but it seems few even know this name.

GPS is an acronym for global positioning system, which can technically include many things besides satellite navigation. GNSS is what is usually used to group GLONASS, Galileo, Navstar, and so forth since that is an acronym for global navigation satellite system. GNSS are a radio navigation aid, and a global positioning system just like LORAN, VOR, TACAN, and others which are losing favor over the satellite navigation aids.

Technically using a clock, sextant, charts, and a compass would be a global positioning system but that's extending the definition well beyond common use. They certainly fall under navigation aids, and their use will likely continue well beyond when LORAN and VOR go dark. They'll likely be used well beyond any satellite navigation aid as well.

Personally I'd like to see more people use Navstar instead of GPS when referring to the US GNSS since it not only is it's proper name but it also reduces confusion since GPS is also used generally to refer to other GNSS. It seems to be a lost cause because even the US federal government is failing to call their own GNSS by its proper name.

Re:Mysterious ways of the government

[AK Marc]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Navstar redirects to GPS. Navstar is the more public name of DNSS. If you want to be correct, Navstar should likely never be used. The original name is DNSS. The common name is GPS. Navstar is an obsolete common name, so it is neither the most accurate, nor the most common.

Personally I'd like to see more people use Navstar instead of GPS when referring to the US GNSS since it not only is it's proper name but it also reduces confusion since GPS is also used generally to refer to other GNSS. It seems to be a lost cause because even the US federal government is failing to call their own GNSS by its proper name.

GPS means one or more GPS (GNSS, as you like to call them, though they are technically unrelated to navigation - you could just as easily call them a global time system, and be no less accurate). US GPS is how I refer to DNSS, as it is unique, and obvious. The only people "confused" are deliberately confused in protest. Nobody knows DNSS or Navstar, and, as you note, nobody uses either, even the government that created it.

Sonic booms

[fremsley471]

Slightly off topic, but China Lake related. My rusty memory says that there was an odd series of tests in the eighties where scientists on the west coast thought that they were hearing infrasound from meteors and such like, then realised it was happening once a week at the same time. Speculation was it was related to the testing of a SR71 replacement, but unless I'm much-mistaken. nothing came of it. Thirty-plus years on, can anyone say what it was?

Re:Sonic booms

[Solandri]

People think the USAF has a shiny toy with a pulse detonation engine. The sound has also been heard over Texas, New York, and the UK. I know the Daily Mail is a tabloid site, but in true MIB style they've got pretty comprehensive coverage of the topic, including an audio recording and pics of the contrail. The contrail pic is from Texas if I remember. There used to be a good article on that in AvWeek, but they put up a paywall.

If I remember, the sounds heard in Southern California in the late 1980s, early 1990s were sonic booms. People assumed it was the Space Shuttle landing at Edwards, except there was no Space Shuttle landing those days. Based on when and where people heard the boom and a little triangulation, I think best estimate was whatever it was was traveling around Mach 5-6. (One of the advantages of flying test flights in Southern California is that you've got this great big ocean you can fly over, so there are fewer witnesses to potentially see/hear your super-secret aircraft.)

well thats just perfect.

[nimbius]

3 hours in a checkpoint with my shoes off, my laptop out, and my belt in a plastic tub as i shuffle with my pants now around my ankles into a giant microwave oven only to have boarded a flight where a thick beard or a mathematics equation on a napkin will get me sent to torture prison wasnt enough. Now, the very agency purportedly keeping me safe from the "terrorists" has knocked out the global system used to guide everything from uber to cruise missiles and my flight to Phoenix is now a flight to Scotland.

Re:Why not press the switch

[Aqualung812]

I see two possibilities, which may both be true:

1. They want to learn more about what it would take to compromise the existing USA GPS, so they know how to detect such activity and perhaps test countermeasures.

2. They want to be able to compromise GLONASS and Galileo without compromising the SA GPS signal. However, in testing this, they might get it wrong and take down GPS.

Ground will still notice. What about time sources?

[Aqualung812]

The FAA advisory says there is a 253nm ring of interference at 50ft AGL (above ground level)

So, depending likely on your line of sight to the transmitter, there is a good chance most of Southern California and Nevada are going to have ground-level interference.

My question is what will happen to the many datacenters with roof-mounted GPS antennas that feed to a local NTP server, which is trusted as a Stratum-1 source inside the company? Those antennas are very likely to be at 50ft AGL or above.

GPS is just a timestamp. If you're screwing with that, there is a good chance what you're doing is screwing with the time.

Wow

[93 Escort Wagon]

I gotta say - those Waze Warriors are getting pretty darn serious!

Re:Why not press the switch

[OrangeTide]

Almost certainly the US military wants a plan to shut down GLONASS and Galileo during operations. If the US can shut down any other positioning system at will, then sharing GPS becomes less controversial in other countries because then the other systems may offer no real defense advantage.

Re:Late to the party

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they shouldn't be testing GPS in California. GPS is known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Re:Ground will still notice. What about time sourc

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you ever notice a 250 nanometer region of interference?

Re: Why not press the switch

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they are testing a way to jam gps for everyone else and it doesn't affect their receivers?

Drones

[AndyKron]

Testing their drone jammer?

Just a few notes

[Caerdwyn]

No doubt all of this is in bits and pieces elsewhere. Feel free to mark redundant.

1. The GPS system is owned and operated by the military. Civilians are secondary users. They get to turn it off any time they want, or reduce its accuracy, etc.

2. People already use readily-available GPS jammers, primarily to steal LoJack-equipped cars. Not sure why they're legal to sell, as a device intended solely for disabling a military-owned system, but http://www.thesignaljammer.com...

3. My money is on the military testing its resiliency to deliberate wide-area jamming or attacks on GPS satellites. It's an obvious way to seriously affect the US military without shooting soldiers, so some countries/NGOs might be more willing to do this than, say, blowing up a bus. My money is also on testing during thesummer during the day because pilots can... y'know... look out the window and see where they are. VFR conditions pretty much guaranteed. (yes, yes, at FL180 up you're in class A airspace and always are on instrument rules, but even A380 pilots need to use eyeballs)

4. There are no commercial aircraft that rely ONLY on GPS. VOR and DME are widely used (especially VOR), and pilots are trained to be able to navigate using those methods (evne non-commercial license holders and non-instrument-rating license holders).

5. I'm a pilot. Only private, but I can navigate perfectly well without GPS, and the plane I most commonly rent doesn't even have GPS. And as a pilot, I'm nothing special. If I were flying in that area, I'd do nothing differently whatsoever.

6. I'm not sure what's up with that Embraer. Something to look up tonight.

An uneducated guess

[nehumanuscrede]

If I were to make an uneducated guess, I would be thinking along the lines of a live fire test of their next generation cruise missiles. ( Something like LRASM )

One of the requirements of the next gen systems is their ability to operate in a communications / GPS denied environment.

So best guess is, sometime within the month, a live fire launch from a platform in the Pacific should be expected. Especially if the target area is China Lake AND the FAA is involved.

Will very likely have a chase plane or two following it during the course of its flight.

Just a guess though :)

Finally

[meglon]

They've managed to reconstruct the crashed UFO from Roswell (which was actually a German V3 made in conjunction with a planned attack by the blue aliens in 1944) with the help of a benevolent Bigfoot that was living near Loch Ness, and are moving it out of the hanger for test flights. No, really... The History Channel documentary on the project should be on later this week.

Re:Late to the party

[AK Marc]

They question every mosquito at their agricultural checkpoints.

Re:Why not press the switch

[heypete]

It's easy to know how a GPS receiver will work if there's no signal: it simply doesn't function.

But how does it function in the presence of strong jamming signals of different types? Does it produce spurious errors? False position or timing data? Does it have other issues? Can very strong signals cause damage to various components like amplifiers and the exquisitely sensitive receiver circuits?

I'm just speculating, but I suspect that they'll be doing tests of that type.

Re:Why not press the switch

[RevDisk]

Because likely the Navy is testing how to operate if someone ELSE is jamming GPS. The conspiracy theorists here on Slashdot are kinda missing the obvious.

Re:Why not press the switch

[RevDisk]

Because people other than the US might try to jam US GPS, and the Navy maybe wants to see how well they operate when a hostile foreign entity jams GPS? In other words, routine training but not something they want to advertise. Given that the US owns GPS, they don't need to jam it. Which everyone seems to be missing. They do need to train for GPS being shot down or failing.

Re:Why not press the switch

[afidel]

Because the block II-F birds (12/31) lack selective availability hardware per presidential order and government policy, there is no way to degrade or turn off GPS to a particular region of the globe.