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Russia Jammed GPS During Major NATO Military Exercise With US Troops (cnn.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

The Russian military jammed GPS signals during a major NATO military exercise in Norway that involved thousands of US and NATO troops, the alliance said Wednesday, citing the Norwegian government. From a report: The NATO exercise, Trident Juncture, concluded Sunday and involved some 50,000 personnel. It was labeled the alliance's largest exercise since the Cold War. Non-NATO members Finland and Sweden also participated in the exercise. A spokesperson for the Norwegian ministry of defense acknowledged the jamming to CNN, which it said took place between October 16 and November 7, and said it would defer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on further questions to Russian authorities.

"Norway has determined that Russia was responsible for jamming GPS signals in the Kola Peninsula during Exercise Trident Juncture. Finland has expressed concern over possible jamming in Lapland," NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu told CNN Wednesday. "In view of the civilian usage of GPS, jamming of this sort is dangerous, disruptive and irresponsible," she added. Asked about the report of Russian jamming, NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was aware of the reports but did not offer additional information. "We have seen there have been similar reports from Norway, and I cannot share more precise information with you," Stoltenberg said Sunday at a news conference marking the end of Trident Juncture.

144 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Helpful by Aero77 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

    1. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Indeed, soldiers must be able to navigate with paper maps too.

    2. Re:Helpful by Pascal+Sartoretti · · Score: 1

      It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      It makes no sense. If Russia has the ability to do this, of course they wouldn't show it during a NATO exercise.

      Or maybe they can do 1'000 times more damages and want to hide it from NATO.

      Or maybe they want NATO to believe this, and they showed all they could.

    3. Re:Helpful by dunkelfalke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Come on, what ability are you talking about?
      Even petty criminals can jam GPS. The signal is so weak you can build a jammer yourself or even order one on ebay if you are too lazy.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    4. Re:Helpful by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      Sure. But plenty of equipment and armament is designed to be deployed with a GPS requirement. Does not matter if you know where you are if your missile cannot figure it out.

    5. Re:Helpful by myth24601 · · Score: 2

      In a real conflict, wouldn't it be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source and direct a strike on it?

      --
      No matter where you go, there you are.
    6. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      If Russia has the ability to do this,

      Everyone has the ability to do this. There is no "if" involved. Signal jamming is easy, especially if you only want to jam a single known band.
      All those FCC regulations on your wifi router that Slashdotters find an offensive infringement on their right to overload the airwaves? Those exist to reduce accidental "jamming" of nearby signal bands.

      All you need is an antenna and a bigger power supply than the signal you want to overload. With GPS, the signal strength is pretty low by the time it reaches human activities, so you could jam a large area with a car battery, a bit of frequency conversion, and a metal post.

    7. Re: Helpful by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Indeed, that was suspiciously generous of them to reveal their capabilities like that...

    8. Re:Helpful by Micah+NC · · Score: 1

      Ha. Actually I'm a little surprised they divulged they had that capability.

      Unless it was like, "C'mon guys, war is never going to actually break out so we're just going to show off."

      Despite all the US spends on military craft ... not feeling real safe.

    9. Re: Helpful by Type44Q · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It makes no sense. If Russia has the ability to do this, of course they wouldn't show it during a NATO exercise.

      Holy shit, as I live and breathe... an actual non-idiot.

    10. Re:Helpful by Streetlight · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Use many multiple jamming devices. And when your defensive response (GPS guided weaponry) require GPS and there is no GPS signal...

      --
      In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
    11. Re:Helpful by Nutria · · Score: 1

      Emitting white noise at high power from directional antennae on a fixed set of frequencies isn't anything new or remarkable.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    12. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The F'in point is that if this were real war, do you think they would not be jamming GPS? This just shows the Govts involved in the exercise that they had better not rely solely on GPS during a time of war.

    13. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      so we should ask Russia not to do that if there's an actual conflict so our missiles can still hit them?

    14. Re:Helpful by Nutria · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We've had home-on-jam HARM missiles for a long time. And we have a lot of them.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    15. Re:Helpful by registrations_suck · · Score: 1

      The F'in point is that if this were real war,....

      That wasn't the point I was responding to, which was that soldiers should be able to navigate with a map.

    16. Re:Helpful by Archtech · · Score: 1

      In a real conflict, wouldn't it be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source and direct a strike on it?

      In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source,

      In the second place, "directing strikes" is what Western armed forces do when they have invaded some poor country without proper defences or weapons. "Directing strikes" against sites that may well be inside Russia itself would be an act of war; and Russian military doctrine is that direct attacks on Russia itself will be met with a nuclear response.

      So if you want to be hit with an unstoppable nuclear missile, go ahead.

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    17. Re:Helpful by pgmrdlm · · Score: 3, Informative

      The artillery rounds are designed to operate in GPS-denied environments. The U.S. Army's artillery is set to receive a new round of upgrades that will allow artillerymen to conduct precision fire missions without the use of GPS. ... The U.S. military's reliance on the GPS network makes that network an attractive target.

      Do missiles use GPS? Today guided weapons can use a combination of INS, GPS and radar terrain mapping to achieve extremely high levels of accuracy such as that found in modern cruise missiles.

      --
      Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
    18. Re:Helpful by Immerman · · Score: 2

      If soldiers can't navigate with a map, it doesn't much matter what else doesn't work - they'll be useless in any war against an even vaguely symmetric opponent.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    19. Re:Helpful by Archtech · · Score: 2

      From TFA:

      "Norway has determined that Russia was responsible for jamming GPS signals in the Kola Peninsula..."

      Er, has anyone realised that the Kola Peninsula lies wholly inside Russia?

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    20. Re:Helpful by hey! · · Score: 1

      This reminds me of a friend of mine in high school who was... well interesting. Tony was into cryptozoology, pyramid power, orgone energy and all that sort of thing. One day he informed me he'd built a working UFO detection alarm, following directions he'd got from one of the ufologist magazines he subscribed to (this was before the Internet).

      "How do you know it actually works?" I asked.

      "Because it goes off all the time," Tony said.

      The moral of the story is that it's easy to convince yourself that something you built works. But to have rational confidence in something, you've got to have some kind of independent empirical confirmation. The Russians built a system to disrupt NATO military use of GPS, but the only way they can know that it would work is to actually disrupt a NATO military exercise.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    21. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sure. But plenty of equipment and armament is designed to be deployed with a GPS requirement. Does not matter if you know where you are if your missile cannot figure it out.

      Perhaps reliance on GPS should be revisited as a potential problem. It's fine for the kind of wars the US prefers to fight: asymmetric warfare against a much less technologically advanced opponent. But on the odd chance the US would have to fight an advanced nation, that might prove more problematic.

    22. Re:Helpful by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My point is, there is nothing difficult about jamming GPS. The signal is so weak, especially in these latitudes, that a 100W jammer probably would be enough to jam GPS in the whole country.
      In fact, the power output of the actual GPS satellites is just a few hundred watts and they sit way up high with the resulting power loss.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    23. Re:Helpful by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

      It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      Well, yeah. Seriously, I'd think they need to be ready for this?

      "We'd like to announce that what the enemy did was really unhelpful, and even dangerous"

      Oh, well, OK then, that should take care of it ...

    24. Re:Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      That way you know the missile is useless in a real scenario. And missiles that only fire in exercises are kinda pointless.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    25. Re:Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      This.

      How long do you think high-tech equipment relying on easily destroyed or disabled infrastructure will work in a symmetric war?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    26. Re:Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      Why? The NATO maneuver served as a show of force. What better thing to do than to answer with one, for a much cheaper price, I might add.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    27. Re:Helpful by magarity · · Score: 1

      Indeed, soldiers must be able to navigate with paper maps too.

      The exercises were in Norway. Soldiers must navigate with sunstones.

    28. Re:Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A HARM missile? Depending on the model that thing costs between 250k and 800k. Building a jammer costs a tiny fraction of that price.

      If you are stupid enough to do that, I sink you with the cost to wage that war.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    29. Re: Helpful by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      You seem to be under the impression that they have some capability that nobody knew about until now. Slashdot really has become a bad charicature of its former self.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    30. Re: Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Excuse me, what did they reveal? That they can jam a weak signal? Sorry, I didn't know this was a state secret.

      What they revealed was that quite a bit of the NATO equipment relies far too much on working GPS. For that PR blunder in what was the biggest military exercise since the end of the cold war, you can reveal the secret that you can do what anyone could since WW2.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    31. Re:Helpful by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 2

      My money is on the fact that Russia thought they could embarrass NATO by foiling their exercise with a simple GPS jammer... they then sheepishly shrugged their shoulders when it didn't work.

      --
      Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
    32. Re:Helpful by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      I'd have thought for an exercise like that, NATO would have been jamming it themselves for realism.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    33. Re: Helpful by DamnOregonian · · Score: 2, Funny

      Said the idiot.

      Yes, if the Great Russia Federation had the advanced capabilities required to block a -130 dBm radio signal, they certainly wouldn't show it off during a NATO exercise. Such high power transmitting must remain secret until the opportune moment, when you can spring it upon the Capitalist pig dogs, who never ever saw the eventuality of a nation on this earth being able to summon the terrifying raw power required to drown out watts of power transmitted at over 12,000 miles away. As I live and fucking breathe! Praise the motherland!

    34. Re: Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      It's more likely to be some sort of Russian technology (read: Cheap Chinese crap attached to a car battery). In true Russian fashion built by the millions and liberally distributed throughout the countryside.

      Good hunting!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    35. Re: Helpful by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      I think that proves that even with GPS, modern navies can't navigate.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    36. Re:Helpful by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      In case of a real war against Russia they would shoot down GPS satellites, not just jam them.

    37. Re:Helpful by schweini · · Score: 1

      I don't get how jamming GPS is so easy?
      If I\d encase the receiver's antenna with a type of metal bowl that opens to the top, so that only signals coming from the sky can be received - how could anything earth-based interfere or jam the signal coming from GPS satellites?

    38. Re:Helpful by Freischutz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If Russia has the ability to do this,

      Everyone has the ability to do this. There is no "if" involved. Signal jamming is easy, especially if you only want to jam a single known band. All those FCC regulations on your wifi router that Slashdotters find an offensive infringement on their right to overload the airwaves? Those exist to reduce accidental "jamming" of nearby signal bands.

      All you need is an antenna and a bigger power supply than the signal you want to overload. With GPS, the signal strength is pretty low by the time it reaches human activities, so you could jam a large area with a car battery, a bit of frequency conversion, and a metal post.

      I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS instead of springing it on us in the opening phases of a shooting war. Without Russias kind assistance it might have been a lot harder to obtain funds from the politicians for preemptive improvements and the procurement of less vulnerable systems. This, and their hacking efforts along with disruptions of drone guidance signals, along with their downright dangerous jamming of civilian air traffic systems comms and air traffic radars will result ins some very swift and comprehensive upgrades to these systems.

    39. Re: Helpful by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

      " In the first place no, it wouldn't be fairly easy to pinpoint the location of the jamming source "

      Easier than you may realize.

      Between ships and aircraft outfitted with the right antenna arrays to satellite based systems, if you fire up a transmitter we can build an AOU small enough to send several cruise missiles your way to say hello.

      The spooky people use to send us targeting data based on this stuff so we could incorporate it into the bigger picture of whatever region we were operating in at the time.

      These systems have been in use for a long time and, over the years, have likely become far more accurate than the original hardware.

    40. Re:Helpful by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1

      It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      The same thing is happening in Ukraine. With all the Russian jamming devices sent in to help the terrorists, NATO and others are taking their own equipment to the battlefield to see how things work as well as sucking up all the information they can on how to minimize or counter the jamming.

      It's almost as if Putin didn't think things through when he invaded another country, what with over 3,000 Russian soldiers dead so far, and has to support a peninsula which has no water source or ability to supply its own power.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    41. Re:Helpful by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      If I\d encase the receiver's antenna with a type of metal bowl that opens to the top...

      I don't know. Do those things really work?

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    42. Re:Helpful by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      You can buy a fucking GPS jammer off of alibaba.
      If you're bored, you can build one for $20.
      If you're determined, you can go ahead and build one with a wide area of effect for a reasonable price as well. But warning- they *will* find you.
      WTF are you going on about, anyway? Blocking GPS isn't hard, and is expected in any military encounter with any even reasonably advanced adversary.

    43. Re:Helpful by hjf · · Score: 1

      No antenna is perfect, and the GPS satellites are 35,000Km away from earth. It's very easy to interfere from a couple km away with relatively low power.

    44. Re:Helpful by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      Reminds me talking with a former Marine describing when his squad were "lost" while on a exercise at night, they had maps and compass but were not sure where they were and where to go. One of their team was one guy, not that smart but he can look up at the sky and intuitively figure out the proper direction of travel. He couldn't explain how it did it, in fact couldn't explain anything but had that knowledge of navigation.

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
    45. Re:Helpful by Strider- · · Score: 1

      That would be extremely difficult. The GPS birds are in medium orbit, well above the theoretical range of any known or suspected asat weapon. Furthermore it would put their own network at risk, as it's in similar orbits.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    46. Re:Helpful by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      The real problem with jamming GPS is high-speed communications links that rely on a very accurate timing source,

      I heard Wall Street uses GPS to coordinate transfers, does this mean jamming GPS can send the US back to Oct 1929?

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
    47. Re:Helpful by kellymcdonald78 · · Score: 2

      GPS Sats are not in GEO but a slightly lower orbit ~20,000km

    48. Re:Helpful by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      Statistical wave propagation and distance squared are working against you. You could block a lot of the jamming, but it's very easy for the jamming to still be far more powerful, on account of it not being 12,000 miles away. GPS already operates with a negative SNR at ground level. It's simply very easy to drown out. Always has been.

    49. Re:Helpful by loonycyborg · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't it be easy for weather, solar flares and other geo effects to interfere with it then?

    50. Re:Helpful by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Ha. Actually I'm a little surprised they divulged they had that capability.

      I'm not in the least bit surprised that they have this ability, or that they are not trying to hide it. Everybody knows GPS is very easy to disrupt.

      I am a little surprised that they decided to up the realism of our exercise and actually do it. But they are obviously turning up the heat and poking at the USA a bit harder of late. I suppose they may be trying to figure out what effect their jamming activities have on our operational responses, what works, what doesn't, but their primary motive likely is just to annoy NATO.

      Don't be worried, I'm very sure we are able to operate in such electronic warfare environments. GPS is a convince, but it is hardly the only way to get around or locate friends and foes on the battlefield. We are prepared to work without GPS, as well as deny others the use of GPS signals by skewing location accuracy to suit our purposes.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    51. Re:Helpful by MattskEE · · Score: 1

      It's all about ratios. Using a high gain antenna pointing directly at the satellites will improve the signal to jammer ratio. It could improve things by 10x, 100x, even 1000x. Then the jammer just needs to increase its power or focus its signal on the target more narrowly to increase the effective jammer power, and we're back to square one. The jammer has an easier job here because the GPS satellites are further and broadcasting over a wide area and through more atmosphere, the jammer can be closer and more focused, and on a ground or air platform the jammer will have access to higher transmitter power levels per dollar invested.

    52. Re:Helpful by rogoshen1 · · Score: 2

      Not even remotely a fan of Russia or its president; but .. NATO running wargames that close to Russian territory -- how are the rooskies supposed to interpret that exactly? It's sort of like during the 1960's, we place missiles in Italy and Turkey, and Russia responds by placing their own in Cuba.

      If China had a real navy, and started running drills off the coast of Japan, what would the reaction be?

    53. Re: Helpful by locketine · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes

      https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impa...

      --
      Think globally but act within local variable scope.
    54. Re:Helpful by bobbied · · Score: 1

      You got modded as funny but this is actually true. Pretty stupid of them to help us out like this, realtime conditions like this are more realistic and only help NATO improve.

      Maybe their point was to asses NATO's abilities in a GPS denied environment? What still worked? What didn't? Who lost their way? Where there communications disruptions (GPS is used as a time source you know)? Disrupting GPS in the area might generate some interesting information for war planners.

      Or, maybe it was just to be annoying...

      My vote is on the latter. Ivan has been kind of aggressive and harassing of late with dangerous intercepts of our aircraft and ships operating in or above international waters. I think it was just another way to annoy NATO for geopolitical reasons.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    55. Re:Helpful by amicusNYCL · · Score: 2

      Missiles should be able to navigate with a paper map.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    56. Re:Helpful by racermd · · Score: 2

      It's not the soldiers with or without maps that are the issue, it's the other equipment that relies on GPS to know where *IT* is so it goes where it's supposed to go or report to the chain-of-command where it is.

      That said, for the life of me, I cannot fathom why this would be an issue today. We, as civilians, have known that GPS can be jammed and hacked for quite a while. And the military would have been able to know about this from Red/Blue exercises for a lot longer than that. The question becomes - what have they done to mitigate that attack vector?

      If they were smart, they'd use GPS as only one source of location input and use a pool of additional sources to get a consensus. If any one of the sources wildly disagrees with the rest, pitch that data out. This way, if GPS is jammed altogether or, worse, hacked to give an incorrect location, it could be detected and mitigated.

      --
      My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
    57. Re:Helpful by link-error · · Score: 2

            Instead of jamming, they would probably inject some errors, i.e. Selective Availability, so systems would still 'think' they have a good signal.

      --
      -Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
    58. Re:Helpful by cstacy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Missiles should be able to navigate with a paper map.

      They can! How do you think precision cruise missiles worked prior to the invention of GPS? They have a map, and they use AI ("computer vision") to look at the terrain they are flying over. I remember when this was deployed around 1980.

      They also have inertial guidance in the navigation array, of course.

      And to cross /. threads here: Some of the folks at the lab where I was working at the time, who invented those vision systems as part of pure basic science research, were concerned about what the technology would be used for. (Of course the funding was from DARPA.)

    59. Re:Helpful by d0rp · · Score: 1

      It makes no sense. If Russia has the ability to do this, of course they wouldn't show it during a NATO exercise.

      It makes perfect sense that Russia would run their own exercise to test their jamming equipment and gauge NATO's ability to deal with it.

    60. Re:Helpful by BringsApples · · Score: 1

      ...the only way they can know that it would work is to actually disrupt a NATO military exercise.M/quote> Nah, they could test this on their own GPS equipment due to the way the jamming works. There's a really good bit of information about it here.

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    61. Re:Helpful by d0rp · · Score: 1

      I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS

      My guess is that they wanted to test the equipment to gauge NATO's ability to deal with the disruption. No point in using jamming equipment if it's not going to be effective (i.e. if they already have redundant systems to prevent this kind of jamming), and you'd want to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more effective.

    62. Re:Helpful by cstacy · · Score: 1

      The Russians built a system to disrupt NATO military use of GPS, but the only way they can know that it would work is to actually disrupt a NATO military exercise.

      There is this thing called "Science" and the big feature is that it can make correct predictions. In the case of how electromagnetic energy works, it can predict -- perfectly correctly -- and we know this -- that a trivial device can disrupt GPS. So, NO, testing it is "not the only way to know", except in some existential sense. I mean, it could be that if you turn on a radio transmitter, it doesn't broadcast a signal, but instead opens a quantum vortex from which the interdimensional aliens pop out and annihilate all of humankind.

      Russians were just being assholes trying to annoy us.

      Meanwhile, the military is not as dependent on GPS as you imagine; the military, which invented GPS, is not that stupid.

    63. Re:Helpful by s_p_oneil · · Score: 1

      TBH, when 1 air force coffee cup costs $1200, they really don't have to do much of anything to sink us with the cost to wage war.

    64. Re:Helpful by hey! · · Score: 1

      I'm assuming they probably tested it on their own equipment first, but that's not a very convincing test. As a civilian you can buy anti-GPS jamming equipment, although some of it requires a security clearance. Presumably the Russians aren't supposed to have the classified stuff, and even if they did it wouldn't necessarily be the same as what the US or NATO military has.

      Russians were just being assholes trying to annoy us.

      That's quite possibly a contributing motivation, but it doesn't preclude a more pragmatic motivation.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    65. Re:Helpful by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      My point is, there is nothing difficult about jamming GPS. The signal is so weak, especially in these latitudes, that a 100W jammer probably would be enough to jam GPS in the whole country.
      In fact, the power output of the actual GPS satellites is just a few hundred watts and they sit way up high with the resulting power loss.

      There are different levels to jamming.

      The cheapest of the cheap simply aim to spew crap over the band - these are trivially easy to find and identify and they don't do as good a job as you might think. They work when they desensitize nearby receivers, but you have to to be close. It's basically like having someone shout in your ear. Once you start getting farther away, all you did is raise the noise floor a tiny amount.

      Basically, satellite signals are inherently weak. What we do is design coding schemes that actually let us recover a signal that's below the noise floor (which is basically what GPS uses). Through the magic of a correlation receiver you can recover signals buried deep within noise.

      The other kind of GPS jammer actually transmits incorrect GPS signals. These are much nastier and can lead things astray unless you compare your received GPS signals against each other.

    66. Re:Helpful by William+Baric · · Score: 1

      If missiles require GPS, then they are useless against Russia. The first thing Russians will do if the US attack them is to shoot down all GPS satellites.

    67. Re:Helpful by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In a real war, they would have their jammers HARMed.

      HARM = High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile

      But I agree that Russia did NATO a big favor by flipping over their hole cards. We likely learned a lot about where their jammers are located, and how they work. We also got some practice working around the jamming.

      Thanks Russia!

    68. Re: Helpful by Agent0013 · · Score: 1

      Right, because you can't just drop it off at a gas station bathroom or somewhere. Or tie it to a helium balloon and let it fly away.

      --

      -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
    69. Re:Helpful by Nutria · · Score: 1

      I never said it was cheap or cost-efficient. Just that we've had home-on-jammer HARMs for a long time.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    70. Re:Helpful by Agent0013 · · Score: 2

      It isn't only the devices that need to know where they are that can be broken by GPS jamming. I remember an article on here a year or a few ago that showed other problems. Even if you revert back to paper maps for navigation, there were systems that would not boot up because they could not get accurate time from the GPS satellites. So, even if they have nothing to do with navigation or location, they can still be built with a dependency on the GPS satellites for correct and accurate time.

      --

      -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
    71. Re:Helpful by Immerman · · Score: 1

      I agree. Which made the stories of GPS "hacked" drones in the Middle East a few years ago all the more troubling as it suggests gross incompetence amongst the military leadership. The widespread use of GPS-dependent technology promises to severely undermine the usefulness of our military against real threats, no matter how useful it is for stomping on grossly outmatched combatants. Get everyone accustomed to using a tool that's trivial to disable, and it's going to severely undermine their effectiveness when it's inevitably taken away by a credible opponent - just at the moment where their peak performance is needed most.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    72. Re:Helpful by Freischutz · · Score: 2

      I have to say that it was awful nice of the Russians to give us this demonstration of how easily everything form simple navigation to weapons targeting can be disastrously disrupted due to our over-reliance on GPS

      My guess is that they wanted to test the equipment to gauge NATO's ability to deal with the disruption. No point in using jamming equipment if it's not going to be effective (i.e. if they already have redundant systems to prevent this kind of jamming), and you'd want to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more effective.

      I don't think so because testing this live against opposing forces unnecessarily warns them of your capability. The Russians could have done secret tests deep in the Siberian forests in some military exclusion zone against a simulated opposing force using either civilian equipment or western military grade equipment obtained through third countries like, say, India? who in turn got it from some western country like Israel, for example, that sells hight tech military equipment and weapons to anybody willing to pay. That might have been picked up by western intelligence services but is unlikely to have influenced a western political, military and defence industry hierarchy that is too deeply invested in their existing systems to believe profit reducing intelligence reports about the vulnerabilities of their systems. Just witness the way these people were willing to completely ignore the potential issues with unencrypted command links to US drones in central Asia until the Iranians used that oversight to hack-n-jack the beast of Kandahar. Instead the Russians chose to showcase their capability, in a way that neither the western politicians, their military hierarchy nor the armaments industry can ignore however much they might want to. Western forces have been over-reliant on GPS, especially for weapons guidance for way too long. Jammers like this would be pretty effective against the JDAM for example which reverts to inertial guidance when the GPS is out, come to think of it, if the Russians can 'skew' the GPS signal the JDAM might not even notice and slam down next to the target. A bomb does not have to miss the target most of the time by more than a hundred yards for a $25.000 JDAM kit to be wasted. The whole thing is a bit like that time some Bush White House bozo bragged about the US ability to bug and track Al Quaeda satellite phones, within 24 hours every single Al Quaeda bigwig had dropped of the CIA's radar and vanished into Pakistani tribal country. The lesson here is that if you have an advantage like this, or tracking Al Quaeda satellite phones or decrypting Nazi army, air force and navy communications you don't tell anybody and never do anything to make your capability obvious to the enemy until it is absolutely necessary. Like Napoleon said, Never interrupt the enemy while he is making a mistake.

    73. Re: Helpful by William+Baric · · Score: 1

      Considering that since 2009 the US has chosen to have a warmongering attitude toward Russia, it's quite possible Russia did indeed troll NATO.

    74. Re:Helpful by Shotgun · · Score: 3, Informative

      Where there jammers are? Just how much energy do you think is require to jam a GPS receiver? They could have small, 10 Watt transmitters strapped to a few drones flying around transmitting randomly at 10k ft. It would totally disrupt a whole nation.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    75. Re:Helpful by William+Baric · · Score: 1

      Are you sure it's "Ivan" who is aggressive? I mean NATO (so the US) just made a military exercise right at the border of Russia. Imagine if Russia did the same thing to the US...

    76. Re:Helpful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      They work when they desensitize nearby receivers, but you have to to be close.

      You definitely do NOT have to be close.

      It's basically like having someone shout in your ear.

      Exactly. It's like having someone shout in your ear ... while you're sitting with the otolaryngologist attempting to characterise your age related hearing loss. GPS signals when they reach the surface are in the order of -130dBm The fact that they work at all is a borderline miracle and they drop out constantly by the most trivial and innocent of interference to say nothing of someone actively attempting to block the L1 band.

      Once you start getting farther away, all you did is raise the noise floor a tiny amount.

      Define further away. Any half way knowledgeable person can produce 500W of noise to interfere with these signals. Now IF these people were at line of sight 21000km away then they already generate just as much noise as as the signal itself. It's unlikely that they would be working from this distance for obvious reasons.

      What we do is design coding schemes that actually let us recover a signal that's below the noise floor (which is basically what GPS uses). Through the magic of a correlation receiver you can recover signals buried deep within noise.

      There's nothing magic about it. But here's the kicker, that thing you call magic is required just to make the base case work. There most definitely is no assumption that you'll be battling with another transmitter in the L1 band accidental or nefarious. It's why the band is so heavily protected in the first place.

      The other kind of GPS jammer actually transmits incorrect GPS signals.

      While everything you've said up until this point is wrong, this here is actually the most likely scenario. Transmitting incorrect signals. Incidentally that doesn't make the GP's comment any less relevant. Transmitting incorrect GPS signals is comically trivial. Like download some open source code, run a command and feed the resulting signal from your cheap $40 SDR through an easily built (or bought) amplifier kind of trivial. Heck there were people doing just this during the rise of Pokemon Go just so they don't have to leave the house while they play.

    77. Re:Helpful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Where is the sky? If you point a high gain antenna straight up your odds of hitting a satellite are greatly reduced. There's a reason that the best GPS antennas have a 180degree radiation pattern and a gain of 2.

      But even if you did point it straight up and even if you did have an incredibly high gain (no antenna is perfect), you're still battling a 500W signal from 21000km away vs a nefarious actor who is likely standing much closer to you.

      Before you understand how easy it is to jam a GPS signal you need to appreciate how amazing it is that it works at all given the absolute tiny signals that we are dealing with.

    78. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Russia didn't show us anything, any HAM or electronics tinkerer knows how to jam a GPS signal and those who are non technical can buy one from some site like alibaba for $50

      If NATO and their allies have not already prepared for such tactics to be used, then shame on them

    79. Re:Helpful by gurps_npc · · Score: 1

      I agree and I do not understand why people think this is 'funny'. I would have called it insightful.

      Furthermore, I think we should include this in future training. It is clear that is what we should expect if a real war with a tech power were to occur.

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    80. Re:Helpful by benjfowler · · Score: 1

      That won't always be the case.

    81. Re:Helpful by benjfowler · · Score: 1

      Just waiting for somebody to use that Russian slur "pindostanis"...

      So far, there's a lot of people rolling out all the shopworn, slightly-racist Russian stereotypes of the West and how it fights its wars.

      Stereotypes, which incidentally, lulls them into a false sense of security, and occasionally gets them (literally) blasted off the battlefield.

    82. Re:Helpful by benjfowler · · Score: 1

      Russia has been constantly assaulting the West with constant acts of war for a couple of years now.

      In fact, they just admitted their 2016 hack attacks on American and British democracy, as acts of war, as a defence against being sued by the DLC.

      So if the West committed an "act of war" now, they'd merely just be evening the score.

    83. Re: Helpful by benjfowler · · Score: 1

      The Russians are stupid backwards-ass hooligans. They're like urban idiots who smash things up and beat people for the sheer fun of it. Because they're stupid, spiteful peasant trash, who just get off on that sort of thing.

      Russia does it, simply because they're scum, and simply because they can. It's note more sophisticated than that.

    84. Re:Helpful by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      They do it at the borders of NATO all the time.
      The fact that they don't have the capability/friends over on this side of the globe (anymore) is hardly relevant.
      NATO members in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia are scared shitless of the Russians. Yes, we're all very sure that Ivan is aggressive. NATO was founded because of it.
      The alternate pole of NATO was the Warsaw Pact, which collapsed because its members managed to throw the yoke of their masters in Moscow. Your relativism here is fucking nauseating.

    85. Re:Helpful by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      They simulate GPS-dark operations on a regular basis. This story is less about how it affected them, and more about the fact that it was done to a sovereign nation with "collateral damage" in time of peace.

    86. Re: Helpful by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      How useful the information is would likely depend on how clever the jamming was. Spewing enough noise to drown out some satellites broadcasting over a fairly wide area from 20,000km away(and not that loudly, I think the power budget for the block III satellites is ~4kw, for everything they do, not just broadcast power) isn't necessarily of much interest; though it might be slightly alarming how many people need a reminder that it isn't exactly difficult.

      Exploiting the details of the implementation to allow jamming at power levels and/or duty cycles well below those of naive noisemaking is more interesting. Subtle injection of skew into the time or position results without being caught by any sanity checks is more interesting still.

    87. Re:Helpful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They can jam civilian GPS which isn't hardened against jamming, Military GPS on the other hand is (supposed to be) hardened against jamming via higher power, frequency hopping, directional antennas, etc. I do have a hard time believing that the Russians would demonstrate their jamming capabilities during an exercise, that would be a little like calling the bank you're about to rob and letting them know that their security guard is sleeping on the job. More likely someones mis-calabrated/faulty equipment was throwing off a bunch of static. It wouldn't be the first time that an expensive piece of military hardware jammed itself/other friendlies.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M247_Sergeant_York

    88. Re:Helpful by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Not only is the signal really weak, but you generally need to talk to a bunch of different satellites at the same time. You'd need a giant apparatus with hundreds of shielded antennas pointing different directions, just to avoid having to make each shield move to track a satellite.

      Military systems instead use a bunch of other fancy techniques with encrypted signals and backup navigation methods. GPS is useful, but not so useful that you want every navigation system to weigh 2 tons.

    89. Re:Helpful by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You could probably do it cheaper if you had an old car stereo and a microwave oven to use for parts.

    90. Re:Helpful by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      What if the jammers cost $1 each (made in China) and an unguided mortar shell costs $400?

      Now, add in the differences in mass and volume, and you might get a picture of what it would take.

      Oh, and a guided mortar costs $60k.

    91. Re:Helpful by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Ha. Actually I'm a little surprised they divulged they had that capability.

      All of the capabilities that would in danger of being revealed would be how NATO responds to it. That's the part that isn't easy to just calculate based on signal propagation. Stuff that is easily calculated isn't the stuff you keep secret. Operational responses cannot be calculated without gathering intelligence. For example, by turning the jammers on at a time when NATO units would be trying hard to communicate and are in fact practicing their operational responses...

    92. Re:Helpful by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      From TFA:

      "Norway has determined that Russia was responsible for jamming GPS signals in the Kola Peninsula..."

      Er, has anyone realised that the Kola Peninsula lies wholly inside Russia?

      It is called "Continental English," you can't parse the grammar or syntax that precisely. You don't uncover subtleties that way, you only lose the thread.

    93. Re:Helpful by Kuruk · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Everyone needs to play games to test there military might :)

    94. Re:Helpful by SharpFang · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ...and hit a $20 worth of antenna and cable equipment with a several $mln missile. Getting the jammer (1 out of 80) offline for 30 seconds it takes Misha to plug the cable leading to the antenna 300 meters north (then an hour to fix the first one.)

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    95. Re:Helpful by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      "How precise does your nuclear missile really need to be?" - Depends. If you want to destroy a city of civilians, not very. If you want to destroy an underground command bunker or nuclear silo, it must have a goddamn pinpoint accuracy.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    96. Re:Helpful by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      Nah, Wall Street is not one entity, it's a plrthora of firms each with own solutions (jealously guarded against the competitor). Some may use GPS. But jamming it you'd only make the others happier.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    97. Re:Helpful by SharpFang · · Score: 1

      Or maybe you just don't understand Russians.

      They have a very special sense of humor.

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    98. Re: Helpful by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Even better, adjust their broadcasting times to each other so it looks like a military vehicle driving, which could prompt the use of the aforementioned HARM.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    99. Re:Helpful by sabbede · · Score: 1
      "Dear Vlad,

      Thanks. We were going to have them turn off their GPS to simulate jamming, but as you know a simulation is no substitute for real experience. Besides, we weren't really sure how your jammers worked or what effect they would have, so giving us a chance to see them in action was most helpful.

      Sincerely, NATO

      P.S., Suck it."

    100. Re: Helpful by anegg · · Score: 1

      Bingo. An adversary is holding war games. You increase a threat or compromise a capability, and observe the effect on your adversaryâ(TM)s behavior. Now you have learned something about your adversary (and they about you), but who gave away more? These are the games militaries play.

    101. Re:Helpful by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      It was nice of Russia to make the exercises more realistic.

      It wasn't nice. Most NATO conflicts have been against adversaries with limited capabilities. e.g. no GPS jamming. The Russians haven't been able to gather intelligence on how NATO operates against more advanced adversaries. Jamming the GPS signal allowed the Russians to gather intel on tactics used by NATO in the absence of GPS.

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    102. Re:Helpful by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Instead of jamming, they would probably inject some errors, i.e. Selective Availability, so systems would still 'think' they have a good signal.

      Spoofing is much more difficult than jamming military receivers. One reason for the military encryption is authentication to prevent spoofing.

  2. Real war conditions by Nukenbar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds like what will really happen in a conflict.

    1. Re:Real war conditions by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      Sounds like what will really happen in a conflict.

      Exactly right. In a conflict, all hell would break loose and there would be collateral damage.

      When there is no conflict, civilian users of GPS can be forgiven for getting a little steamed if they become "collateral damage".

      If NATO wants to simulate a loss of GPS, they can certainly do that without "help".

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:Real war conditions by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Exactly.

      "In view of the civilian usage of GPS, jamming of this sort is dangerous, disruptive and irresponsible,"

      War is "dangerous, disruptive and irresponsible (to many)". Losing GPS isn't the worst thing that would happen to the civilian population in actual war.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    3. Re:Real war conditions by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      It's mild compared to getting shot down (e.g. Russia shooting down MH17) . But in peacetime losing position can be pretty damn dangerous.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Good Practice by techdolphin · · Score: 2

    I hope our military can operate without GPS, and it is something they should practice with or without Russia's help.

    1. Re:Good Practice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They can, but Russia wants to observe the procedure so that they can interfere with that too.

      If other nations would do to Russia half of the bullshit Russia does to others then the Russian generals would have a fscking meltdown.

    2. Re:Good Practice by Micah+NC · · Score: 4, Informative

      Iran's capture of our drone four years or so ago ... indicates our military can't operate without GPS.

      On the other side ... human pilots (with all the design/support/payload/safety) bring up aircraft cost astronomically.

    3. Re:Good Practice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Good chance most of them couldn't operate without their smartphones...

    4. Re:Good Practice by getuid() · · Score: 1

      You mean, like, putting US military bases all over the world including ther fscking foregarden?

      Or sustaining something north of 50.000 NGOs in their country?

      I'm no fan of russinas, but their generals sure seem pretty relaxed to me, given the circumstances. More so than the US generals anyway.

  4. "international contracts" by gDLL · · Score: 2, Insightful

    F you very much for these international "contracts" ... how about other "contracts" such as british sovereignty in north america, slavery, Yalta, communism, the belgian Congo .... how about the "peace in our time"-accord with the 3rd reich ?

    God help the americans.

  5. Nothing by webinstinct · · Score: 1

    ... is what will be done about it. Russia scored some cheap points with their population by doing something almost juvenile and all the "adults" in NATO can do is call this irresponsible and unprofessional. Same thing happens when Russian planes buzz US/NATO planes in international airspace. Whatcha gonna do?

  6. YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP! by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    but it's expecting a bit much of civilian oil tanker captains to navigate without GPS

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    1. Re:YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP! by Talderas · · Score: 1

      That tanker is 250m long and 44m wide and has a displacement of 112k tons. That frigate is 134m long, 17m wide, and has a displacement of 5.3k tons. That frigate stands no chance of stopping that tanker in a collision. The tanker may have been where it shouldn't have been but the frigate should have been able to get out of the way unless it was crowded or low visibility conditions.

      --
      "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
    2. Re:YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      It is not. In fact, they're required by law to be able to do so.

    3. Re:YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP! by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      From what I heard, according to the communications, the frigate was at fault. It didn't want to turn because it was "only" 900m from shore.

      I mean, turning isn't really a requirement, unless you don't want to lose one of your five largest ships which costs as much as your entire defense budget for a year.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    4. Re:YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP! by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      You don't really need the communications for that; as the smaller vessel, it is expected to get out of the way.

  7. Map reading is still part of basic training by pgmrdlm · · Score: 1

    https://www.armystudyguide.com...>br>https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2016/02/11/commandant-to-marines-get-out-your-map-and-your-compass/

    --
    Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
  8. Jam GLONASS next time? by Octorian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So when Russia does their next big exercise, should we deploy the GLONASS jammers in return?

    I really do hope we're able to deal with a lack of GPS. Everything has become so dependent on it, and this general assumption that we have unchallenged space superiority. Probably because we've gotten way to accustomed to fighting Iraqis and Afghans who really cannot even pretend to challenge us technologically.

    1. Re:Jam GLONASS next time? by guruevi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      GLONASS is (slightly) better defended against jamming. It's not impossible but the signal frequency for each GLONASS satellite is not fixed like GPS. So you have to jam a broader band and since the satellites are built for this, they can switch frequencies at a dime.

      Even GPS jamming isn't that effective for military installations unless you do it from space. Various anti-jamming techniques for military purposes involve having multiple receivers, some that would shield signals that come laterally (from the ground). Although that may prevent you from acquiring satellites nearer the horizon, it's a tradeoff.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    2. Re:Jam GLONASS next time? by MiniMike · · Score: 1

      We should probably be prepared to use GPS or GLONASS (as well as neither).

  9. Re:Hahaahahaha by Archtech · · Score: 1

    And Putin just sat back and chuckled at the stupid Americans.

    Well, at least you got that right. Although, being a diplomat and a statesman, he doesn't let it show.

    --
    I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
  10. This affected civilian GPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    C'mon slashdot. Everyone knows that GPS can be jammed, and the NATO military can deal with it. The reason that this is an issue is that civilian GPS was jammed. Aircraft, boats, etc. that were not part of the military exercises were possibly affected. That is a reckless and possibly dangerous thing to do.

    1. Re:This affected civilian GPS by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      does this mean people will no longer be eager to dump all those VOR stations scattered about the country?

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
  11. If this were a surprise... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1

    ... shame on NATO. I would expect this to be one of the first things that is done during any military conflict. So I'd say we owe a thank-you to Russia for adding a level of realism to the exercises.

    1. Re:If this were a surprise... by jeff4747 · · Score: 1

      Considering a few countries filed NOTAMs about GPS being blocked before Russia jammed anything, I really doubt it was a surprise.

      Also, GPS jamming is somewhat common in military exercises. It turns out the military is not staffed entirely by idiots.

    2. Re:If this were a surprise... by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      I would expect this to be one of the first things that is done during any military conflict.

      They do.
      What led you to believe otherwise?
      This is news because a country we have a near Cold War with did it across their border and impacted civilian population as well as military exercises.
      Not quite an act of war, but it's hostile. Whether or not it's expected in case of a real conflict is entirely inconsequential to the report.

    3. Re:If this were a surprise... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1

      ...It turns out the military is not staffed entirely by idiots....

      Never said it was. That's your straw-man.

  12. Most severe consequece reported this far by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Was that reindeer (carbou) herders had difficulties locating whereabouts of their herd as the gps coordinates transmitted by tracking collars few reindeers wear were reporting locations somewhere else than the herd was. This was reported by local newspapers here day after the exercise was already over and incident was first reported and told that Finnish Communications Authority had heard about jamming while it was happening but did not bother reacting as nobody yet had complained about disturbances.

    Now few days after when the incident was reported politicians are expressing that they need to do something about the matter. Like it would really matter to Russians, they will repeat it at their own will.

    It's like those airspace violations at Baltic sea. They just don't care and thus those happen every now and then no matter how they each time promise to be more cautious in the future. Someone needs to be real gullible to trust any Russian promises if the promise doesn't primarily serve their own interests all times.

  13. Re:Major troop movements near Russian borders... by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    This Warsaw Pact?

    Didn't know the US was a signature power. You learn something new every day...

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  14. Re:Hahaahahaha by cyberchondriac · · Score: 1

    I have to wonder if you have posters of him riding horseback, shirtless, or posing with a bear, all over your bedroom wall.

    --

    Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
  15. Re:unlikely by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

    You would be wrong. Not a lot of people remember, but back when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa one of the things the Soviets did was they bombed Berlin on August 7 1941 with DB-3 long distance bombers. If they know there is a large force behind the attacks threatening their nation they could strike.

  16. Since when has military been concerned with... by 3seas · · Score: 2

    Civilians... other than considering them acceptable collateral damage?

  17. If true, it's quite nice of them... by bradley13 · · Score: 1

    If it's actually true that Russia jammed GPS, one should thank them profusely. Any military planner who expects GPS to last past the first minutes of a serious military confrontation, is living in fantasy land. It is easily jammed, and numerous countries undoubtedly have anti-satellite capability. Hence, practicing maneuvers without GPS had better be standard practice.

    Of course, it's also possible that one NATO unit was tasked with the jamming, without informing the other units. And this was later blamed on Russia, because right now every damned thing is blamed on Russia.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
  18. Re:The US is bound via the NATO. by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    By the very definition of what the Warsaw Pact was no NATO member has EVER signed it. It's pretty much impossible.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  19. Re:Hahaahahaha by William+Baric · · Score: 1

    Putin is one of the best statesmen I can think of. I mean in the West we have Bozo the Trump, I make great duck face Trudeau, momma's boy Macron, let the invaders in Merkel, I'm everyone's puppet May... So it's not like the competition is tough.

  20. All's fair in love and war by bigtreeman · · Score: 1

    All's fair in love and war.
    I hope they are still able to operate with map and compass and aim their guns with slide rule calculations.
    The next world war could quickly devolve into a good old fashioned hand to hand blood bath.

    --
    Go well
  21. Re:Hahaahahaha by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    You really are a vile little shitstain, aren't you?

  22. Re:Major troop movements near Russian borders... by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Wrong again, Ivan.

    You aren't modded troll for calling out some kind of inconvenient truth, you're being modded a Troll for gaslighting and dressing it up as such.
    What I consider a defining aspect of our times, is I'm not even sure you're aware of how full of shit you are. I think you might actually believe that shit.

  23. Re:Hahaahahaha by benjfowler · · Score: 1

    They're welcome to keep thinking that ;-)

    The Russians NEVER learn. It'll cost them.

  24. It was not the Russians by aberglas · · Score: 1

    NATO knows that that it is easy to accidentally build dependencies on GPS into their systems, given that GPS is used everywhere. So to perform a serious exercise, they want to jam GPS to find out what stops working.

    But it is difficult to just jam a specific area. There will be leakage. And that will annoy civilians that rely on GPS nearby.

    So blame the jamming on the Russians.

  25. Your Driverless Car - Dead in a War by BrendaEM · · Score: 1

    Not only would GPS be the low-hanging fruit, ripe for disabling. If everyone has driver-less vehicles, America's productivity stops.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM