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

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.

Comments

Helpful

[Aero77]

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

Re:Helpful

[dunkelfalke]

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.

Re:Helpful

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Helpful

[Streetlight]

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

Re:Helpful

[Nutria]

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

Re:Helpful

[pgmrdlm]

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.

Re:Helpful

[dunkelfalke]

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.

Re:Helpful

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Helpful

[Freischutz]

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.

Re: Helpful

[locketine]

Yes

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

Re:Helpful

[cstacy]

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.)

Re:Helpful

[ShanghaiBill]

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!

Re:Helpful

[Shotgun]

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.

Re:Helpful

[SharpFang]

...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.)

Real war conditions

[Nukenbar]

Sounds like what will really happen in a conflict.

Re:Good Practice

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good Practice

[Micah NC]

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.

This affected civilian GPS

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jam GLONASS next time?

[guruevi]

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.