US Government will be intermittently jamming GPS near New Mexico until Feburary 24

[Ithanul]

On 1/29/2018 at 10:39 PM, Ryujin2003 said:

What is really happening:

 

Believe it or not, but the military does do training excercises, and often, the tow no s and such they train around are more than happy for the "inconvenience".

 

But.. scientifically speaking, how much power would be needed to jam  that much GPS? That would be insane. I would guess they are limiting certain types of GPS location frequencies over that region manually from the satellites, not doing it via jamming or other on the ground technologies.

 

Lmao, you made me laugh real good on this one.

As someone who is former active duty and still in the Guard and work on a base.  Pretty much sums a bit of an exercise up.

 

Guy at gate, "Hey, what this exercise about this time?"

Other co-worker, "No clue, but I be glad when it is over and we get off these 12 hour shifts."

 

Pretty much the way it was in the aircraft shop I was part of. 

 

But yeah, the military is always, somewhere doing exercises.  And usually, during one, anything and everything will be thought up to test.  Reason, do it now during an annoying exercise so we don't have to do it again for awhile.  Especially the inspection style ones (ugh, those are the worse).

 

But just one State, pffff, that a small exercise then.

[AshleyAshes]

On 1/29/2018 at 10:39 PM, Ryujin2003 said:

But.. scientifically speaking, how much power would be needed to jam  that much GPS? That would be insane. I would guess they are limiting certain types of GPS location frequencies over that region manually from the satellites, not doing it via jamming or other on the ground technologies.

I have an update to this question.  You wanted to know how much power would be needed to jam GPS over such a wide side and that it would be 'Insane'.  Ars had some interesting information.  Namely, the GPS system is not going to be artificially jammed by making changes to the signals from the NAVSTAR system itself.

 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/dod-red-flag-exercise-ushers-in-gps-jamming-season-across-west/

 

In short, The United States Air Force will be using it's practical electronic warfare assets to jam the GPS signal.  So no, it's not an 'insane amount of power' you can jam the entire area of the widest circle, over 400 nautical square miles, with a specialized Hercules.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_EC-130H_Compass_Call

 

The USAF has 14 of these aircraft and jamming GPS is not a high tech endeavor so building similar aircraft would be trivial for basically any other nation as well.

[Ithanul]

Ah, the all mighty EC-130H.

 

If there is one cargo aircraft that been outfitted to a myriad of configurations, it is the C-130.  If you think that one is nuts, the AC-130W (I got to work around those) and the AC-130J have some nutty setups themselves.  I seen what a Whiskey model can do, even by itself one of those can tear the crap out buildings, vehicles, and troops, along with seeing some very interesting tech.

[Zzyzx]

If you read that NOTAM, it says they will post actual NOTAMs at least 24 hours before any GPS jamming. If you look up NOTAMS for ZAB (Albuquerque ARTCC) and filter for just GPS, you can see more detail. The first one is daily from 0700-1030 from 2/13-2/17, not blacking out all of those days, if you look at the details, but it's not just a month of constant jamming.

[ShredBird]

On 1/31/2018 at 4:17 AM, asus killer said:

This makes no sense at all, considering that anyone can disable a gps by turning it off why go to all the trouble of blocking the signal over such a large area that also includes a foreign country, disables emergency services use of a fundamental tool, etc...

I don't think you can turn GPS off on a plane or a bomb or a missile.  The functionality is likely hard coded in and there is no way in hell they're going to even attempt to modify code just for a test.  The military never intended GPS on these systems to ever be turned off.

The USAF owns GPS, they can do what they want with it.  Using it for Google maps and everything else is a privilege, not a right.  And as @Zzyzx has shown they're on a schedule and they've likely shared that information with everyone so that they can be prepared to operate without it.

[ShredBird]

On 2/8/2018 at 5:15 PM, AshleyAshes said:

I have an update to this question.  You wanted to know how much power would be needed to jam GPS over such a wide side and that it would be 'Insane'.  Ars had some interesting information.  Namely, the GPS system is not going to be artificially jammed by making changes to the signals from the NAVSTAR system itself.

 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/dod-red-flag-exercise-ushers-in-gps-jamming-season-across-west/

 

In short, The United States Air Force will be using it's practical electronic warfare assets to jam the GPS signal.  So no, it's not an 'insane amount of power' you can jam the entire area of the widest circle, over 400 nautical square miles, with a specialized Hercules.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_EC-130H_Compass_Call

 

The USAF has 14 of these aircraft and jamming GPS is not a high tech endeavor so building similar aircraft would be trivial for basically any other nation as well.

Correct, it actually doesn't take much to jam GPS or any signal for that matter.  It just doesn't happen because of how extremely illegal it is and doing anything in those frequency ranges requires a lot paperwork and permits.  Worthwhile test for the DoD for sure.

[Ithanul]

7 hours ago, ShredBird said:

The USAF owns GPS, they can do what they want with it.  Using it for Google maps and everything else is a privilege, not a right.  And as @Zzyzx has shown they're on a schedule and they've likely shared that information with everyone so that they can be prepared to operate without it.

Yep, most seem to forget that the GPS system is a military system under the USAF.  The military just allows a part of it to be used for civilian purposes.  It is consider a battle system platform by the military.  So, at any time, depending on military directive, the military can control and direct the GPS system.