quade 3 #1 January 10, 2003 http://www.msnbc.com/news/857322.asp?0dm=T15LN Ok, suppose Iraq -does- have GPS jammers, would it make sense for them to use them? Follow me on this. If they allow the U.S. to freely use GPS guided weapons, then the Iraqis will have their centers of command and control demolished in short order, but will probably -not- have a lot of collateral damage to innocent civilians. If, on the other hand they use GPS jammers, then they'll have far more collateral damage and will still eventually lose due to the overwhelming number of weapons we can afford to lob in their direction.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gawain 0 #2 January 10, 2003 I read this article yesterday. If I recall correctly, the jamming has to be far more focused or far more broad based than the actual triangluation that GPS uses or the GPS signal itself to guide bombs, cars, hikers, etc. Of course the other problem here is that the MSNBC story is woefully short on detail. The only other coverage I can find is on FoxNews. Clicky GPS jammer There's a little more detail, but not much. At least there's a picture.So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright 'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life Make light! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
charliezulu 0 #3 January 10, 2003 GPS doesn't take you through endgame, that just gets you into the ballpark. CZ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #4 January 10, 2003 Sure as hell makes the first few innings easy.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest #5 January 10, 2003 This makes the assumption that GPS-guided weapons pose enough of a threat to make jamming worthwhile. Most modern fighter jets have IMU (inertial measurement and internal gyros) that are not dependent upon GPS, except for corrections from time to time. Normally, IMUs are so accurate that GPS is redundant. The Tomahawk missile has inertial guidance, and uses visual references for correction. It only uses GPS as a check. If GPS reception is jammed, the missle will continue to track using its last updates. Further, the Iraqis most likely use GPS for ground navigation too (the desert is mostly flat and featureless over there, and it's too expensive and time-consuming to teach grunts how to navigate via theodolite, compass, sextant, or other means). "may be able to fool the precision-guided bombs and missiles that would form the backbone of the U.S. military arsenal in a war with Iraq." BS. Dumb ol' iron bombs will form the backbone of ordnance, same as always, 'cause they're cheap. For more precision, Paveway seeker heads (GBU, guided by laser) can be mounted on iron bombs, or Mavericks (TV-guided AGM-65) can be used day or night. GPS guidance might be used in bad weather, where the target can't be seen in order to be painted with a laser or locked onto by a video-guided weapon. "The United States anticipates that more than 80 percent of the munitions used in any war on Iraq would be precision-guided munitions using GPS." Bah. More BS. They might have meant "80 percent of precision-guided munitions", but not the total. Only 10% of all the iron dropped on Iraq last time was the smart kind. Although that figure will doubtless increase somewhat, it still won't be much of the total. Once again, a clueless press weanie gets it wrong. With this "GPS jam" nonsense, I'm reminded of Wile E. Coyote putting up a little umbrella to shield himself from the boulder crashing down on him. Just like Wile E., it won't do the Iraqis any good, but might even do harm by engendering a false sense of security."The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat." Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DJL 232 #6 January 10, 2003 That's a funny article. It's about how the jammers will thwart attacks yet the sources say, "The question is their effectiveness", and "...effectiveness is questionable." -Doug"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wingnut 0 #7 January 10, 2003 most all gps's that the military uses are anti spoof. i wonder how hard it would be to completly jam them.....and we controll the gps sats. i wonder if they will institute the inacuracy for civilains again in the near future...... ______________________________________ "i have no reader's digest version" Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zlew 0 #8 January 10, 2003 they can turn it on and off (the inacuracy and or the whole system) as they like even in specific areas. So we could zap the middle east...china...whatever as needed. kinda cool. Z Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wingnut 0 #9 January 10, 2003 Quotethey can turn it on and off (the inacuracy and or the whole system) as they like even in specific areas yes and no..not in specific areas but overall..... they can make it +/- whatever they want and only with the right encryption decoder can you get it to be dead on........ ______________________________________ "i have no reader's digest version" Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #10 January 10, 2003 Quotemost all gps's that the military uses are anti spoof. i wonder how hard it would be to completly jam them..... Anti-spoof is one thing. Jam proof is another. All you'd have to do is overpower them. That's a pretty low-tech solution to high-tech weapons. whether or not it's the smart thing to do for your people, that's another issue.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
billvon 2,471 #11 January 10, 2003 >. i wonder how hard it would be to completly jam them..... Not hard at all. We accidentally did it to nearby aircraft (on the ground fortunately) during development of the MDSS airborne system. We were emitting at 1610MHz, GPS is 1575. Extensive filtering was required to prevent GPS interference. >. i wonder if they will institute the inacuracy for civilains again in the near future...... Don't know why they would. They could just use GLONASS instead. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zenister 0 #12 January 10, 2003 QuoteQuotemost all gps's that the military uses are anti spoof. i wonder how hard it would be to completly jam them..... Anti-spoof is one thing. Jam proof is another. All you'd have to do is overpower them. That's a pretty low-tech solution to high-tech weapons. whether or not it's the smart thing to do for your people, that's another issue. exactly. without contact to at least 3 satellites your figure of merit is above 4 which translates to something like a 1000m error...yeeks..____________________________________ Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nathaniel 0 #13 January 11, 2003 I imagine it would be pretty hard to hide a GPS jammer of the scale necessary to screw with military GPS... Turn it on for longer than N seconds it will be another target. Since bombs these days only need intermittent GPS sync to get most of the advantage, you'd need to continuously block gps sync to get a good defensive benefit... IMO it will be mostly useless since either 1) it is turned off 2) it isn't anymore NathanielMy advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #14 January 11, 2003 Quote I imagine it would be pretty hard to hide a GPS jammer of the scale necessary to screw with military GPS... Turn it on for longer than N seconds it will be another target. Are you suggesting that we have GPS jammer seeking weapons? Remember that because of the distances involved the GPS jammer doesn't need to be anywhere near as large or powerful as the satellites themselves. Further, my -guess- is that somebody with just a little basic knowledge of electronics could build them pretty damn cheap compared to the price of the weapons platforms and packages they're trying to jam. If I was Saddam you bet your ass I'd be willing to spend a couple hundred dollars on a disposable GPS jammer to avoid getting a direct hit by a $100,000 "smart" bomb. And, that's assuming that the U.S. could actually hunt down and dispose of the jammers. If I was Saddam, I'd -probably- deploy the GPS jammers because for him personally, there's not going to be a down-side to it. Sure, more of his own people are going to die because of it, but probably not him personally, AND the collateral damage and casualties will whip up more sympathy in other countries. He'd be a bad leader for doing it, but I don't think that's much of an issue with him.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nathaniel 0 #15 January 11, 2003 It's not far fetched to me that GPS-interference seeking devices could be available soon if not already. GPS operates via radio waves, and we already have lots of different radio-wave-emitter seeking weapons. True, an opponent could deploy lots of GPS-denial equipment, but the more he allocates to fancy equipment the less bullets and food for his army... And the greater his logistical nightmare trying to power them all... and not forget EMP weapons. GPS is a line-of-site signal too. With a little effort and a directional antenna or four I bet we could make it very difficult to interfere with a GPS tracking device--not that I perceive it would be worthwhile in a cost-benefit sense due to other drawbacks in GPS-jam scenarios. Ultimately tho, I'm no military scientist, and I don't work for the gov't...I can't prove to you that it is not feasible to jam GPS, but without more information and given the tendencies of the American media I think you can forgive me for being a sceptic. In military terms it's my perception that outside the US / western Europe collateral damage means close to nil... I fully expect the US would employ GPS "jamming" by degrading or turning off the GPS signal should iraq bombard the continental US with GPS guided bombs... What's the avg density of people per square mile in the US? Even in densely-populated areas, any military would (should?) put its own operational effectiveness ahead of that of civilians in any serious conflict--serious as in possible it would lose. GPS has many non-guided bomb uses too, eg, navigation for people planes cars and boats, time synchronization (useful in some cryptographic scenarios), of which it would be advantageous to deny an enemy. Summary 1. I am a sceptic 2. Anyone facing a GPS -equipped foe would use such a device if they had it (or had something that claimed to be a GPS jammer) 3. I doubt it would have a significant impact on a US military operation in iraq ( see #1 ) Nathaniel finally, there is a paper floating around the NIST web server on the vulnerability of civilian assets to GPS denial. It specifically mentions transportation, finance, and one other sector it decided was vulnerable. I'll post a link if I can re-discover it / wasn't taken down post 9/2001. --edit-- wasn't the nist, oops. here's the part about the transportation sector http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/archive/2001/Oct/FinalReport-v4.6.pdf here's the page I got that link from if you can't sleep tonight http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/gps/geninfo/default.htm links to discussion of same topic on sci.military.moderated http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&th=b7d227ecee977fc8&seekm=B9B92C05.1BE6A%25rkeeter%40earthlink.net#link1 http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&th=1f0f60af4354cc60&seekm=F5x76u.246%40law7.daytonoh.ncr.com&frame=offMy advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
phatcat 0 #16 January 11, 2003 I just bought a new GPS receiver, so will any of this crap that I didn't read affect me? Cause if it does, I'll be, like, pissed and stuff. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 3 #17 January 11, 2003 I seriously doubt that Iraq has the capabilities to interfer with the GPS system world-wide.I have no doubt that they could easily have the ability to interfer with it over their own country.You're probably going to find your GPS works just fine for 99% of anything you'd want to use it for -- getting un-lost for instance.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rhino 0 #18 January 11, 2003 The JADAM is VERY important to the military. A typical Laser guided 2000lb bomb costs nearly a half million dollars.. Now they can take a 2000lb mk84, strap a 15,000$ fin package on it for pennies of what the laser guided version costs. $500,000 for one laser guided bomb? or $25,000 for a gps guided bomb? The math is easy.. Not only that, personell don't have to be on the ground lasing the targets... Rhino Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KawiZX900 0 #19 January 11, 2003 i'd really like for people to believe that there are things in military GPS that some goons will not be able to interfere with. I'd hazzard a guess that there is nothing to worry about. unless you are stuck in Iroq with a Garmin street maps gps then u may be fuked sans lube Accelerate hard to get them looking, then slam on the fronts and rollright beside the car, hanging the back wheel at eye level for a few seconds. Guaranteed reaction- Dave Sonsky Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rhino 0 #20 January 11, 2003 Those bombs GPS systems are encrypted.. The possibility of that GPS encryption being broken is a billion to one.. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KawiZX900 0 #21 January 11, 2003 sssshhhhh !!!!! loose lips sink ships Accelerate hard to get them looking, then slam on the fronts and rollright beside the car, hanging the back wheel at eye level for a few seconds. Guaranteed reaction- Dave Sonsky Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Gawain 0 #22 January 11, 2003 You don't have to decrypt a signal in order to jam it.So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright 'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life Make light! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
phatcat 0 #23 January 11, 2003 Quote You don't have to decrypt a signal in order to jam it. Yeah, and it aitn't pretty... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KawiZX900 0 #24 January 11, 2003 so how does one jam a sattelite anyway? Accelerate hard to get them looking, then slam on the fronts and rollright beside the car, hanging the back wheel at eye level for a few seconds. Guaranteed reaction- Dave Sonsky Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zenister 0 #25 January 11, 2003 simply put, you dont. you jam the signal by increasing the noise level in the area you are trying to protect to the point that the receiver cannot 'hear' it. theoretically you could jam the transmitter (satellite) so that its signal could not get to any receiver, but doing so would be hideously expensive (in power terms) and easily targeted____________________________________ Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
