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Russia is signaling it could take out the West's internet and GPS. There's no good backup plan.
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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I find the threat of GPS loss to be hard to believe. Theyd have to take out 38 GPS satelites and presumably any of the other navagation satellites American allies have in orbit, and presumably theyd have to not damage their own navigation satelites in the process. I also doubt they could do that all at the same time, or quick enough that no one could respond. Im sure they have the capability, and im sure they have an idea of what the operation would have to look like but in terms of a plan that's actionable, I have big doubts.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that threat.
They know exactly where in the sky they are. They know what frequencies their antennas are tuned to. I'm betting burning out those transceivers would not be an impossible feat.
I also don't know how well they put up against really large lasers
They've also been fully capable of putting s*** into space for years. I would not put it past them to have some form of combination weather/spy satellite and weapons platform out there.
They must be aware of the concept of re-ta-lia-tion. You shoot down my satellites, I shoot down yours. Nobody wins and we are all back 40 years.
or they could jam the signal.
Where though? They just gonna fly enough jammers up into orbit to cover the entire path and all the satelites and pretend thats not going to also jam every navagation satelite including their own and China, their biggest allys? I don't see it.
They just have to give them the raspberry.
I don't get why this is so hard.
Blowing up the GPS satellites is certainly an option and there's not much we could do to stop them. We know that China has succesfuly tested an anti-satellite missile in 2007. I would not be surprised if Russia was working on the technology at the same time. If they can't or don't want to blow up the satellites, then they could perhaps launch their own jamming satellites to orbit near the existing GPS satellites would work.
Edit: It just occurred to me that you don't need to jam them. Just put up your own satellites that mimic the GPS satellites to throw off the calculations of anyone trying to use them. Your devices wouldn't know which signals were legit.
The Soviet Union proved that it was able to shoot down satellites in the 60s. The technical difficulty of hitting a satellite with a missile is not really an obstacle here
Yeah, the Soviet union could also mass produce tanks and planes. Russia today...
Glances at Ukraine
Is using almost exclusively Soviet stock.
It may not be a problem technology wise, but do they really have the equipment today to blow up dozens of satellites?
I seriously doubt it, Russia isn't the Soviet Union, they seem less capable, and corruption would probably have undermined the program even if it still existed.
And even if they can, can they also do it without harming their own and China's geopositioning systems?
Nope, they can't. And not only that, destroying that many satellites is almost assuredly going to trigger Kessler Syndrome and lock out space for the most part for a good long while.
Do this, then get absolutely raw dog fucked by the US (and any other competent) military, who has absolutely no issue with ground nav or weapons guidance because they all use encrypted GPS signals.
There's also back ups. so destroying the GPS isn't a good solve either.
You don’t need satellites in space to shift GPS, they’ve been messing with it in war zones for years, and AWACS like planes could do it in real time anywhere they won’t get shot down.
China doing it in 2007 was big news because they joined the club. The West and Russia has had the capability for decades.
They can't even reach the satellites
Jam some strategic locations, like air travel hubs or highly populated areas for the highest impact. No need to jam wide open low population areas without military targets.
Real curious how Russia plans to get jamming equipment the size of a truck into those areas
I also just don't see anyone in Russia deciding that were going to trigger article 5 by using a jammer on US soil. The risk reward is non existent unless they can make the whole country GPS and internet dark at the same time. Imagine that many resources going on the ground in a country as large as America. It's basically asking Ukraine to regain any territory they had a counter invasion plan ready for.
That's easy you just drive the truck into the area. It's when you turn it on that's the issue. You're going to meet a lot of people very fast.
Like speedating with small arms fire!
Lmao, not really. But it's fun to think about like that.
The jamming equipment could be the size of a briefcase; the received signal is below the noise floor.
Or it could be one satellite already in the air beaming to a specific area. Or a constellation of satellites already in the air who handoff coverage of a specific area. Or a hack of an existing satellite constellation command and control channel to reprogram the transmitters to cover up GPS L band.
You are not jamming GPS with a briefcase.
I’m familiar with radio systems. You could absolutely put a 1 kW L-band jammer in a briefcase, with an effective radius of probably a couple of miles.
Huh. I went to go look at that stuff and it's definitely 2024. At any rate news articles made it clear that airports have dealt with GPS jamming for over a decade already and the FCC is pretty quick to send someone out with RDF equipment if it's not a transient signal from a highway. Planes aren't falling out of the sky so they've got a good idea of how to handle it already.
I was just pointing out that it isn't necessary to jam 100% of GPS to have a massive impact. The odds that Russia could pull anything off is pretty small, and jamming GPS for more than a few hours is evenless likely.
Triggering NATO collective defense so they can deploy a jammer on US soil doesn't seem to be what they're threatening, and they're already been using jammers in Ukraine. So either theyre threatening to do something they can't do or theyre threatening to do something they're already doing, and already being countered, in a new place.
Which they do. Not on a global scale, though.
It is quite annoying to be Russia's neighbours. But you can work around it. In fact, it's not bad to train yourself to operate without GNSS. And it would be even better if the jammers decided to spontaneously combust.