Military To Jam GPS Signals

from the watch-where-you're-going dept

Mon, Jun 14th 2004 12:30am — Mike Masnick

If you're out on a boat on the east coast this week, don't expect to rely on your GPS navigation system. It appears that the government isn't just interested in jamming mobile phones for military reasons - but are now testing systems to jam GPS signals along the east coast as well. They've been trying to get the message out, but it's likely that some people out on their boats may find themselves a bit less sure of where they are. Of course, it was partly because of this very threat of US jamming of GPS signals that Europe has been working on their own satellite location system, Galileo - which will be independent of military control. This also might mean that any jamming by the US of GPS won't much matter once Galileo is up and running.

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Richard Parker, 14 Jun 2004 @ 1:16am

Deliberate GPS degradation, Galileo, and GPS jammi
Mike, with regard to the Galileo system and GPS jamming, I think you've gotten two things backward. First, Europe's interest in developing its own GPS system is, in part, due to the long-standing ability of the US government to command the GPS system to deliberately degrade the quality of the civilian portion of the US GPS signal, not due to the development of GPS jamming by the US. Second, US interest in GPS jamming is in response to Galileo, not the other way around. If Europe succeeds in deploying their own GPS system, then, in the absence of European cooperation, the US would have to deploy GPS jamming if it wishes to reliably deny accurate location information to its adversaries.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jun 2004 @ 8:58am

What kind of "jamming"?
The referenced article didn't mention what kind of "jamming" was being tested: internal or external. The military reportedly has the internal ability to disable GPS for non-military users in any area, in effect "jamming" that area. This would affect both GPS navigation devices and cell phones with GPS. Since the military is conducting exercises in the area, they may be simply testing this existing capability. This would be nothing new and would not indicate an ability to externally jam Galileo.
But speaking of Galileo, didn't I read in the news that Europe had agreed to give the US military the ability to disable Galileo anyway?
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Charles W., 14 Jun 2004 @ 9:15am

No Subject Given
I have to agree with the above post. The US GPS system is controled by the military, and they can turn it off whenever they want. No need to jam it. (Better yet, have one or more of the satellites send out corupt signals so that unless your reciever is configured correctly it shows you being x miles from where you really are.)

So if we are looking at how to jam GPS then most likley it is because we don't trust the people that have control of the other GPS systems to turn them off when we ask.

-Charles W.
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gerry, 14 Jun 2004 @ 12:10pm

Re: What kind of
And who says jamming can only be done against one signal wave? All the military has to do is:

General: "Hey, we need to block Galileo."
Captain: "Yes sir! What's the frequency private Kenneth?"
Private: "Sir, it's in the XYZ band, encoded in ABC".

Captain: "Reconfigure jammers! Fire!"
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koko, 3 Jun 2009 @ 9:35pm

nice jobs
It was only two people per kayak, so I teamed up with a guy named Chris from England who was travelling with his two “mates” for a year (fellow Lost Boys!). It took us about five hours to make it back, but we stopped for a picnic lunch on the beach (and to periodically splash water on Jen and Amanda with our oars). Plastic products made by injection molding services with low costs and supeior quality Shoring scaffolding for construction is a very useful tool. Books printed by China printing is very good quality and good prices. High tides and dreary weather aside, I was sad when our trip through Abel Tasman came to an end—its speculator rainforests and azure-wave lapped beaches are Mother Nature’s gift to the world.
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