Russia’s jamming of GPS signals marks a shift in its non-conventional attacks against the Baltic states, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Friday.
“They [Russia] are moving from the cyber domain, disinformation domain, towards a more physical one which affects airplanes, daily lives of people in our region,” he said in a joint news conference with his new Latvian counterpart Baiba Braže in Vilnius.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania warned last month that Russia’s jamming of GPS signal was increasing the threat of aviation incidents.
Estonia on Wednesday summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires to protest the jamming of GPS signals which led to disruptions in Tartu Airport.
The Estonian Foreign Ministry said in a press release that it “has caused serious damage to air traffic in our region, the clearest example of which is the suspension of flights between Helsinki and Tartu”.
Braže told the news conference in Vilnius that “it’s not a new phenomenon but it leaves a certain sort of consequence that is worrying”.
Landsbergis called for sanctions on those responsible for these actions, adding that “it is also very important to send a message to Moscow that they are not operating in a grey zone”.
“If they expect us to be silent, if they expect us to be quiet about the things that are happening, they are definitely not going to get that. We see, we know, and we act against it,” Lithuania’s foreign minister said.
This week, several European countries summoned Russia’s diplomats over hybrid and cyber-attacks orchestrated by Moscow or groups linked to it.
This will sound naive, but could Baltic countries respond with GPS jamming in Russian territory?
Sure, that would be a proportional response. But it would probably help Russia in their war against Ukraine because Russia doesn’t really have effective GPS guided munitions, but Ukraine does.
Is it possible that Russians are GPS jamming to protect targets in their territory, and the Baltics are feeling the disruption as well because of how close they are to Russia?
yes, possible, but also stupid, because any jammer is also like a beacon that guided weapons can target without the need for GPS. maybe they are that desperate though.
They’ve been desperate for a while. They rolled into the country with their uniforms ready for a victory parade in Kiev. Instead they’ve had their military stomped. The massive stockpiles of USSR supplies were a one-time thing, and a LOT of that is destroyed.
ah ok
Network Location is critical infrastructure.
Europe has to take Mozillas Database and make a free and GDPR compliant service.
More to the point, if Russia is going to keep doing this, then I think that we’re going to need some more jam resistance. Absent outright destroying the transmitters or trying to apply pressure to Russia to stop it themselves, we can’t really stop the jamming as things stand.
The US military has some additional jam resistance that they can use with GPS – I believe, from past reading, that part of it involves having directional broadcasts, which I assume means that there are a limited number of areas that can benefit from it, and I think that it requires military, M-code-capable receivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Military_(M-code)
I don’t know if it might be possible to provide at least limited access to this without compromising US military security.
It might also be possible to reactivate the old Loran-C stations. It sounds like Europe closed theirs down about eight years ago; I don’t know if the physical hardware is still present in the area. I don’t think that those provide enough accuracy for missile targeting, so Russia may not jam those.
The introduction of civilian satellite navigation in the 1990s led to a rapid drop-off in Loran-C use. Discussions about the future of Loran-C began in the 1990s; several turn-off dates were announced and then cancelled. In 2010, the US and Canadian systems were shut down, along with Loran-C/CHAYKA stations that were shared with Russia.[2][3] Several other chains remained active; some were upgraded for continued use. At the end of 2015, navigation chains in most of Europe were turned off.[4] In December 2015 in the United States, there was also renewed discussion of funding an eLoran system,[5] and NIST offered to fund development of a microchip-sized eLoran receiver for distribution of timing signals.[6]
EDIT: Sounds like people are already talking about it.
https://www.eetimes.eu/are-we-over-dependent-on-gnss/
eLORAN possible PNT alternative to GNSS
The threat of malicious actors disrupting satellite-based PNT services has risen significantly in recent years, driving regional initiatives to seek viable alternatives. One development is the renewed interest in LORAN, a long-range hyperbolic navigation system first developed in the 1940s. LORAN and its contemporaries—Consol, Decca and Omega—utilized time-of-arrival and phase-difference measurement techniques involving a chain of two or more transmitting stations to establish a position fix. Maritime and aeronautical charts had specially printed hyperbolic curves that allowed navigators to plot receiver-derived coordinates. These navigation systems typically used low frequencies of 90–120 kHz and provided relatively accurate positioning information, particularly for shipping in coastal waters. LORAN-A, the first implementation, used 1.85 MHz to 1.95 MHz, but subsequent versions LORAN-B and LORAN-C moved to the 100-kHz spectrum.
By the late 1980s, with the widespread availability of commercial GPS receivers, LORAN and Decca systems fell out of popularity. In 2010, the U.S. government considered LORAN-C obsolete and instigated a program of service closures and station dismantling. Most European LORAN-C coverage lasted until 2015, after which services stopped. All but one LORAN station, Anthorn (U.K.), remains.
During the later stages of LORAN use, an enhanced version of LORAN (eLORAN) was developed to meet the demand for accurate timing applications. eLORAN offers improved positional accuracy, stated to be on par with unenhanced GNSS, and with the provision of time-synchronization capabilities supported a wider range of use cases. Unfortunately, eLORAN never saw commercial deployment, but against the backdrop of global uncertainties and GNSS vulnerabilities, it offers a viable alternative to satellite-based PNT.
Unlike satellite GNSS signals, the typical output power of an eLORAN transmitter is 200-kW ERP, and because they are located on land rather than in space and use low frequencies, the received signal strength is significantly stronger. Attempting to jam an eLORAN transmitter would require considerable power capability and physically large antennas, which, even if possible, would highlight the jamming station’s location.
EDIT2: While I’d guess that Lithuania and similar are mostly-concerned about maintaining safe navigation, I’d imagine that GPS jamming sucks from a smartphone standpoint too. Google and Apple both run location services; as long as they know the location of WiFi or Bluetooth stations in the area, and a smartphone can receive their broadcasts, they should be able to get a fix. One possibility might be the government rolling out WiFi stations – could even provide municipal WiFi if they want from it, but that’s not necessary – in urban areas where jamming is really bad and then just telling Apple and Google the precise location of the transmitters and their IDs (since I don’t know if the “auto-learning” of a position can work without a GPS signal). Then if you’re Lithuanian or whatever, the phone can get a position fix off the government WiFi points.
USA’s current idea solution to no GPS is NITRO, https://www.gps.gov/governance/advisory/meetings/2023-05/callahan.pdf
That’s interesting, but from reading it, I think that they’re trying to solve a different problem. The issue that the Baltics and Finland are hitting is GPS jamming creating problems with positional data, which is used for navigation.
But it sounds like these guys are looking at trying to solve the problem of providing synchronized clocks countrywide (which is related in that having synchronized clocks is required for some positioning systems, but not quite the same thing; you can have synchronized clocks without knowing your position). They’re just using GPS as a time source.
Interestingly, they also mention possibly using this “new Loran” thing too (though to solve their time problem, not to determine location).
NITRO is extensible to additional and future time sources and technologies (e.g., over- the-air radio & TV broadcasts, Signals of Opportunity, planned ELORAN solution)
EDIT: For their timekeeping problem, I’m also kind of surprised that there’s no reference to the atomic clock radio transmissions that we run for the contiguous US. But maybe that’s vulnerable to spoofing or something.
googles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB
WWVB is a time signal radio station near Fort Collins, Colorado and is operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).[1] Most radio-controlled clocks in North America[2] use WWVB’s transmissions to set the correct time.
The normally 70 kW ERP signal transmitted from WWVB uses a 60 kHz carrier wave derived from a set of atomic clocks located at the transmitter site, yielding a frequency uncertainty of less than 1 part in 1012. A time code based on the IRIG “H” format and derived from the same set of atomic clocks is modulated onto the carrier wave using pulse-width modulation and amplitude-shift keying at one bit per second. A single complete frame of time code begins at the start of each minute, lasts one minute, and conveys the year, day of year, hour, minute, and other information as of the beginning of the minute.
Welcome to the party, pal
We were never out of it.
Updates to GPS will just require certificates or similar in the future.
