The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely. Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already. Therefore, the disruptions must either be regular tests of the capability, or just actual communication. Right?
> The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely.
Is it? If it is an early warning system, could it be jammed briefly so it would fail to warn, couldn't it? It will be a global disruption of GPS, but a brief one and I'm sure people wouldn't be concerned of it due to other news.
> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless
Do you believe that cutting sea cables is a sensible action? Or sending drones to neighbors? It is what they call "hybrid asymmetric warfare", I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, but presumably it may let them take over the world or something.
Probably they just strive to normalize deviations, to boil frog slowly. When people become used to some stupid actions they widen their repertoire, until everything short of tanks crossing the borders became just normal news noise nobody reads twice.
> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already.
Forget "state actors", truck drivers have taken out entire airports with GPS jammers:
The US still has a fairly robust network of VOR's / VOR with DME / VORTAC stations. Good for navigation, but there's no timing component, beyond what's inherent in how they operate.
Admittedly, that'll never be of use outside aviation as its line-of-sight only. But if the sun threw a Carrington event (or worse) at us, I think a lot of western aviation could carry on.
There is definitely value in having a demonstrated as opposed a simply supposed capability, though. And actions that are 'almost-certainly-but-not-completely-provably-us' is very much something Russia likes to do.
(One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go)
> One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go
GPS is suprisingly low power. I believe the satellites themselves transmit between 20W and 50W, and in general the signal is quieter than the background noise threshold. It's only by correlating with the PRNG stream [1] that the data signal can be detected at all [2].
[1] The PRNG stream is 1023 bits at 1.023Mbps, so repeats every 1ms, and only autocorrelates with the correct stream when they are aligned. When the streams are not aligned, the data looks like random noise, and each transmitter has a different LFSR configuration to provide a different sequence such that each stream has a low level of correlation with another.
[2] The PRNG stream bits at 1.023Mbps are exclusive-or'd with the data stream at 50bps, so when the decoder is using the correct PRNG and sequence offset, exclusive-or'ing with that produces detectable long pulses at the expected 50bps.
Why these capabilities, if they exist, were not used to send Iranian drones to a wrong target? Maybe because they do not exist. Israel definitely would be happy if thousands of drones were rerouted to a neighbour country or into the sea.
Is that normal? To promote a research paper in ArXiv so heavily? I think the parent comment’s concerns still apply, saying a large, well-funded YouTube channel is specifically releasing coordinated content to promote this prompts more questions than it answers, in my mind.
The video did not settle on the jamming of von der Leyen plane on approach to Plovdiv, but AFAIR it was a (likely unintentional) lie.
Never acknowledged by von der Leyen nor by her press secretary because it exposed the lack of basic world knowledge around von der Leyen and her office.
TLDR: Neither von den Leyen nor her office knew about ADB-S nor about the multiple services that collect ADB-S broadcasts and republish, and there was none around who could stop them from announcing an embarrassing lie.
Probably because some missing mention of some specific thing you care deeply about doesn't imply "lack of basic world knowledge" for an entire political office, really strange thing to say and most likely why people are downvoting. It's neither kind, curious and definitively a snark/swipe that doesn't really add anything to the point you were trying to make.
The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely. Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already. Therefore, the disruptions must either be regular tests of the capability, or just actual communication. Right?
> The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely.
Is it? If it is an early warning system, could it be jammed briefly so it would fail to warn, couldn't it? It will be a global disruption of GPS, but a brief one and I'm sure people wouldn't be concerned of it due to other news.
> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless
Do you believe that cutting sea cables is a sensible action? Or sending drones to neighbors? It is what they call "hybrid asymmetric warfare", I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, but presumably it may let them take over the world or something.
Probably they just strive to normalize deviations, to boil frog slowly. When people become used to some stupid actions they widen their repertoire, until everything short of tanks crossing the borders became just normal news noise nobody reads twice.
AKA Salami Tactics, famously referred to in the UK sitcom "Yes, Prime Minister"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics
> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already.
Forget "state actors", truck drivers have taken out entire airports with GPS jammers:
* https://www.cnet.com/culture/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-acc...
People like the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation have been trying for years to get some kind of GNSS backup accepted:
* https://rntfnd.org
China has certainly put their money into resiliency (both navigation and timing):
* https://www.gpsworld.com/china-completes-national-eloran-net...
* https://rntfnd.org//2026/03/19/china-has-built-a-triad-of-sa...
* https://rntfnd.org/2023/11/28/china-eloran-used-for-critical...
Some folks are certainly cluing in: South Korea has (e)Loran and the UK and France are joining up with them:
* https://rntfnd.org/2025/04/30/the-uks-system-of-systems-appr...
* https://rntfnd.org/2025/11/12/s-korea-leads-meeting-with-u-k...
The US still has a fairly robust network of VOR's / VOR with DME / VORTAC stations. Good for navigation, but there's no timing component, beyond what's inherent in how they operate.
Admittedly, that'll never be of use outside aviation as its line-of-sight only. But if the sun threw a Carrington event (or worse) at us, I think a lot of western aviation could carry on.
2 replies →
Celestial Navigation is also doable even in daylight nowadays, e.g. https://sodern.com/en/ranges/astradia
1 reply →
Iridium has launched its own alternative positioning and timing system now https://www.iridium.com/iridium-pnt
There is definitely value in having a demonstrated as opposed a simply supposed capability, though. And actions that are 'almost-certainly-but-not-completely-provably-us' is very much something Russia likes to do.
(One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go)
> One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go
GPS is suprisingly low power. I believe the satellites themselves transmit between 20W and 50W, and in general the signal is quieter than the background noise threshold. It's only by correlating with the PRNG stream [1] that the data signal can be detected at all [2].
[1] The PRNG stream is 1023 bits at 1.023Mbps, so repeats every 1ms, and only autocorrelates with the correct stream when they are aligned. When the streams are not aligned, the data looks like random noise, and each transmitter has a different LFSR configuration to provide a different sequence such that each stream has a low level of correlation with another.
[2] The PRNG stream bits at 1.023Mbps are exclusive-or'd with the data stream at 50bps, so when the decoder is using the correct PRNG and sequence offset, exclusive-or'ing with that produces detectable long pulses at the expected 50bps.
3 replies →
Why these capabilities, if they exist, were not used to send Iranian drones to a wrong target? Maybe because they do not exist. Israel definitely would be happy if thousands of drones were rerouted to a neighbour country or into the sea.
Unless the actor happens to be a state that puts a great deal of emphasis on flexing & appearances regardless of how pointless it is
Or actual jamming mistargeted for some reason, or used because it was deemed necessary.
Repeatedly, over years, only for 2 to 5 seconds at a time? Seems unlikely
3 replies →
>Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless
No, Russia does these "tests" all the time to see and gauge the reactions. Ex flying just a bit into EU airspace.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/05/nato-fighters-interce...
[dead]
Why is the video out at the same time as this article?
Also the user posting this article on HN was only created 5 hours ago.
Is the US planning for war with Russia and are manufacturing consent again?
Because the video is based on the research done in this article, it even specifically calls out the article's authors in the description
Is that normal? To promote a research paper in ArXiv so heavily? I think the parent comment’s concerns still apply, saying a large, well-funded YouTube channel is specifically releasing coordinated content to promote this prompts more questions than it answers, in my mind.
2 replies →
Am I correct it looks like this was published 3 days ago? They made that video.. in essentially 2 days?
1 reply →
Russia is currently waging a huge war with europe. While your country is helping them just like they helped nazis in ww2
The video did not settle on the jamming of von der Leyen plane on approach to Plovdiv, but AFAIR it was a (likely unintentional) lie.
Never acknowledged by von der Leyen nor by her press secretary because it exposed the lack of basic world knowledge around von der Leyen and her office.
Why downvotes?
Here's the press conference where it was announced: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341
FlightRadar24 disproved the story shortly after: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178
TLDR: Neither von den Leyen nor her office knew about ADB-S nor about the multiple services that collect ADB-S broadcasts and republish, and there was none around who could stop them from announcing an embarrassing lie.
> Why downvotes?
Probably because some missing mention of some specific thing you care deeply about doesn't imply "lack of basic world knowledge" for an entire political office, really strange thing to say and most likely why people are downvoting. It's neither kind, curious and definitively a snark/swipe that doesn't really add anything to the point you were trying to make.
4 replies →