Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials (msn.com)
- Reference: 0175124221
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/09/24/1857224/electronic-warfare-spooks-airlines-pilots-and-air-safety-officials
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/electronic-warfare-spooks-airlines-pilots-and-air-safety-officials/ar-AA1r14fn
Pilots report clocks resetting, erroneous warnings, and navigation errors lasting minutes to entire flights. While no major safety incidents have occurred, aviation officials warn that managing these disruptions could overburden crews during emergencies. Airlines, manufacturers, and regulators are scrambling for solutions, but new equipment standards to combat spoofing won't be ready until next year at the earliest. In the meantime, pilots receive briefings on identifying and responding to potential attacks, sometimes instructed to ignore safety system warnings.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/electronic-warfare-spooks-airlines-pilots-and-air-safety-officials/ar-AA1r14fn
Aliens / UFO / etc (Score:2)
Could this kind of technology that we are hearing about now, possibly be a plausable explanation for the well known trope that some of the pilots report in history of things like gauges and dials failing , radio contact fading, when encountering so called UFOs .
Re: (Score:2)
Incidents were rare until the Ukraine invasion. Occam's razor says Putie & Friends, not aliens.
BTDT (Score:1)
Having personally experienced this but in a marine environment it's very disconcerting. Luckily, ships don't fall out of the water, so the danger is far less. But, you still have the possibility of running into another ship that is struggling with the same problem. Ships tend to stay together while underway. None of our electronics were cable of dealing with this. As often as not, we would happen everything off and do it the old fashioned way with celestial navigation.
Re: BTDT (Score:1)
Turn not happen
Re: (Score:2)
> As often as not, we would happen everything off and do it the old fashioned way with celestial navigation.
Does anybody still carry a sextant and know how to use it? And what about cloud cover? Without a sextant, how long do you trust a chart with a compass once you determine your electronics are not returning correct location data?
Re: (Score:2)
> Does anybody still carry a sextant and know how to use it?
The US Navy has resumed teaching celestial navigation. In case someone shoots all the satellites out of the sky.
> how long do you trust a chart with a compass
Charts have pretty good depth information for popular routes. Particularly in close to shore. There's also [1]RDF [wikipedia.org] off known transmitter locations. Or triangulation off charted landmarks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_finding
1,100 daily incidents reported in August (Score:2)
1100 incidents per day?
1100 incidents per month?
1100 day-incidents per month?
Re: (Score:2)
The [1]definition of daily [merriam-webster.com].
Apparently you're the only one who doesn't know what it means.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/daily
I'm not saying it's aliens (Score:2)
> The October 2022 Texas jamming incident [at DFW airport] remains a mystery.
...but it's aliens!
GPS should be demoted (Score:1)
You should never be trusting the computers to the exclusion of your common sense. This includes creating machines where the computers override the humans controlling them without and 'override override' if the human, after the computer override, determines the computer is in error. If you're going to die, you want to make sure you have the opportunity to at least resist your fate, right?
Every time humanity automates something it's awesome until somebody finds a way to exploit it to hurt people. And then
Re: (Score:2)
> Every time humanity automates something it's awesome until somebody finds a way to exploit it to hurt people. And then they use the exploit.
Aviation GPS: "Turn left and extend flaps to full. Enjoy the scenic ground view at five thous...." *boom*
You say that like people need to be exploited for harm to occur.....
New equipment ready... (Score:2)
Map, compass, stopwatch, E6B flight computer.
Also electronic warfare proof.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, in visual conditions, but a lot of flights are in instrument conditions. There are still some ground stations, but there are also a lot of instrument approaches that are GPS only. I don't know if those can be used by airliners, but I think so
Re: (Score:2)
My comment was semi in jest. But...
It does worry how much reliance we put on tech in general, but for navigation in particular. I would consider basic map reading to now be a lost art.
Inertial Guidance (Score:2)
We've been doing it with missile guidance systems for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Heck, most mapping apps will do a good job with dead reckoning in a tunnel.
Where is the back-up ? (Score:2)
Perhaps LORAN-C/D/E or whatever the latest version is?
Why are GPS receivers so shit? (Score:2)
Why doesn't aviation use receivers with phased array antennas on top of the plane which block out below the horizon sources and can determine if they are getting signals from the direction of the satellites?
Re: (Score:2)
PS. oops, I knew this from the previous time I considered this and looked it up, but I forgot ... ITAR has held back export (and thus manufacture) of modern near jamming proof GPS receivers.
[1]https://www.gps.gov/governance... [gps.gov]
"Prohibition: Federal regulations (ITAR) have precluded use of more than three elements in beam-steering antenna"
[1] https://www.gps.gov/governance/advisory/meetings/2022-11/parkinson.pdf
Re: (Score:2)
This is what I was wondering.
Why the hell would an aircraft 7 miles up in the air want to ever get signal from a ground station that can be screwed with far easier than satellites in geosynchronous orbit?
I mean, sure - more signal sources means higher accuracy. That is, right up until the ground stations start giving conflicting info and skew your flight path into restricted airspace...
Astrodomes (Score:2)
If we still had astrodomes ( [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), we wouldn't have to worry so much about flying blind!
C'mon Boeing! What were you thinking when you go rid of these?
(before you rip me. I'm joking.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome_(aeronautics)
Re: Astrodomes (Score:1)
There is a better method: [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Also, GPS frequencies are supposed to be licensed and messing with it should be highly illegal, to the point that war actions should be taken to protect it. The control of which should be automatic to prevent fuckery
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning
Re: (Score:2)
Dead reckoning is no substitute for calculating a latlong using a sextant and a clock. It's the manual equivalent of inertial navigation and has lots of error built in. Practical classes in naval science demonstrated this conclusively even in an inshore context. Try the same in the open ocean and huge errors can open up.
Re: (Score:3)
Seems like an okay idea to me. But nobody knows much about astronomy anymore. We should computerize the sextant, and transmit all the star chart data from a centralized server via satellite telephone. Better put a paywall in there, just to be safe.
Re: (Score:2)
You will have to make the computerized sextant able to filter out all of those low orbit internet satellites that Elon and company keeps throwing up there.
Re: (Score:2)
> We should computerize the sextant, and transmit all the star chart data from a centralized server via satellite telephone.
Just don't fly though the Bassen Rift.....
Combo is the future (Score:2)
Astrodomes won't work under cloud cover. Future systems may have to rely a combination of astrodomes, AI ground feature/light identification, commercial radio wave broadcasts, special radio & laser beacons near airports and waypoints, and momentum/gyroscope estimation.
The tricky part is what do pilots do if the different sources contradict. Software bugs, lightning, etc. will occasionally bleep shit up.
Re: (Score:2)
Most jet aircraft flight hours are above the clouds.
Re: (Score:2)
> If we still had astrodomes ( [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), we wouldn't have to worry so much about flying blind!
> C'mon Boeing! What were you thinking when you go rid of these? (before you rip me. I'm joking.)
Newer versions were getting too [2]big [wikipedia.org] ... :-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome_(aeronautics)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome