Russia GPS-Jamming Civilian Aircraft! | Mentour NOW!

since the war in ukraine started there's been a very alarming uptick in the amount of gps spoofing and jamming incidents in the airspace around russia and ukraine in today's mentor now video i'm going to talk about how the gps system actually works and how these jamming and spoofing incidents could potentially have some very dire consequences for airplanes that's flying close to this area stay tuned the global positioning system gps is probably one of the most underrated part of our modern infrastructure basically almost all of the things that you have around you which are technological uses gps in one way or another that includes things like cash machines global financial markets your fitbit your telephone your car and of course aircraft if the gps system would suddenly stop working you would definitely notice it and that's because the gps system is something as rare as an extremely exact reliable both timekeeping and navigational system which is also free and when something is free we have a tendency to start incorporating it into a lot of different functions and aviation is not different in that way the gps system is an american gnss system global navigational satellite system and the way it works is simply put that we have a minimum of 24 different satellites that sits in six different orbital planes around the world every plane has a minimum of four satellites in it and each one of these satellites inside of it keeps a very precise atomic clock and also a transmitter because we know exactly where these satellites are at any given moment when the satellite sends out their coded time signal receivers down on the ground like in your phone for example or in my aircraft will be able to receive that signal when your phone on my aircraft receives the signal it knows exactly where the satellite was and it knows how long it took for the signal to move down to the receiver that way based on one satellite we can kind of paint an arc of all possible positions on the earth so if you have three of these satellites it means that you have three of these arcs painted which is going to pinpoint your location but in fact you need more than three you need four satellites and that's because the clock that is inside of your receiver is not as exact as the atomic clocks in the satellites therefore you also need a forced satellite that can correct the timing in your receiver but if you have four satellites above the horizon it means that you can pinpoint your position down with very very good accuracy but because these gps signals also include a very precise timing code it means that objects that doesn't need to know its position your cache machine for example or financial markets use these signals to fine-tune the exact time to track for example financial transactions the gps system is owned and operated by the united states of america and since the year 2000 they have given access to these services for free to anyone who wants to utilize them but because the system is operated and controlled by the united states space force it means that the u.s also have the ability to turn it on and off when they feel that that's needed that has been used in war zones before and because of that it's now not the only gnss system around russia has built their own system called glunas and so has europe china india and japan they all work on the same principle that means that there's a lot of satellites moving around up there feeling the same function but of course it is understandable none of these countries wanted to solely rely on the goodwill of the united states now the aviation world uses gps as one of its primary means of navigation but luckily it's not the only one which we're going to get to in a second gps has been used to modernize the airway structure all over the world so as we're now flying along our flight plan we fly to waypoints that are defined by gps coordinates and the same goes for when we do our arrival routes and departure routes they tend to be gps defined now but maybe the single biggest difference that gps has made to the aviation world is the onset of gps approaches or or nav approaches because gps is so reliable and so exact it means that poorer countries or smaller airports and operators which couldn't afford to install expensive big ils systems can now create these gps approaches instead which means that they now become available down to lower weather minimus and it is a fantastic way to increase the utilization of this airport and it's just good for the aviation infrastructure as a whole now the gps system is not only used strictly for navigation within aviation we also use it for for example our clocks in the cockpit so if the clock stops working it's normally the first indication that something is wrong with the gps system but we also use them for our enhanced ground proximity warning system but this reliability on the gps system have also shown some real weaknesses which have become painfully apparent during the last few weeks of war in ukraine now before i continue to explain the details of the gps jamming and spoofing problem around ukraine and russia i just want to present the sponsor of this episode which is ground news and they are really relevant to what we're talking about right now ground news is a news comparison platform that gives you the breaking news as it happens but it also gives you the sources and the political leaning of those sources now this can be really important because as you know understanding the news that are coming out from for example the war in ukraine can be really confusing and that's because the same facts can be presented in completely different ways depending on who is presenting them sometimes knowing where the news is coming from is as important as knowing the news itself let's use this article as an example this is a story about how russian mercenaries from the wagner group is being deployed inside of ukraine ground news first gives you an overview of what the story contains and then it gives you the 17 different news outlets that are writing about the story right now it shows you the political leaning the reliability of the reporting practices but also the bias distribution which indicates whether or not these news are being shown more on the left the right or the center and that's indicating potential biases and blind spots i found this both really helpful and refreshing and it doesn't hurt that ground news was founded by an aerospace engineer either so if you're looking for a better way to stay informed then use the link here in the description below which is ground dot news slash mentor now to download the app for free and get started the problem with the gps signals is that they are very weak this requires the receivers that are in your phones or in our aircraft to be really really sensitive and whenever you have sensitive receivers it's also relatively easy to jam them out and this is exactly what military-grade jamming equipment is designed to do and that's what's happening around ukraine and around the russian borders right now what these jamming devices do is that they basically send out a very similar signal on the same frequency as the gps signals are being sent this can either completely overwhelm the receiver as in making it impossible for the receiver to establish contact with the satellites thus making it impossible to see where it is as well or it can be even more insidious and it can send out a signal that makes the receiver believe that the position is actually somewhere completely different when i was doing the research for this episode i was speaking to an old friend of mine who used to be in the military he had been to a conference in moscow a few years back and apparently there was some kind of military exercise going on at the time that he was departing and he had his own little gps receiver with him on board and when he was looking at his gps receiver as he was flying back he could see that his position was not updated at all it looked like he was sitting still in saint petersburg for the whole time that he was within russian airspace these jamming devices are not only used by the military they have also been used by private individuals who maybe bought them on the black market and wants to use them either to hide away from society doing some kind of criminal business or in some cases they've just been used by delivery van drivers who doesn't want to show their location to the delivery company when they're taking a longer break for example there was actually an instance where a van driver was using a device like this close to an airport and it caused some horrendous problems at the airport but military-grade jamming devices can have as high output power as 10 kilowatt and that will affect gps devices in a radius of almost 125 miles the primary objective of one of those transmitters is obviously to weaken the target accuracy of an enemy power or just disturb their surveillance or navigational capability and it can have some really bad effects on overall morale of the opposite power during the war in ukraine the u.s support operation has reported that they have detected jamming and spoofing attempts by the russian military but because they have been using hardware that has been made to counteract that kind of spoofing and jamming attempts their operations haven't really been affected unfortunately the civilian aviation sector has not been that lucky in the beginning of march a couple of thin air pilots reported that they had encountered problems with their gps system when they were flying close to kaliningrad over the baltic sea then on the 6th of march a crew from transovia baltica tried to fly into the city of savolinna and as they were getting closer to the airport they completely lost their gps position unfortunately the only approach available in savolina is a rnav gps supported approach which meant that they were unable to start that approach and they had to divert back to where they came from they first suspected that this was a system problem with the aircraft but as they got further away from sabolina their gps started working again indicating that this was likely a jamming issue they later tried the same flight on the subsequent day and they encountered exactly the same problem because of this on the 17th of march yasa the european aviation safety agency issued a safety information bulletin to all operators and aviation authorities around europe and in this safety bulletin they basically said that since the war had started on the 24th of february there had been an increase of these jamming and spoofing attempts and that they could have some really severe impact on flying aircraft the area is most affected by this seems to be the area around kaliningrad some parts of eastern finland the black sea and even a little bit of the eastern mediterranean sea yasa also said that it was impossible to know exactly where and when the spoofing and jamming attacks was going to occur but that potential effect in the flight deck could be the loss of the clocks as i mentioned before inability to follow the flight plan due to inaccuracy of navigation equipment it could also cross the aircraft symbol to appear to be in a completely wrong position on the navigation display and also quite terrifyingly it could have an effect on the aircraft enhanced ground proximity warning system so it could trigger a faulty terrain alert or even a pull-up event and and i can tell you as a pilot myself that the last thing that you want is a sudden terrain warning when you're not expecting it it will make you doubt where you are and there's no way to know if it's faulty or not this is not a good thing so what can we the pilots do about this then well fortunately gps is not the only navigation system we have on board if we lose our gps's we will fall back to the second best thing which is our irs the inertial reference system which i've done a video about that you can check out up here the inertial reference system is a navigation system that is housed completely inside of the aircraft it's built on a combination of laser gyros and accelerometers even though the irs system uses the gps to kind of zero out some of the faults that comes by time it is still a very accurate navigation system it will become less accurate over time but we will definitely be able to continue flying and navigating using it and even if you're flying an aircraft that doesn't have an irs system you can still continue to navigate on what we call conventional navigation which are ground-based navigation aids like vor and ndb beacons these navaids will help you to get yourself to watch a airport that has an instrument landing system which also does not need gps so when it comes to overall navigation we can do that without the gps's this is more of a nuisance and it can cause these warnings which we definitely do not want lastly i just want to mention that it's not only jamming and spoofing that can have a negative effect on the gps system really bad solar flares can also affect the satellite so that the gps system becomes unusable and that's why it's probably not a great idea that so many systems are depending on the gps system in order to function normally this is something that we as a society need to build up some kind of backup system for check out this video next i think you're going to find that really interesting and if you want to see the rest of the videos that i've done about the russian invasion in ukraine then check this out you can support me and the channel by buying some merch or by becoming a member of my patreon crew have an absolutely fantastic day and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 339,094

Keywords: Russia, Ukraine, ukraine conflict, aviation industry, Mentour Pilot, Nationalize aircraft, aircraft seized, unlawful seizure of aircraft, stolen aircraft, Boeing, Airbus, Aircraft leasing, Mentour pilot incident, Mentour Pilot ukraine, Aircraft accident, Iron curtain, Putin aircraft, Aviation market, Boeing 777, Boeing 747, Air current, Jon Ostrower, Fear of flying, aviation explained, Fear of flying help, war explained, GPS, IRS

Id: 8xPeZfEExy8

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Knersus_ZA]

Reminds me of that 007 movie where a newspaper mogul got China and the UK all seriously miffed up with spoofed GPS signals.