Why isn’t Russia blocking GPS in Ukraine?

economist.com

8 points·rjmunro··4 comments

Every citizen of Moscow knows that Russia can spoof a GPS signal. Last 5 years GPS near Kremlin works kind of bad and GPS devices show strong signal about you being located in different places of Moscow. I am not a military expert, but I am pretty convinced all that successful attacks from Himars guided using a laser beam from drone because of a real possibility of spoofing.

First of all, HIMARS is a platform, not a rocket. It can launch different rockets.

Second, GMLRS (the rocket type famously used by UAF-operated HIMARS and M270) are not laser guided.

Third, any drone would not last very long in that environment so far behind enemy lines. Russian air defense is not as decrepit as one might think.

Fourth, if anyone were to highlight targets with a laser it would be the special forces.

Fifth, you can spoof the unencrypted public GPS but you can only jam the encrypted military gps.

Sixth, GPS jamming is not nearly as bad as long as it happens only through a portion of rocket's flight path. The rocket is actually guided by INS corrected by GPS.

I have no idea if the the following is included in rocket/missile in question, but I heard there are also missiles with cameras that navigate a preprogrammed path purely by vision, which become basically unjamable.

Yup, that's called tercom (terrain contour matching), and is an alternative for GPS correction. Used for example by the Tomahawk cruise missile. Note that you still also want INS, though, cause why not.

GMLRS doesn't do that. Also, Ukraine will not get Tomahawks, not even the closest ally Britain can use them without American permission.

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