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Comment by mysterydip | Hacker News Reader

I was under the impression that GPS was heavily disabled/interfered in the area. Do these use a different guidance system to reach their targets?

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I would assume Russian military would not be relying on GPS but use GLONAS[1] instead.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS

I don’t know about their glide kits but the lancet drone has camera based guidance and uses a nvidia sbc.

Russia has its own constellation called GLONASS. It might be possible for Ukraine to jam that and GPS. I’m not sure how that would affect the bomb’s accuracy.

I’m sure Ukraine is researching this.

GPS is indeed jammed. Ordinance in such an environment often relies on interial navigation.

Apparently they use a jamming-resistant GLONASS receiver module: https://mil.in.ua/en/articles/kometa-challenge-for-ukrainian...

GPS is almost never used for military guidance systems compared to inertial dead reckoning, GPS is too unreliable and easy to jam!

That isn't true. Inertial guidance systems that work for appreciable flight times are too expensive. Many military systems do use GPS, such as HIMARS, Excalibur, JDAMs, etc...

If I had to guess, the reason why the above are jammed and the UMPK isn't is because of better integration with the launch platform and a shorter flight time leading to less inertial drift over time, plus a very large warhead to make up for inaccuracy.

> GPS is almost never used for military guidance systems compared to inertial dead reckoning

GPS is lighter, cheaper, and more accurate (when it works) than inertial navigation systems (which are more reliable to work at all) and is widely used alone or alongside inertial navigation on weapons systems.

Most ATACMS use GPS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-140_ATACMS#Variants

The UK's hot-shit guided artillery shell uses GPS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur

Yeah, GPS is seriously unreliable anywhere around the Baltic and Ukraine.

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