Comment by jjwiseman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjwiseman | Hacker News Reader

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Russia has been jamming GPS over Finland, Estonia, and Poland on and off for a couple years, and it's been at its peak now for several months. Sometimes flights have to be canceled. Tartu airport in Estonia was closed for a while[1] because the only instrument approaches it has were GPS-based.

Even worse than jamming is spoofing, which Russia also does. With jamming, you and the aircraft's systems both know what's happening. Spoofing isn't as easy to detect, as the GPS system can report the wrong location but think it's highly accurate. Spoofing (and to some extent jamming) can have a persistent effect on aircraft systems even after they move out of range of the jammer/spoofer, which can lead to degraded navigation accuracy for the rest of the flight.

It's a whole deal. Russia is messing with strategically important systems of many European countries, and decreasing civilian aviation safety, and they rarely get called on it. For a long time there was reluctance to even name Russia as the culprit.

1. https://www.heise.de/en/news/GPS-jamming-no-more-flights-to-...

> Russia has been jamming GPS over Finland, Estonia, and Poland on and off for a couple years, and it's been at its peak now for several months. Sometimes flights have to be canceled.

I feel like we had airports before we had GPS. If this is a regular thing, shouldn't we have ways of using the airport without hoping that the jamming is having an off day?

Here's one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_octant

There usually are other systems (e.g. ILS), but not always.

This post has several comments along the lines of "We used to fly without GPS and it was fine!" The fact is that aviation is so much safer than it used to be, and GPS is part of that. GPS helps aircraft navigate accurately even when they're not near an airport. It helps give situational awareness and avoid mid-air collisions (almost every aircraft these days has a traffic display that shows ADS-B positions of other nearby aircraft, and those positions come from accurate GPS).

Loss or spoofing of GPS isn't usually a critical safety issue on an aircraft, but it definitely removes layers of safety and adds additional risk. Pilots can lose that situational awareness of nearby traffic. They may have increased workload and distraction due to having to use a less familiar & less accurate means of navigation, trying to figure out why their systems aren't working correctly, and even getting bogus ground proximity warning system alerts. ATC may now have increased workload and distraction because some approaches or even runways are no longer usable.

We drove cars for a long time without seat belts and air bags, too.

> We drove cars for a long time without seat belts and air bags, too.

And if we were having problems with seatbelt jammers, everyone would instantly respond by just not using seatbelts in those areas. There would be no road closures and no trip cancellations. What are we supposed to learn from this analogy?

That aviation without GPS isn’t as safe as aviation with it.

I don't even think that's true. Seatbelts are an improvement in safety regardless of context. But what you're arguing here is that a system that's designed to rely on GPS availability, and gets it, is safer than the same system during a GPS outage, not that GPS availability will make any airport management system safer.

It makes it safer to run aircraft closer together. Most airport capacity increases these days come from optimizing airspace, not from new runways or airports, which are time consuming, expensive, and controversial. We used to operate without them but we were also generally operating a lot fewer flights back then.

The more apt analogy is what would our roads look like if all traffic signals stopped working? People would still drive, but it would have to be at lower speeds, with more congestion, etc.

> The more apt analogy is what would our roads look like if all traffic signals stopped working? People would still drive, but it would have to be at lower speeds, with more congestion, etc.

This happens pretty frequently with single signals, so we know what that looks like.

An unattended broken signal gets treated like a stop sign (by law), and this immediately blocks traffic. It's a total disaster.

If it happens anywhere near a population center, a human will be dispatched to cover for the broken signal and dysfunctional law by manually directing traffic, and this gets you almost all the way back to normal.

If every signal failed at once, that would cause much bigger problems, but in the event that we know we're unable to repair the signals, which is the case here, we wouldn't just try to muddle through using the existing roads and systems. We'd define new systems that worked better in the absence of traffic lights.

I was mostly addressing the idea expressed in other places in this thread that aviation without GPS is fine, not your specific point. To address your question, the commercial aviation world is still in the process of figuring out how to deal with the new, current reality of GPS jamming and spoofing. They're developing new procedures, designing new equipment, and changing priorities and plans. While this happens they're downplaying the risks in press releases and statements to avoid spooking the public.

"If this is a regular thing, shouldn't we have ways of using the airport without hoping that the jamming is having an off day?" Yes. But it takes time and money. This level of GPS interference is relatively new, and for about the past 30 years you could basically assume GPS would be available.

What do you mean "if" of course we do? Relying on older methods means narrowing the acceptable conditions for landing. It means reduced economic activity, reduced opportunities.

How about we treat enemies as actual enemies, rather than rolling over and letting them make our lives more difficult?

In comparison to the US's power, Russia is an annoying pipsqueak, but instead we are letting Russia boss around on everything. It's shameful and embarrassing.

Why in the world should we have to rely on inferior methods?

> How about we treat enemies as actual enemies, rather than rolling over and letting them make our lives more difficult?

Treating someone as an actual enemy means accepting that sometimes they're going to do things that are inconvenient for you.

> Why in the world should we have to rely on inferior methods?

Well...

treating someone as an actual enemy means accepting that sometimes they're going to do things that are inconvenient for you.

And they are going to also experience "inconveniences" for random bullying.

Ignoring what a bully does has predictable consequences.

Yes, I'm reminded of how woefully the teachers at my grade school tried to stop bullying by... making them sit together and talk through a script. Usually finalized by a knock on the head as they were walking out, having perfectly finished their "remediation". I'm also reminded of how quickly problems were solved when you simply disobeyed the adults and hit them back. It got results. You might say that a grade school is very different than the world state. You might

Yes, some might.

And other, far more wise people, might realize that appeasement of bullies throughout history has resulted in some of our very worst wars and the most horrific atrocities that humanity has ever committed. Weakness invites conflict and destruction from the bullies of the world, and when it comes to war, the bullies gain materials and conscripts when they are allowed to conquer.

(I think we are very much on the same page, thank you for the comment.)

Europe has about 5 functioning fighter aircraft and ~~20 operating tanks at any given moment. It is also completely controlled by a political system that considers conflict the same way it sees domestic abuse in a relationship. It's entire current zeitgeist is formed and controlled by the half of humanity that cant fight and will spend as much time as possible trying to talk their way out of it.

Your narrative on Europe is wrong. Poland has 1000 tanks and would completely wipe out Russia in a war. United, Europe could eliminate Russia's military with a few percent of GDP, full war footing is in no way essential.

They are nobles arguing about who has to take time away from the dinner party to shoo away a miscreant throwing tomatoes. Except for the Baltic States, who take it more seriously at the moment, but that will change as soon as the Vatniks on the political extremes are finally removed.

even assuming Poland could do this, what do you think Russia would do nuclear wise if they were faced with imminent destruction? Did you forget that we live under the sword of Damocles?

Additionally, good luck finding young men who want to fight for their country in the west of Europe. New arrivals will not lay down their lives as they often hate their host countries and people. Heritage Europeans are massively discriminated against by their own governments for speech crimes, on top of race and sex-based discrimination. A very small amount of men will fight to continue that state of affairs.

First, Poland is a NATO member.

Second, Ukraine is invading Russian territory, occupies it, and no nukes yet! The supposed nuclear threat is empty and stupid.

Third, if you think for a fucking microsecond that 90% of Polish men are not ready to go to war and kill Russians you have never talked to a Polish person. They know what is at stake.

Fourth, even the UK is talking about boots on the ground and planes in the air over Ukraine, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/03/amid-us-rift-with-ukrain...

Fifth, fighting these completely made up narratives that have no basis in reality is exhausting. It's almost as if an entire population has decided that they misread the commandment to be "Though SHALL bear false witness."

Poland is a NATO member, but we're not going to war if they invade Russia and then get nuked.

UK is talking about boots on the ground. Wake me up when they actually have a sustained, large-scale presence.

Europe has paid Russia more (for their natural gas) than they have given aid to Ukraine during the duration of this war. Europe is totally cooked.

You're suggesting open war with Russia over GPS jamming? You do understand that the west also engages in sub-war, antagonistic activities with Russia, right? These aren't "inferior methods", they're part of spectrum of activities which have associated costs and risks.

> I feel like we had airports before we had GPS.

one of the things that made GPS available for civilian use was the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 incident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

Yes, airports in eastern Europe are now using the old ground based VHF radio beacons (VOR, DME and ILS).

However, they were not in use a few years ago. Some airports never had the ground based equipment installed, others still had the beacons functional but the procedures (STAR, SID) had been phased out in favor of the easier and cheaper satellite based GNSS RNAV procedures.

Some airports had brand new VHF equipment installed, others had the old procedures reinstated.

But aviation is a slow moving, risk averse, cost sensitive business so several airports were inaccessible (apart from visual approach) for a few months.

We become reliant on technology so quickly. Alternatives may not be safe in extreme weather. We have also torn down previous systems like Omega.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_(navigation_system)

They are surely doing that because they want to divert NATO expansion westward /s

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