Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe | Hacker News Reader

Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe

arxiv.org

440 pointsmimorigasaka238 comments

Interesting to see that they are able to identify the specific satellite. I wonder if we can do something now that we know the source.

Working on construction projects on the Romanian coastline (just South of Ukraine) and on the Polish continental waters (just West of Kaliningrad) we experienced jamming on a daily basis.

>I wonder if we can do something now that we know the source.

Russia signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) in 1967, this may be a treaty violation of this or other treaties, something like that or retaliation regarding it may be possible.

You can hack the satellite, or use other electronic warfare options to jam or interfere with it's operations.

You can shoot it down with a missile.

The X-37B is in space right now and interfering with space assets is a pretty obvious possibility for why it exists at all, but it's secret so nobody says these things.

If you start shooting down stuff in orbit, it'll invite retaliation, but even without retaliation there's a huge risk of a Kessler syndrome (especially with all the stuff that SpaceX has put into orbit in recent years).

I've thought about this before - do you actually need to "shoot it down" (make it explode)? What if you just nudge it a little and either make it spin or change its orbit? If your missile can reach the satellite then these seem like things that should be possible, no?

Depends, if you nudge it only a little, its own onboard stabilizers / thrusters should be able to correct it. It'd have to be more than its own systems can correct for.

Nudge it long enough to deplete it's fuel reserves? Or just wrap the emitting antenna in tin foil...

There are tug boat style satellites now, one could grab it and force it to Earth.

A missile intercept for explosions or a kinetic destruction the relative velocity will be measured in kilometers per second.

A little nudge doesn't do much, it's still a satellite in a substantially similar orbit. Any sort of nudge requires intercept, go up there and match its velocity so you can grab it and push. And still you have to push on it a whole lot to make a meaningful difference. Spin it up? You'd have to do enough to exhaust it's fuel it uses to orient itself.

You're sort of saying if you can chuck an apple hitting a car on the highway, surely you can tow it away to get it off the road. They're significantly different problems.

An apple at highway speeds can break the windshield and make the car undriveable. People throwing things from highway overpasses is a serious (and deadly) problem.

>A missile intercept for explosions or a kinetic destruction the relative velocity will be measured in kilometers per second.

The satellite will also be going kilometers per second. You have to almost match the orbital velocity to have a chance of hitting it anyway.

To the contrary, for the 1 satellite missile strike we have public information on, not only did it not catch up to the orbital velocity for intercept, it hit it head on (going the other direction) adding to the relative velocity. A satellite with an ~8 km/s orbital velocity was struck head on by a missile adding to that by ~2 km/s for a total just under 10 km/s.

It is indeed not that hard to intercept something in orbit. Because the orbits don't change and can be predicted to high precision months in the future.

I see. I'm actually more impressed by a head on intercept for the current anti-satellite missiles and that definitely makes the idea unworkable.

No, Kessler syndrome is pretty unlikely in this case. All of the guilty satellites are in Molniya orbits. Debris from destroying them would not greatly effect geosynchronous orbit or the low earth orbits used by Starlink.

> especially with all the stuff that SpaceX has put into orbit in recent years

I've heard this repeated a lot but I've never seen anyone do the maths. StarLink satellites are all in very low orbits, so intuitively it seems like most debris from a collision would just end up deorbiting.

90% of starlink satellites are >400km in altitude. They aren't in very low earth orbits where that intuition even might be correct. They're above the space station.

I've definitely seen math done - though I'd have to dig it up again. I think in FAA filings.

I agree with part of your response.

The best sources that I can find say that Starlink sats orbit around 550 km above Earth. By all accounts, this distance is well within Low Earth Orbit definitions. However, you used the term "very low earth orbits". I never heard before and needed to research it. It is a neologism from 2017 and does not seem to have a precise definition. Most uses indicate less than 450 km above Earth.

The International Space Station flies around 400 km above Earth.

LEO is crowded enough (mostly with Starlink) that satellites have to actively maneuver to avoid collisions [1]. There's research [2] arguing that we're probably already in runaway territory in some orbits — that is, debris from 1 collision likely produces more than one secondary collision — we're just way over on the left of the hockey stick curve. A bit of bad luck, or two megaconstellations that don't perfectly coordinate their operations with each other, could move us to the right pretty quickly.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643

[2] https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...

If you americans start shooting down russian stuff, russians start shooting down american stuff, and there's only chinese stuff left.

> You can shoot it down with a missile.

Obviously a bad idea, but frying it with some sort of high powered electromagnetic pulse would seem the smartest option with plausible deniability.

I wonder if the US already has such weapons in orbit.

Kessler event oops, you know. I guess I know someone with several disposable satellites, I wonder if they could be bothered (but I guess not)

> frying it with some sort of high powered electromagnetic pulse would seem the smartest option with plausible deniability

Realistically, how many people could do this ?

If you gave me a million dollars, I could do it. Someone else would have to aim it, but it shouldn't be that hard to do.

From what distance? I would have thought $1M wouldn't go far

This is not something individuals should be doing.

But it's also not really plausibly deniable if there's only one actor with the means and motive to do it.

I assume that satellites have protection against that - because of solar flares.

X37-B it's a tiny robot space shuttle launched by the military.

Why WOUDLN'T one of its possible payloads be an electronic warfare package? Go up to an adversarial satellite, do some signals intelligence capturing things, have a jamming package, or a stronger EM output to fry circuits.

So Russia may be in violation of a treaty, treaties. I'm shocked.

They were in violation of the INF treaty too years before the US pulled out...

source? trust me bro?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novator_9M729

A claim and "is believed" is not a fact. A fact is that many years prior introduction of that missile (no evidence of being mid-range), the US blocked all discussions about their heavy attack drones which effectively serve the same tasks as mid-range missiles. And the very ridiculous explanation about their mid-range missiles they claimed were built for training purposes, a.k.a "target-missiles". Then it came the question about MK-41 launcher of otherwise air or naval borne Tomahawks, which turned it immediately into a subject of INF (and thus forbidden). The fact that the Russians openly introduced the named missile (9M729), which nobody has seen or have proven has a range more than 500km, AND invited US to a demonstration and inspection of that missile, which US declined, because of course they had other plans ongoing and have already stated they want to leave INF. More can be added, but please stand the high-ground of a real research on that topic, before repeating the hollow US narrative. A dangerous one as always.

Russian Armed Forces have practically demonstrated a range of at least 1200 km, see this news report that was linked from Wikipedia.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-us...

There's more interesting stuff on Wikipedia; this gives the impression that both Russia and USA wanted to exit the treaty because China wasn't bound by it or any similar treaty and thus has been stockpiling exactly these kind of missiles for a long time now, so the treaty puts both Russia and USA at a disadvantage. Then follows some theatrics where Russia and USA point finger at each other while never talking about their true motivation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_For...

Like the USA, I don't think Russia codifies treaties into law. Like in the USA, treaties for Russia are mere suggestions used as a geopolitical tool until inconvenient.

This does not follow my understand of treaties signed and ratified by the US.

    > Domestic Enforcement: If the treaty is self-executing, its provisions automatically become part of federal law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. If it is non-self-executing, Congress must draft and pass implementing legislation to establish domestic enforcement.

I know much less about treaties signed and ratified by Russia, but I found this:

    > Russia codifies international treaties into domestic law through the formal ratification process. Under Article 15(4) of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, ratified treaties are considered an integral part of the Russian legal system, provided they do not conflict with domestic constitutional principles.

That jamming near Kaliningrad must surely be impacting the Russian residents as well, right? Unless it is very carefully aimed which seems unlikely since it is also trying to cover a very large volume.

Kaliningrad is one big military base.

Doesn't sound like you have actually been there. Military is a major employer, but in a territory inhabited since 1944 there are generations of people born there who didn't see a reason to live, the same foreign gastarbeiter as in any Russian city, etc. I.e plenty of ordinary people who could be inconvenienced.

I don't think you meant it like that, but Kaliningrad, or Königsberg is inhabited since a bit longer. For example Immanuel Kant lived and taught there.

Obviously. But since the Russian occupation infamously expelled the natives completely, when I talk about “inhabited since 1945” in the context of people living there now, I’m obviously referring to the Russian population.

Also the birth place of graph theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsbe...

reason to leave, sorry.

1) with the exception of probably a few pensioners (who also depend on gov’t funding), everyone in the area is dependent on the military. It’s a giant military base in the middle of nowhere.

2) anyone not military (and hence in on it), is a pensioner or the like and won’t give a shit about GPS.

This is not a thriving urban metropolis or tourist location.

The city has half a million residents and the oblast has a million residents. There's restaurants, museums, grocery stores, car dealerships, parks, zoo's, malls, stadiums, factories, train stations, an airport, ports etc etc. It's a real place.

I never said it wasn’t.

Killeen, Texas is also a real place.

How many people do you think don’t have at least a 2 degree connection to the US military?

Do you think anyone there is going to think twice about going along with what the military is doing? Or could if they wanted too?

And Killeen is far, far less isolated geographically.

It is like saying Detroit is military base because there are some military related buildings.

Uh huh

Why lie? It _is_ a tourist location, with > 2mln tourists annually (for their 1 mln permanent population). It also has quite a diverse economy, with Avtotor being a major car assembler (though not quite what it was pre-war), a fishing industry, amber mining, a TV manufacturer, &c. With a significant military presence, of course, but "giant military base in the middle of nowhere" is just ridiculous.

Crazy what the Russians destroyed... (you?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nigsberg_Castle

Hey, old military installations (albeit ancient) are still a type of tourist attraction lol.

Most places in Russia are hunting and fishing locations too, hah.

Yes, we Russians are entirely responsible for British carpet bombing.

(I, of course, do not agree with the decision to demolish the remaining ruins in 1968; it could have been handled better.)

It is not. I.e. there is one of the largest passenger vehicle assembly line Autotor.

Jamming in general will affect everything using those frequencies (and potentially more besides) in a given area, so if you're using it you're weighing up the effects it'll have on your stuff as well. (early in the current Ukrainian invasion, reportedly Russian electronic warfare units were screwing up their own side more than the Ukrainians)

>must surely be impacting the Russian residents as well, right?

They don't give a fuck.

Was watching a youtube video by a russian the other day talking about war & sanction impact and things like ride sharing apps literally say on screen the location is going to be wrong and to select pickup spot manually. It's just assumed to be fucked as a given even at an app development level

They don't even have internet anymore...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr510de17jlo

Bit of a reach, their internet may be restricted to a degree, but they sure do have internet... my partner calls and video calls their family back in Russia daily from half way around the world.

We do. And my VPN is not even turned on now to write this comment

Does ukrainians and romanians give a fuck, 'cause not many russians live in the north-west part of Black Sea? And the jamming there's from who?

Afaik the grains corridors for the Ukrainian ships are alongside the Romanian coast, hence the Russian interest

> Do Romanians give a fuck?

A Ukrainian USV (water surface drone) just exploded the other day in Romania's main industrial port (Europe's 4th largest for a sense of scale), apparently thinking it's somewhere else due to GPS EW interference. Yes they're affected, yes they care

Weren't we promised that quantum dead reckoning was right around the corner?

"works" and "fits in phone" are to VERY different levels of maturity of the tech

>and to select pickup spot manually. It's just assumed to be fucked as a given even at an app development level

No, it's a feature that was there from the beginning - you don't always choose the location you are currently at.

>They don't give a fuck.

But yes, we don't give a fuck

Yes, it's very wide spread and not carefully aimed at all. It's also not done by satellite but a ground based station.

https://gpsjam.org/

That covers most of Poland, wtf

Why wouldn't it?

The behavior will continue until a consequence is imposed.

Not on regular Russians, mind. Their ruling class. They're still free to move about the continent, make investments, do whatever. Currently Europe seems to be more interested in breaking away from the US than dealing with the power that has killed hundreds of thousands on their own continent.

Europe seems to be interested in neither. As a rule, elites in any country are not concerned about hundreds of thousands of their citizens being killed. I have yet to be proven wrong.

Maybe there are reasons Europe is pulling away from the US?

The current US president has threatened to invade European territory, is attempting to impose Russia's preferred "peace" plan on Ukraine, and has recently relaxed sanctions on Russia. He also consistently denigrates the military support Europe's given to the US in the recent past. The US has basically cut aid to Ukraine to zero, while Europe continues to supply them, which is currently the best way of dealing with Russia, sucking their military power into a war their not going to win.

And?

When the Russians invaded Georgia in 2008, Europeans inked a deal for a second gas pipeline with them, Nordstream 2. When they annexed Crimea in 2014, Europeans went to the Sochi Olympics (which happened that same year) and went to the World Cup in 2018. And this is before you take into account the dozens of smaller incidents.

Those aren't "threats to invade European territory", not even ones that were ignored by the military. Those were shooting wars that got people killed and redrew the map in Eurasia. Europeans continued to do business with Russia more-or-less unimpeded until 2022. Many Russians still live, work, and do business in the Schengen area.

The US Congress passed a bill to fund Ukraine this week. [0]

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-passes-ukraine...

Remind us, why US Congress funds a country on literally the other side of the planet?

It’s cheaper than landing ten divisions of Marines.

Because the world is actually very small and Ukraine winning helps the US

It is in this position thanks to US in the first place.

The (misguided IMO) idea was that buying their gas and integrating them into world markets would strengthen ties and liberalize them in the medium term.

Nobody believes that anymore, post-2022.

I don't think it was misguided; Nuland-Pyatt leak and the tapping of Merkel's phone made it pretty clear to me that like in the Yeltsin years the problem was that the US didn't want Russia/Europe ties to succeed.

Russia didn't want Russia Europe ties to succeed. That is why it invaded Ukraine.

Why then did Russia have $300 Billion invested all over Europe? That was a massive portion of their national wealth, and it all got frozen by the EU in 2022. It looks as if Russia did want close economic integration with Europe. That's something the usa would not want, though.

Russia invaded Ukraine specifically to stop it from becoming too integrated with Europe. The idea of a rich and democratic Ukraine is a nightmare for Putin.

Because they thought that everything would be over in three days and business would continue as usual, as it did after 2014.

The funding bill is never getting past the Senate, and even if it were the money is unlikely to reach Ukraine unless the current admin has a fundamental change of heart.

Well, and we are paying for those mistakes now.

EU had that weird idea that if we just be nice to Russia and tolerate their bullshit for long enough they will warm up to us. Turns out that doesn't really work for country that entire foreign policy could be summed up as "bullying and lying"

I'm sorry but bullshit is what you're talking about. UK took money from Russian oligarchs (that they stole from my pocket) while being perfectly aware of the source, and later pretended they're "fighting" it when the potato got too hot to handle, never returning the invested money and essentially blaming me by proxy, someone who attempted to bring it under control. Germany was happy building pipelines and providing the high precision machines under the corrupt leader colluding with Russia, only breaking ties after the war and making said leader a scapegoat. It was all about your wealth at the cost of my wealth and freedom, you provided most money for the war and Russian elites' superyachts, and profited from it greatly with full awareness of what you're doing, and you were OK with that as long as the costs were externalized. Now you're pretending it was noble peacemaking, an honest mistake, and someone else is to blame. What's worse, you don't seem to learn from either our or your mistakes, willingly building a cage for yourself with a lag of just a few years.

US has got itself compromised by Russia. US president is a Russian asset. Breaking away from unreliable former ally is the logical thing to do for Europe's security.

Funny how Ukraine situation started improving once they have severly limited sharing information with the US.

> They're still free to move about the continent, make investments, do whatever

Except that's not true at all, is it? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...

It's not completely true, but there are hundreds of thousands of visas given to Russian tourists each year by European countries, something that's hopefully will get corrected soon.

> According to data cited in Wednesday's letter, which was seen by Reuters, 477,878 Schengen visas were issued to Russian citizens for tourism in 2025, up from 440,558 in 2024.

https://www.reuters.com/world/sweden-urges-eu-tighten-rules-...

It should have been the very first thing to go.

> Currently Europe seems to be more interested in breaking away from the US

The efforts taken to move away from Russia in the past 5 years clearly dwarf any de-Americanisation efforts to the point that it's difficult to take your comment seriously after this sentence.

Not only Poland, they have jammers around St Petersburg as well which affects Finland, there have been reports about boats losing GNSS reception in Swedish waters, etc. This has been going on for years.

Don't worry though, it's been condemned in a sternly worded letter: https://www.icao.int/news/icao-assembly-condemns-gnss-radio-...

How far is the horizon from the tallest antenna mast in Kaliningrad?

Why is Ukraine not jammed in this map? Shouldn’t that be Russia’s priority?

GPS interference is estimated from ADS-B data which is broadcast by airplanes so that they can be tracked. The lack of data over Ukraine is because their airspace is closed to civilian flights.

The GNSS jamming in Ukraine is mostly from Ukraine themselves, to defend against Russian drones and guided bombs.

Just as Iran jams GNSS, and Venezuela jammed GNSS ahead of the attack. Didn't really help though.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/nasa-satellites-can-...

Probably because Wester jammers are used from ground and drones have antennas on the top side. For comparison, Russian satellite can jam the signal from above and on a large area. Russian technology is superior.

If Russian GNSS receivers wasn't affected they wouldn't need fiber optic drones, Ukraine is jamming both the small and large drones. Russia have both their own Kometa system to try to filter out the jamming signals, and plenty of Chinese tech as well.

Russian technology is very dependent on both western and Chinese tech, yet they couldn't even defend their own oil refineries in St Petersburg or make any relevant progress along the front in years.

To be fair, USA also could not defend their allies and their bases, and didn't move the frontline in Iran as well. And if Iran buys a submarine capable to launch missiles from a friendly country the situation might get worse.

They would be jamming their own glide bombs and drones then. It would be more useful to jam Russian airspace to defeat Ukrainian drone attacks.

>That jamming near Kaliningrad must surely be impacting the Russian residents as well, right?

Russia does not care, nor does it care about its population.

Where are you from?

I ask because you have western privilege, like me, and assume our governments care about its people. Why I lucked out being born in Sweden, the more I learn about the world, the more I am convinced I lucked out ahahaha.

No one gives a fuck what russian residents are thinking about it. And if they start to talk about issues - police will quickly force everyone to shut up.

Thats true, but its also true that most russians support this war. Maybe they dont say it, but they are the soldiers in the trenches, mechanical engineers building missiles, software developers building their military software, Oil/NG workers that fund the war and so on

I'm sure that if you ask any of them, they would say that they don't have a choice. Same as western IT developers that continue to support the enshittification of the internet. They don't have a choice. /s

The soldiers in the trenches now are mostly recruited from convicts/suspects who want to get a pardon, and volunteers lured by large salary and bonuses, and loan repayment suspension. Most prefer to support the war from the couch.

It's more reasonable to say that the russian people tolerate the war as long as it does not impact their economic situation over a certain tolerance threshold. Almost all of the fighters from the Russian side are on paid voluntary contracts for a reason.

Do you believe Putin cares who he inconveniences?

Russians got used that GPS in Moscow and St. Petersburg often shows wrong position (I did not observe it because I never enable GPS though). We also have mobile Internet shoutdowns which are more annoying than GPS spoofing.

I’ve briefly been somewhere for a few days with significant GPS interference, and yes, basically phone navigation doesn’t work reliably.

For me it was a minor annoyance while driving but presumably any apps that rely heavily on GPS (Uber, food delivery) just wouldn’t work very well or at all

"what is GLONASS" - you

Yes, it does, and they don't care, bc russian "culture" has no regard for life or people in general. Everyone and everything is expendable.

One of Russia’s superpowers is that they don’t give a damn about collateral damage on their own people. This isn’t just a throwaway comment I’m making this actually bears out over several decades.

Russia is constantly GPS jamming EU.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyx3ly54veo

So funny seeing non-EU people and/or people friendly to Russia comment (not you)

Carry on!

Yeah, same with traveling by boat in the Baltic Sea, been continuously GPS-jammed since 2022 or something annoying like that, basically the entire South East-coast of Sweden been unnavigatable with GPS since then.

    > basically the entire South East-coast of Sweden been unnavigatable with GPS since then

This is an interesting first-hand account. If GPS is unreliable, how do you navigate? Perhaps: (1) Only daylight hours and use landmarks? (2) Can modern boat navigation systems estimate your location based upon measured speed and compass direction?

Are you aware of https://gpsjam.org ?

That site has limitations. It uses the GNSS quality send by ADS-B beacons. So, you will only see reliable data if there are sufficient aircraft in that region. But, it is a useful site.

Related Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz23G_UXCGA

The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely. Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already. Therefore, the disruptions must either be regular tests of the capability, or just actual communication. Right?

Or actual jamming mistargeted for some reason, or used because it was deemed necessary.

Repeatedly, over years, only for 2 to 5 seconds at a time? Seems unlikely

yeah, I have to admit I was commenting on possibilities here without having gone into the article yet -- having now looked for real, I agree that the disruptions don't seem very useful for actual jamming and repeatedly like this for years across satellites and bands in this specific way doesn't make sense for some mistaken targeting either.

There is a very good reason to do this. Suppose you had a device that would make the shoplifting detectors at stores go off. The first time you did it everyone would get hassled. And the second time and so forth. But if you kept doing it eventually the employees would stop caring. Then you just walk out the door with your stuff.

> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already.

Forget "state actors", truck drivers have taken out entire airports with GPS jammers:

* https://www.cnet.com/culture/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-acc...

People like the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation have been trying for years to get some kind of GNSS backup accepted:

* https://rntfnd.org

China has certainly put their money into resiliency (both navigation and timing):

* https://www.gpsworld.com/china-completes-national-eloran-net...

* https://rntfnd.org//2026/03/19/china-has-built-a-triad-of-sa...

* https://rntfnd.org/2023/11/28/china-eloran-used-for-critical...

Some folks are certainly cluing in: South Korea has (e)Loran and the UK and France are joining up with them:

* https://rntfnd.org/2025/04/30/the-uks-system-of-systems-appr...

* https://rntfnd.org/2025/11/12/s-korea-leads-meeting-with-u-k...

The US still has a fairly robust network of VOR's / VOR with DME / VORTAC stations. Good for navigation, but there's no timing component, beyond what's inherent in how they operate.

Admittedly, that'll never be of use outside aviation as its line-of-sight only. But if the sun threw a Carrington event (or worse) at us, I think a lot of western aviation could carry on.

> The US still has a fairly robust network of VOR's / VOR with DME / VORTAC stations. Good for navigation, but there's no timing component, beyond what's inherent in how they operate. Admittedly, that'll never be of use outside aviation […]

I'm aware of the FAA's MON, Minimum Operating Network.

Exactly: that doesn't help boats. Or people in cars. Or farmers:

* https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te...

It doesn't help those that use GNSS for precise timing (TCXOes can only 'free run' for a finite amount of time before drift compounds 'too much').

A lot of these were getting dismantled until quite recently, but given recent developments they should obviously be kept

> A lot of these were getting dismantled until quite recently, but given recent developments they should obviously be kept

The FAA has always planned for keeping a non-GNSS-based infrastructure:

* https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/acf/medi...

* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2012/08/21/2012-20...

* https://download.aopa.org/epilot/2012/120112VOR-MON-White-Pa...

* https://flighttrainingcentral.com/2017/03/legacy-navigation-...

Iridium has launched its own alternative positioning and timing system now https://www.iridium.com/iridium-pnt

It's wild how far Motorola has fallen.

GPS L1 is at 1575 MHz, Iridium is (AFACIT) at 1626 MHz: that's 50 MHz over.

* https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/GNSS_signal

* https://insidegnss.com/something-old-something-new/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

If you're jamming on L1 I don't think it's that much more difficult to jam a little bit over as well.

Celestial Navigation is also doable even in daylight nowadays, e.g. https://sodern.com/en/ranges/astradia

It's been doable since the 1940's.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2981843A/en

Will that come as an option for my RAV4 or F-150? How about my Cessna?

Will it help keep my NTP/PTP masters sync'd?

Unless the actor happens to be a state that puts a great deal of emphasis on flexing & appearances regardless of how pointless it is

There is definitely value in having a demonstrated as opposed a simply supposed capability, though. And actions that are 'almost-certainly-but-not-completely-provably-us' is very much something Russia likes to do.

(One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go)

> One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go

GPS is suprisingly low power. I believe the satellites themselves transmit between 20W and 50W, and in general the signal is quieter than the background noise threshold. It's only by correlating with the PRNG stream [1] that the data signal can be detected at all [2].

[1] The PRNG stream is 1023 bits at 1.023Mbps, so repeats every 1ms, and only autocorrelates with the correct stream when they are aligned. When the streams are not aligned, the data looks like random noise, and each transmitter has a different LFSR configuration to provide a different sequence such that each stream has a low level of correlation with another.

[2] The PRNG stream bits at 1.023Mbps are exclusive-or'd with the data stream at 50bps, so when the decoder is using the correct PRNG and sequence offset, exclusive-or'ing with that produces detectable long pulses at the expected 50bps.

FWIW this is how almost every communication system works. They're all weaker than background noise (e.g. sunlight) but you extract them by correlating with some kind of carrier signal (often but not always a sine wave)

Err what?

No, conventional radio broadcasts can be received with a low noise amplifier and a tuned filter.

The received GPS signal, at ground level, is lower than the thermal noise floor. And the 1.023MHz code is modulated on the RF carrier anyway.

> and a tuned filter

So correlating it with a sine wavelet?

No? Old AM radio required only rectification. You can receive it with accidental diodes.

You do generally need a tuned filter before the rectification, unless you have an extremely large signal dominating the local airwaves. Which is precisely the parent poster's point: with RF you are almost always doing something to demodulate the signal. Whether you are doing it with a sine wave or something more complicated is not that fundamentally different. (and if you're looking at a spectrum analysis, that is looking at the radio signal from the point of view of that sinusoidal modulation scheme, so you will see such signals 'above' the noise floor more readily than something using a different modulation).

I'd argue that "correlation" is an accurate description of what you're doing with Gold codes - you're testing the known sequence of the output of a PRNG against the received signal, and only accepting it when the data correlates, otherwise you're adjusting the offset and trying again until you find a high correlation (strong +ve and -ve spikes) or you give up and assume there's no transmission. There's nothing in the received signal that tells you there is a real signal there at all, without correlating against every possible offset.

If you compare that to the majority of radio transmissions modulated on a sine wave carrier, there is a clear signal there and you don't need to correlate anything to tell you that, and you don't need to keep trying different offsets - you can just demodulate using a carrier of the correct frequency and the result is correct, just with a slight phase shift relative to the local carrier and which probably isn't even relevant in the frequency domain of the signal.

The key point to me is the trying repeated offsets to try to pick out a signal well below the noise floor, and choosing the offset that provides the best correlation, compared to demodulating a very strong signal that's obviously there by just adding a carrier. The latter could be done using "correlation" if you're implementing an SDR, but it doesn't have to be, and most radio hams would prefer to think of it as a simple analogue operation instead.

A strong signal 'that's obviously there' is only obviously there after you've already filtered it to some extent. If you were to look at the raw broadband RF environment on a scope you very much would not see the vast majority of signals there. And when you're demodulating you do often need to tune the phase and frequency of the carrier you're demodulating with, as well. GNSS signals are just generally quite low bandwidth and so that process takes a while.

Not to say that such codes aren't a neat trick, but it's useful to consider that these are in many ways the same thing.

By "obviously there", I meant take some old analogue receiver and twiddle the tuning knob. The vast majority of radio transmissions are many orders of magnitude louder than the noise floor. They are very obviously there.

Tune your SDR radio down to 1.023MHz, you'll see nothing there at all. The signal is about 20dB below the noise floor. The only way you can pick out anything at all is by correlating it against the PRNG with the correct offset in the sequence.

The GP post (to be fair, I should have replied to the post 2 higher up) was arguing that all signals are weaker than the noise floor and demodulating using a carrier was exactly the same thing. It is in one way, but also not in another - in that you need to keep trying different offsets in the PRNG sequence until you find a correlation. That's why I think "correlation" is a sensible term for Gold Codes, but "demodulation" is better for signals modulated by a sine wave carrier.

What you're describing is correlating the received signal with complex sine wavelets of various frequencies.

You also need an accidental antenna. A tuned one that preferentially receives certain sines. Or else you are receiving sunlight with a solar panel.

> The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely.

Is it? If it is an early warning system, could it be jammed briefly so it would fail to warn, couldn't it? It will be a global disruption of GPS, but a brief one and I'm sure people wouldn't be concerned of it due to other news.

> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless

Do you believe that cutting sea cables is a sensible action? Or sending drones to neighbors? It is what they call "hybrid asymmetric warfare", I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, but presumably it may let them take over the world or something.

Probably they just strive to normalize deviations, to boil frog slowly. When people become used to some stupid actions they widen their repertoire, until everything short of tanks crossing the borders became just normal news noise nobody reads twice.

AKA Salami Tactics, famously referred to in the UK sitcom "Yes, Prime Minister"

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

Presumably the missile needs GPS to hit the target so if you jam right when the missile is coming in the missile will miss so you can't really jam the warning

Also if you broadcast noise when your missile is about to hit then your own jamming signal acts as an early warning as well, although I guess it wouldn't provide location.

ICBMs don’t rely on GPS. They are typically self-guided and use a blend of their known launch location, inertial navigation using gyroscopes, celestial navigation (yes, looking at stars), and a few other techniques.

US weapon systems have never relied on GPS for guidance. Some will accept GPS corrections to the primary inertial guidance system but those corrections will be rejected if they deviate more than a few meters from the inertial guidance. US missiles in particular use precision terminal guidance which doesn't involve GPS at all; in these systems GPS would only be used to correct mid-course guidance.

There has been anecdotal evidence for years suggesting that the latest US inertial guidance technology is sufficiently precise and accurate that GPS correction no longer adds value.

I do not think that is correct. For example, Excalibur [1] relies on GPS and proved to be quite inefficient in Ukraine. Russia figured out how to jam them in a few months.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur

This isn't true for US made weapons. They explicitly do not use GPS because it is the first thing to go in a war

>Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless

No, Russia does these "tests" all the time to see and gauge the reactions. Ex flying just a bit into EU airspace.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/05/nato-fighters-interce...

Why these capabilities, if they exist, were not used to send Iranian drones to a wrong target? Maybe because they do not exist. Israel definitely would be happy if thousands of drones were rerouted to a neighbour country or into the sea.

Are there any credible reports of Iran hitting any intended target smaller than a city? Because the drone doesn't need to have GPS for that.

American AWACS bombed on the ground, that is smaller than a city.

Even if that's for communication, repurposing it for mass jamming shouldn't be that hard. It already has this effect. Unless it's low power satellites that wouldn't be able to sustain radio signal in anything longer than short bursts.

The flexing seems stupid, but also if it's a communication channel, they have given themselves away (just as if they were flexing with the jamming).

The video did not settle on the jamming of von der Leyen plane on approach to Plovdiv, but AFAIR it was a (likely unintentional) lie.

Never acknowledged by von der Leyen nor by her press secretary because it exposed the lack of basic world knowledge around von der Leyen and her office.

Why downvotes?

Here's the press conference where it was announced: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341

FlightRadar24 disproved the story shortly after: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178

TLDR: Neither von den Leyen nor her office knew about ADB-S nor about the multiple services that collect ADB-S broadcasts and republish, and there was none around who could stop them from announcing an embarrassing lie.

> Why downvotes?

Probably because some missing mention of some specific thing you care deeply about doesn't imply "lack of basic world knowledge" for an entire political office, really strange thing to say and most likely why people are downvoting. It's neither kind, curious and definitively a snark/swipe that doesn't really add anything to the point you were trying to make.

I think you normalize the deviation, here.

If you listen to the press conference, Podesta (the press secretary) spoke about the plane circling and not being able to land. When preparing the press conference, she should have checked if this obvious lie can be obviously disproved, but she did not. This probably means that she did not know this was a lie, but then someone who ordered this to be announced knew.

My bet is that von der Leyen or her close aide told Podesta to announce the lie in these terms, and the thing that worries me as a European is that there was none to warn these war-mongering ladies that they are making a mistake. This whole situation screams for an intern that sets up the mics and has a callsign and who can stop Podesta as she walks to the pied de stal of shame and explain that the position of planes is monitored all the time and is public information.

But I bet that all their interns are servile 3rd generation eurocrats.

P.S. The whole press conference (and many others) are fascinating to listen to. The language these people use is softened by the media. What do you think von der Leyen was doing on that plane? She was going "along the frontline" to inspect our preparedness for war where "the frontline" is the Eastern EU border.

P.P.S The story made rounds in EU circles, and there was a parliamentary question offering a chance to apologize, but von der Leyen chose to ignore it.

> I think you normalize the deviation, here.

I don't care about Ursula von der Leyen nor her plane, merely explaining that if you try to extrapolate that a group of people don't have "basic world knowledge" based on not knowing a specific technology nor how/why it's used, the community is actually doing the rest of us a favor by downvoting it.

Want to discuss her office's use of a plane and how it's related to inspecting ammunition factories or whatever tirade you're going on about? Do create a new submission where that can be discussed, hardly related to the interesting story and methods of trying to track down GNSS interference.

It's a 9 months old story, even the MEP who wrote the question got over it.

I raised it because it was mentioned in the Veritassium video, but they stopped short of calling it a lie. They wanted to stay on topic, but the beauty of HN is that we can wander slightly off-topic and discover curious facts without being punished.

Yeah, curious facts like "it exposed the lack of basic world knowledge around von der Leyen and her office". Go outside brother, and get some fresh air before that too disappears :)

"the community" is a very small privileged group, hope you know that.

Even if you think the information density of YouTube videos is too low (many do on HN), I can confidently say that the visuals are outstanding for (a) how GNSS/GPS works and (b) how they pinpoint'ed the satellite.

Mildly interesting, and highly likely related. A cluster of 5(?) Ukrainian marine drones wound up today outside and around of Constanta off the coast of Romania with one detonating in the port and the rest detonating... somewhere around. Que here noisy exposion in port:

https://youtu.be/Y8kdneBU_3Q?si=cr07TeMnxJTG-3TM&t=17

No significant damage.

The Ukrainans apparently lost control of the drones and they wound up there. My pet theory is that Russian EW jammed the control signals and guided the GPS jamming walking them to Constanta. I'll admit, if it was intentional (it seems so) it's pretty damn' impressive work from Russian EW.

TLDR (conclusion from the paper): "By a combination of these techniques the satellite Cosmos 2546 (NORAD ID 45608) was identified with high confidence as one source of the interference. Further analysis pointed to the Russian Edinaya Kosmicheskaya Sistema, an early warning constellation to which Cosmos 2546 belongs, as collectively responsible for the wide-area transient interference causing GNSS degradation across Europe since 2019."

Additionally:

> Note that Cosmos 2546 was launched in May 2020 and so cannot be responsible for the interference events that occurred in 2019. Moreover, Cosmos 2546 was not over Europe during some interference events after May 2020. But during all events on the 75 days shown in Table 1 there was at least one EKS satellite above a 35∘ elevation angle with respect to every reference station that observed the interference. Thus, it is highly probable that the EKS constellation is collectively responsible for the wide-area transient GNSS interference events noted since 2019.

I do not see any discussion of the power required for such wide-area jamming. Even as the useful GPS signal is quite weak at the ground level, this satellite would require power in kW range, right?

Satellites have multi kW solar panels

Being on a Molniya orbit probably also helps: the apogee is at nearly 40000km, but the perigee is on the order of 1600 (according to the EKS wiki page), so outside of their primary observation points of their orbit they are quite close to the earth and thus have a ton of blasting ability for satellites with geostationary comms capabilities.

I wonder why they call this specific discovery “jamming”. What they found is a relatively rare burst transmissions over roughly 5MHz of spectrum of something looking like a 12ms cyclic prefix with spacing related to 150 seconds multiplies. I would suspect it is some sort of sync or data close to L1 GPS frequencies, that as a side effect causing lower CNR for the GPS receivers. Btw it is only 10dB, which also I can’t really call “jamming”.

Overall it seems to be an overfitting the observation to the wider intent of a malicious actor.

> I wonder why they call this specific discovery “jamming”.

Because it jamms.

Well 10dB lower CNR for couple seconds doesn't pass my definition of jamm, but rather is a minor co-channel interference.

Hmm - the timing is uncanny that only 2 days ago I started building a dead reckoning system.

Your local cellphone towers already provide a more accurate position beacon signal for GPS modules in most parts of the world. Additional RF beam-forming in G5+ systems also make it impractical for lamers to jam long-distances due to limited coherent signal propagation.

Indeed, amateur Hams have caught Russian ships jamming/spoofing local port traffic several years before the various official overseas conflicts started. Not sure if it is government sponsored, or just various smuggling schemes like some ships spamming China harbors. =3

Agreed about cellphone towers providing accurate position, but not with enough precision and highly dependent on the number of towers in the vicinity.

What i started building is for a highly unlikely scenario which is ; no internet + no GPS + no cell tower.

I have this idea that I'll get Bosch 9-DoF sensors onto every lane of every road, at least twice a month, then any other thing on a road can use a Shazam - like waveform lookup to determine where they are.

I didn't come up with this for dead reckoning, it's more for, um, autonomous cars to be able to avoid potholes and stuff.

GPS jamming has been happening for years and it's not like dead reckoning is an insane new concept

what are you saying? nothing of what you said is new or unknown.

There's a live map too: https://gpsjam.org

That has nothing to do with the article, which is about satellite based interferences.

It's been known that Russia does GPS interference near their Western border and the Baltic down to Ukraine for several years now. It's something airline pilots prepare for now, and expect.

Not sure why this is being couched as novel or surprising.

The novel aspect is that it is being conducted by a satellite, rather than a ground station. Which is an escalation in sophistication which makes counter-jamming much more difficult and also gives global reach to the jammer.

You could actually try reading the paper first before posting comments like this.

Was responding to many of these comments, which read as if the commenters haven’t heard of this before.

The top comment in this thread is some dude asking if we can ‘do something now that we know the source’ lol.

We’ve known the source for 5 years. The fact this particular jamming originates from a Russian satellite and not Russian terrestrial-based equipment doesn’t change much. And while it’s unconvenient for planes and affects separation minima, planes have inertial systems and pilots deal with this easily. It happens in many places around the world, actually, although the Russians are definitely the worst offenders.

U.S. Military Turned GPS into a Global "Numbers Station" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479

The disturbing thing is that anyone was surprised by this. GPS is very fragile.

This made news in the U.S. a few years ago because Ajit Pai had the brilliant idea to allow so-called "5G" telecom service on frequencies too close to those of GPS. I don't think this case is resolved yet: https://physicstoday.aip.org/news/new-5g-exemption-may-jam-g...

TLDR: Russia is jamming GPS and GNSS over Europe, purposefully, using a constellation of military satellites, part of the Russian nuclear program.

Theory is that Russia has been constantly practicing to totally disrupt GPS and GNSS (and the Chinese system) across all of Europe since 2014. Practicing to deploy electronic warfare not across a warzone or even a country but an entire continent.

Who's theory is that? Is it proven by independent research?

Well I like how "the community" downvotes a reasonable question. À la guerre comme à la guerre.

Comm signal in band with GPS? Control for a GPS software supply chain attack?

Saved you a click:

>This paper analyzes and identifies a space-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference source that has caused scores of powerful transient wide-area interference events over continental Europe, Greenland, and Canada since 2019. While terrestrial or near-terrestrial sources are primarily responsible for the recent uptick in GNSS interference worldwide, space-based interferers are of special concern given their potential for vast geographic reach and their portent of a qualitative escalation in GNSS interference. Based on data collected between 2019 and 2026 from a network of terrestrial GNSS reference stations, this paper (1) develops a received-power-based detection framework; (2) details the spatial, temporal, and spectral patterns of wide-area interference events caused by the source; (3) presents and analyzes identification techniques that blend received-power and time-difference-of-arrival measurements; and (4) applies these techniques to confidently identify the GNSS interference source as a constellation of Russian early warning satellites in Molniya ("lightning") orbits.

tl;dr - it was Russian satellites

How unsuprising.

This tl;dr is actually in the tl;dr on the linked page. We're doing tl;drs for tl;drs now?

In the future abstracts will be called Tilldars and no one will remember it came originally from trying to pronounce "tldr"

it should be right in the title tbh, not after some 150 words of prose

Not a new concept. From Matt Might https://matt.might.net/articles/peer-fortress/

"The scout delivers a flawless summary of your abstract."

glad it's getting more coverage

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48246794

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309667

Being engaged to warfare with Russia and being jammed in response. So weird.

Russia attacked Europe, this is just another reminder that they are our enemies and we should be sabotaging their systems in turn.

Relax, Russia didn't attacked Europe yet (if you mean EU).

It may not have attacked intentionally the EU yet, but a week ago there was an incident when a Russian drone apparently strayed away from whatever Ukrainian target it may have had, and it hit an apartment building in the city of Galati, in Romania, in the EU, injuring two people.

In the past there have been other incidents with Russian weapons reaching the neighboring countries from the EU, like Poland and Romania, but this was the first time when they hit a populated area, causing human injuries.

That was not a Russian drone in Romania. Ukraine has admitted it was theirs.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707098wkzpo

The linked article disproves your claim. It seems you're mistaking the naval drone incident, which did not cause casualties, with the Russian drone strike.

> The country's defence ministry said the drone had self-detonated near an oil terminal without causing any casualties, although authorities have said it caused considerable damage to a ship and warehouses.

> Ukraine later confirmed one of its naval drones had been involved, saying it had been knocked off course by Russian electronic interference. Moscow has yet to comment.

> It also comes a week after two people were injured when a drone hit a Romanian apartment block in the eastern city of Galati - close to the border with Ukraine.

> Romanian officials said they had confirmed it was a Russian drone but Moscow said "accusations" of its involvement were "unsubstantiated".

You’re right. I confused the two. Thanks for the correction.

They said Europe, why would you assume the EU?

They killed 2 Czech citizens and caused massive damage and remediation costs by sabotaging an ammo depot in the Czech Republic already in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...

Many more were harmed and significant damage caused by their shady reckless actions over the years.

Russia is the aggressor. What do you propose?

Playing Devil's advocate, given how much firepower Russia has, why is it so soft on Ukraine. I mean what is the endgoal for Russia here? Tire out the US/NATO Empire just as US did to Soviets in Afghanistan. I sometimes feel like all these events are orchestrated as Simon Dixon talks about them in his videos.

https://www.youtube.com/@SimonDixon21/videos

In which way is Russia being soft on Ukraine?

Are you joking? Russia has thrown everything it has at Ukraine for quite some time.

Everything> Are you sure?

They have a large nuclear arsenal; I'm sure the news would have covered it being used.

What news do you follow that shows Ukraine as a hot nuclear desert?

China and India signalled to Russia that nukes are big no-no.

Reason is simple - using nukes when you can't win a conventional war will degrade them from strategic asset into tactical one and whole nuclear proliferation flies out of the window and everyone will have nukes.

So, not everything, then.

Russia is throwing most of its deployable conventional firepower on Ukraine and whatever robots, KABs, missiles and drones it can manufacture. It is their manufacturing capability which is limited.

Have you seen the Oryx list of destroyed equipment? The defunct Soviet Union produced a shitton of armored vehicles, Russia inherited most of them and they all got burnt in Ukraine.

The GPS jamming has been measured since 2019.

You can likely bet that Space X with their thousands of sats deployed in space already has among them a few hundred stealth US military sats strategically placed and ready for the command to deal with the few Russky sats causing these problems ... think our Space Force.

Completely different orbits to make this possible

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