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Comment by uijl | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

>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.

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