GPS Sole Source Civil Aviation Navigation?

[SirRichardCraniumEsq.]

The single threaded fallacy

GPS Sole Source Civil Aviation Navigation?

Ask Wong Lee in Beijing what he thinks about that?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml



"The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by
the Bush administration"

"After a contentious debate, the White House directed the
Pentagon to limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ .....................

No warm fuzzy for me

[Mitty]

Interesting. The GPS function of the GPS constellation would not be vulnerable
to this type of attack because the delivered energy levels are low. Enough to
blind a camera but not enough to physically damage the bird.

Sufficiently high energy pulses could certainly be hypothesized, however.
Whether they can be delivered from the ground, I don't know. Possibly not due
to atmospheric dispersion and absorption. Someone here will probably know.

On 9/28/2006 9:42 AM, SirRichardCraniumEsq. wrote the following:
> The single threaded fallacy
>
> GPS Sole Source Civil Aviation Navigation?
>
> Ask Wong Lee in Beijing what he thinks about that?
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml
>
>
>
>
> "The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush
> administration"
>
> "After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to
> limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.
>
> Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ .....................
>
> No warm fuzzy for me

[SirRichardCraniumEsq.]

Mitty wrote:
> Interesting. The GPS function of the GPS constellation would not be
> vulnerable to this type of attack because the delivered energy levels
> are low. Enough to blind a camera but not enough to physically damage
> the bird.
>
> Sufficiently high energy pulses could certainly be hypothesized,
> however. Whether they can be delivered from the ground, I don't know.
> Possibly not due to atmospheric dispersion and absorption. Someone here
> will probably know.
>
> On 9/28/2006 9:42 AM, SirRichardCraniumEsq. wrote the following:
>
>> The single threaded fallacy
>>
>> GPS Sole Source Civil Aviation Navigation?
>>
>> Ask Wong Lee in Beijing what he thinks about that?
>>
>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush
>> administration"
>>
>> "After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to
>> limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.
>>
>> Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ .....................
>>
>> No warm fuzzy for me

It worrys me more the Government is hiding this from the
public and it comes from a paper in the UK

That is scary.

[Bob Gardner]

Has any thought been given to the disparity in altitude between spy camera
satellites and the GPS constellation?

Bob Gardner

"SirRichardCraniumEsq." > wrote in message
. ..
> The single threaded fallacy
>
> GPS Sole Source Civil Aviation Navigation?
>
> Ask Wong Lee in Beijing what he thinks about that?
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml
>
>
>
> "The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush
> administration"
>
> "After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to
> limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.
>
> Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ .....................
>
> No warm fuzzy for me

[SirRichardCraniumEsq.]

Has any thought been given to the disparity in altitude
between spy camera satellites and the GPS constellation?

<SNIP>


Working with the speed of light(LASER)it probably does not
matter that much.

If the Chinese can hit a spy satellite I am sure they can
figure out a way to zap a GPS bird. If not right now soon in
the future.

America should establish a good solid VOR/DME back up
network on the ground hardened for EMP attacks with back up
power and redundancy.

The FAA as always is walking backwards with their future
planning and right now are looking at decommissioning ground
based navaid's soon.

That is just stupid

[Mitty]

On 9/28/2006 3:59 PM, SirRichardCraniumEsq. wrote the following:
> Has any thought been given to the disparity in altitude between spy
> camera satellites and the GPS constellation?
>
> <SNIP>
>
>
> Working with the speed of light(LASER)it probably does not matter that
> much.
>

Beam dispersion, hence diminishing energy density at the target, and pointing
accuracy are two considerations that come immediately to mind. In addition to
the simple geometry of pointing accurately at something farther away, every
thousand miles of orbit height adds something more than ten milliseconds of
delay to your aiming feedback control loop. And since you are talking about
ground based weapons you probably have the atmosphere causing your beam to wave
around in a significant way. It may be that only space based weapons of this
type are even feasible. I don't know. Maybe someone who does will pipe up.

> If the Chinese can hit a spy satellite I am sure they can figure out a
> way to zap a GPS bird. If not right now soon in the future.
>

There is a big difference between illuminating a bird with the minimal amount of
energy density required to temporarily blind its camera and delivering enough
energy to kill the bird. Note that now they are not even killing the cameras
though they might be able to do that. Remember that it isn't enough to just
(accurately) get energy to a target -- it must be absorbed and not reflected
away. This issue is not exactly a new one for military satellite designers.

> America should establish a good solid VOR/DME back up network on the
> ground hardened for EMP attacks with back up power and redundancy.
>

Electromagnetic pulses big enough to cause wide scale ground damage of
electronics come only from nuclear detonations, which tend to cause other
difficulties that could make VOR availability a fairly minor priority. There
are those pesky gamma rays hitting all that live meat, for example. Also the
(unhardened) ground and spaced-based assets of the domestic telecommunications
network.

> The FAA as always is walking backwards with their future planning and
> right now are looking at decommissioning ground based navaid's soon.
>
> That is just stupid
>

Possibly, but illogical and unscientific arguments don't prove it.

[RK Henry]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:44:57 -0500, Mitty > wrote:

>Interesting. The GPS function of the GPS constellation would not be vulnerable
>to this type of attack because the delivered energy levels are low. Enough to
>blind a camera but not enough to physically damage the bird.

The DOD designers considered all of these issues when they originally
worked on the system. It was, after all, originally a military system.
That's why they designed it the way they did.

An attacker would have to destroy more than just one bird to disable
the system. If they did that, especially with a nuclear device, then
civil aviation operators would have bigger issues than whether GPS was
working. This would be an act of war. Civil aviation would be
grounded, civilians would be instructed to "duck and cover" and pull
out their cache of duct tape, Internal Revenue agents would be
scurrying about implementing those emergency plans to make sure
everyone can pay taxes while civilization is being torn asunder.

Focus, people.

On the other hand, at least they aren't saying that George W. Bush is
using the GPS satellites to spy on Americans.

RK Henry

[Sam Spade]

SirRichardCraniumEsq. wrote:
> The single threaded fallacy
>
> GPS Sole Source Civil Aviation Navigation?
>
> Ask Wong Lee in Beijing what he thinks about that?
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/26/wchina226.xml
>
>
>
>
> "The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush
> administration"
>
> "After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to
> limit its concern to one line," Defense News said.
>
> Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................ .....................
>
> No warm fuzzy for me
Those were optical birds.

[Sam Spade]

SirRichardCraniumEsq. wrote:


>
> America should establish a good solid VOR/DME back up network on the
> ground hardened for EMP attacks with back up power and redundancy.

Are you an FAA employee who maintains VOR stations?
>
> The FAA as always is walking backwards with their future planning and
> right now are looking at decommissioning ground based navaid's soon.
>
> That is just stupid
>

No, not stupid at all.

Most of the serious aircraft will have IRUs by the time the VORs are
gone, so they will be able to do just fine getting to the nearest ILS.

[Andrew Sarangan[_1_]]

SirRichardCraniumEsq. wrote:
> Has any thought been given to the disparity in altitude
> between spy camera satellites and the GPS constellation?
>
> <SNIP>
>
>
> Working with the speed of light(LASER)it probably does not
> matter that much.
>
> If the Chinese can hit a spy satellite I am sure they can
> figure out a way to zap a GPS bird. If not right now soon in
> the future.
>

Aiming for a target 200 miles away is much different than aiming for
something 10,000 miles away. Also, it is not the speed of light, but
the beam diffraction that becomes a problem. You have to concentrate a
lot of energy in a small area to cause any damage, and that becomes
progressively more difficult for distant objects. I am not saying it is
impossible, but the comparison is like firing a shotgun vs firing a
missile.