This pairs interestingly with that piece on how the Anthropic engineer raising the red flag is likely trying to gin up popular support for heavy AI regulation. This looks like more of the same. I'm guessing we'll see a whole PR push of these sorts of articles to build popular support for the government stepping in and regulating the space.
The problem here is the assumption that if the US mil weren’t jamming GPS it wouldn’t be getting jammed. GPS is trivially easy to jam for any state actor, and it’s not “macho” to say that pilots always need to be able to safely conduct flights in its absence.
In this case it was an own-goal. If the U.S. military hadn't jammed this flight's GPS it wouldn't have been jammed.
Worldwide, it's an issue that is going to require changes to the infrastructure of aviation: Training, procedures, equipment. That's what I mean when I say "they should have just used VORs and ILS" shows an unsophisticated understanding of aviation safety. "Just use the training you're already supposed to have" isn't enough. We need to make sure that crew and ATC aren't just improvising when there are GPS outages. Manufacturers need to ensure that equipment has been thoroughly tested against GNSS jamming and spoofing -- The Embraer Phenom used to start "UNEXPECTED ROLLING AND YAWING OSCILLATIONS (DUTCH ROLL) AT HIGH AIRSPEEDS,"[1] after it lost GPS; recently there have been many reports of inertial navigation systems becoming "contaminated" after GPS interference such that they give completely wrong positions for the rest of the flight, even after GPS returns.
You're right that just stopping the U.S. military from jamming civilian aircraft GPS doesn't solve the problem for the rest of the globe. That will take more effort, and it's why aviation authorities and industry have been looking at the problem for years. But it would mostly solve the problem for now, in the U.S., where significant GPS interference is rare outside of military exercises.
The accident flight descended into hostile terrain at night and had a CFIT.
That has less to do with GPS jamming than it does accepting a visual approach from 14 miles out with an enormous mountain they couldn't see between them and the airport.
The error as I see it is abandoning the safeguards of flying a standard instrument approach procure. RNAV or ILS, the terrain clearance is backed into the procedure. They descended below minimum safe altitude.
I think the GP assumption is that there is a bad actor intent on serious harm.
I'm not really sure where I side on this.
Ideally Defense would be able to conduct exercises without worrying about harming civilians. But that seems impossible to drive to 0.
I think the top level commenter comes across as a bit one sided. How often is due-diligence done by the pilots? Could the guidance provided be more well defined and reduce these incidences to several orders of magnitude less? Hopefully the military is not purposefully inflating incidences for nefarious purposes or instigating specific instances.
As far as I know, that assumption generally holds.
If we're talking "trivially easy for a state actor," then it's not macho to say that pilots need to be able to safely conduct flights with a missing engine and a cracked windshield.
> The VOR MON program is designed to enable aircraft, having lost GPS service, to revert to conventional navigation procedures. This will allow users to continue through the outage area using VOR station-to-station navigation or to proceed to a MON airport where an Instrument Landing System (ILS), Localizer (LOC) or VOR approach procedure can be flown without the necessity of GPS, Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), Automatic Direction Finder (ADF), or surveillance. Any airport with a suitable instrument approach may be used for landing, but the VOR MON assures that at least one airport will be within 100 Nautical Miles (NM).
They are continuing to be maintained only because the FAA fought very hard for that ability. The rest of the government does not understand (or care) why the FAA wants to keep "obsolete" systems, and the FAA is subject to their legislative whims.
I've taken to checking https://gpsjam.org/ as part of preflight and inflight when connectivity is available. Cannot always trust the NOTAMs in this regard if those jamming or degrading GPS don't communicate intent or actual, so one must rely on direct observation and reports. I recommend other aviators do the same, the cost is free.
(sites surfacing this information are obtaining it from actual automated observations from aircraft ADS-B broadcasts that contain GPS accuracy and positioning information, treating the entire commercial air traffic system as a GPS/GNSS observatory sensor network, which is very cool imho)
Amen. At my company we tried LastPass, BitWarden and there were revolts from either sales or tech sides of biz... nothing stuck until 1password, since then its been bliss.
The technology hasn't demonstrated the required level of reliability yet. Several companies are getting close, and and early attempts by the companies listed in this thread have paved the way for the FAA to start rolling out the process for scalable compliance. Up until very recently it's all been "approval by waiver/exception", which is very slow, while the FAA figures out along with everyone else what success looks like.
Currently there's approvals in limited areas in the US for testing, and several companies are approved for significant steps towards our shared dream of 5 minute burrito deliveries to our back patios. Nobody has gotten approved for blanket deliveries yet; the safety levels aren't quite there.
Plug: End State Solutions consults and supports companies in developing the conops, safety case, and approval packages. Reach out once your drone company has a design you're ready to freeze for the approval process and we'll help you out. Our team got Insitu and Matternet the first ever commercial UAS type certificates issued by the FAA.
reply