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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| Norks Jam GPS to Disrupt S.Korea-U.S. Drills | |
| 2011-03-08 | |
North Korean military units jammed Global Positioning System signals Friday in some parts of South Korea, the government believes.
The North first attempted to jam GPS signals last August during joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises and the latest attack apparently targeted the current "Key Resolve" drills, intelligence agencies say. The North has two types of GPS jamming devices -- one imported from Russia in the early 2000s and an adapted version. For three to four years it has been circulating a sales brochure for its own version in the Middle East. The vehicle-mounted device imported from Russia is capable of jamming GPS signals from 50 to 100 km away. The North Korean-made jammer has similar capabilities but is cheaper. An intelligence report says the North recently imported a new 24-Watt jammer from Russia that is capable of interfering with GPS reception within a radius of 400 km, which means it can cover nearly all of the Korean Peninsula. The devices are targeting mainly the U.S.' Tomahawk and South Korea's cruise missiles or their Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs. But most of the weapons are capable of avoiding signal interference since they use military codes. The South Korean and U.S. militaries use missile and bomb guidance systems alongside inertial navigation systems. Their accuracy could suffer if only the INS is used. Once the GPS devices are jammed, it would be difficult to locate the precise position of enemy ships or aircraft and could result in missiles or bombs hitting the wrong targets. A military source said, "We've suffered no significant damage from the North's GPS jamming operations, but missiles or bombs could of course be affected." | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #24 Hi, Classical_Liberal - it's been a while! Missed you, my dear. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-08 22:41 |
| #23 Here's the Rantburg article, TW. Those were my comments. Thank you, Angie! A wonderful story -- you tell it considerably better than I do. :-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-08 22:17 |
| #22 Brian Shul is a great speaker and photographer. Well worth seeing his 'Sled Driver' presentation: http://www.sleddriver.com/ |
| Posted by: Classical_Libera 2011-03-08 22:02 |
| #21 Here's the Rantburg article, TW. Those were my comments. |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2011-03-08 21:19 |
| #20 That's the story, Whiskey Mike. Thanks! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-08 18:17 |
| #19 TW, here is a link: preview is giving me a hard time so just in case... http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/21/story-sr71-pilots-sh.html |
| Posted by: Whiskey Mike 2011-03-08 17:22 |
| #18 You are thinking of the SR-71 Blackbird, TW; Thank you, SteveS. I'm going to need more guidance to find the story, though. Now I know why one of our posters uses the nym SR-71. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-08 17:10 |
| #17 You are thinking of the SR-71 Blackbird, TW; simply an amazing machine. A quick google for sr-71 blackbird stories will turn up some goodies As for the Norks, I think it is nice of them to give our guys some practice in a real-world situation. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2011-03-08 16:36 |
| #16 it is understood that officers will be advised to point their radar guns inland in future. Gorgeous English understatement! Yes, you did state that it was an urban legend, Oscar -- I saw the words. But I've been know to miss subtleties like actual words, myself, so I can't cavil when others do. There was a discussion here recently, prompted by an article about the U.S. Air Force spy plane pilot who flew really, really fast over Libya back when Reagan was president (somebody please chime in with the details, please!), and was going so fast that he overflew the refueling plane in Italy before he was able to slow down. There were two stories told in the thread, as I recall: one about the private pilot calling in for a ground speed check, getting something that made him feel smug, only to hear an anonymous voice being told he'd achieved some impossible speed (clearly a fighter jet pilot tweaking him); the second story was the anonymous voice calling in to ask that 10,000 ft. be reserved for him, the airport saying, "Sure, if you can get up there," and the response being, "Thank you. Now descending to 10,000 ft." I wish I could remember the actual stories or find them by a web search, but I'm afraid it's a double fail for me, today. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-08 15:31 |
| #15 Isn't that an act of war? It is if I'm more than ten miles from home. |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-03-08 15:28 |
| #14 The GPS jammers Iraq imported, ineffective as they were, were supposed to have been destroyed with laser guided bombs. I thought I remembered hearing Schwarzkopf saying that they used GPS-guided bombs shortly after that was done. Maybe he was joking, but I remember laughing at it. |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-03-08 15:09 |
| #13 Next time I'll put bells , whistles , chimes , alarms and sirens on there so you pick it up quicker Fred should program something like that next to Italics in comments. |
| Posted by: Pollyandrew 2011-03-08 15:07 |
| #12 Face meet palm ... Neither of you two (Gloluse B. Hayes9343 and Lemuel Unaper1938) see the URBAN MYTH status . Theres a lot of holes in the story , but this article reminded me a bit of it Next time I'll put bells , whistles , chimes , alarms and sirens on there so you pick it up quicker :) |
| Posted by: Oscar 2011-03-08 14:41 |
| #11 Dutch don't fly Tornados. The GPS jammers Iraq imported, ineffective as they were, were supposed to have been destroyed with laser guided bombs. Though rumor at one time was they were destroyed with JDAM bombs. |
| Posted by: Gloluse B. Hayes9343 2011-03-08 14:33 |
| #10 ...but had automatically armed a Sidewinder air-to-ground missile ready to neutralize... What rubbish, Sidewinders are Air Intercept (Air-to-Air) missiles. |
| Posted by: Lemuel Unaper1938 2011-03-08 13:27 |
| #9 Reminds me of an old urban myth flying around about 10 years ago .. Goes something like this (copy n pasted as Im a lazy bum nowaday !) A report has revealed that two traffic patrol officers from North Berwick were involved in an unusual incident whilst checking for speeding motorists on the A1 road between Oldhamstocks and Grantshouse. Last May, they were using a hand-held radar device to trap unwary motorists on the Edinburgh to London trunk road. One of the unnamed officers used the device to check the speed of an approaching vehicle, and was surprised to find that his target had registered a speed in excess of 300 miles per hour. The £5000 machine then seized up and could not be reset by the bemused PC's. The radar had in fact latched on to a NATO Tornado aircraft in the North Sea, which was taking part in a simulated low-flying exercise over the Borders and Southern Scotland. Following a complaint by Sir William Sutherland, Chief Constable of the Lothian & Borders Police force to the RAF liaison office, it was revealed that the officers had a lucky escape - the tactical computer on board the aircraft not only detected and jammed the "hostile" radar equipment, but had automatically armed a Sidewinder air-to-ground missile ready to neutralize the perceived threat. Luckily the Dutch pilot was alerted to the missile status and was able to override the automatic protection system before the missile launched. The Police declined to comment, although it is understood that officers will be advised to point their radar guns inland in future. |
| Posted by: Oscar 2011-03-08 12:45 |
| #8 IIRC, the US has a HARM missile that is similar. Either way, finding an active jammer and killing it is the easy part. They only are meant for being turned on if an attack it actively taking place and only used to make the initial strike miss, then turned off and moved. Otherwise they are just really loud targets. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2011-03-08 11:22 |
| #7 Now, the one that really will mess with you is the RAF's ALARM. Wicked! |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-03-08 09:56 |
| #6 Whiskey Mike, Having had the pleasure of working with the HARM (AKA the Mach 5 High Explosive Fuzzbuster), let me assure you that the old girl is well up to the task. IIRC the latest version specifically had home-on-GPS-jam software installed in it and it's been demonstrated under, ahem, 'combat conditions'. Now, the one that really will mess with you is the RAF's ALARM. Outstanding weapon that has a little tool called 'loiter mode'. Put simply, one can fire it at a target and if the target sees it and shuts off the radar it can shut off its motor and deploy a small chute, then hang around for IIRC a minute or two until the target thinks he's safe and lights up his radar again. The seeker head then cuts off the chute, relights the motor, and sends the missile back in. I LIKE that. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2011-03-08 09:07 |
| #5 Perhaps they did it to see what our response would be so they can compensate for it in the future - hope we didn't take the bait. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2011-03-08 09:05 |
| #4 Giving a press release about an enemies capabilities is solely intended to muddy the water. It can be done when the system doesn't work, to make the enemy think it did; or when it works, to make the enemy think it doesn't work. So the bottom line is that we want to reduce their international sales. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-03-08 08:59 |
| #3 A shrieking child throwing a tantrum. A child with nukes. I wonder if a HARM can lock that jammer. |
| Posted by: Whiskey Mike 2011-03-08 05:06 |
| #2 That is really, really stupid for N. Korea to show their hand. Now the US and SK can plan accordingly. |
| Posted by: Glegum White8424 2011-03-08 00:32 |
| #1 A jamming signal should make a good homing beam for a transmitter-destroying missile. I'm just sayin'......... "Eighth Army officials today expressed regret over an unfortunate incident in which a test of a new missile was disrupted by unexpected interference, resulting in the missile diverting far off course, and inadvertently crossing into North Korea, where it evidently exploded." |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2011-03-08 00:20 |