U.S. Defense Testing Could Knock Out Your GPS

[aaron88_7]

I like how the ads are now for GPS units lol

 

[Marco925]

[citation][nom]house70[/nom]As for commercial pilots relying on GPS for their daily flights... good luck with that! So what, if some civilian planes crash? Happened before! We can always blame the weather...[/citation]
yeah, but this time the cat's been let out of the bag.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

screw the us army

 

[Hupiscratch]

Does someone know the purpose of these tests?

 

[Repelsteeltje]

[citation][nom]hunter315[/now][...]Anyone who complains that they are knocking out the GPS signal, the US DOD put up the star of GPS satellites, they can do what they want to them.[...][/citation]

But who paid for those satellites? ...

 

[WyomingKnott]

[citation][nom]garyshome[/nom]Damn right over my house. I won't be able to find the bathroom[/citation]
Your house is in the ocean? 😉

 

[vittau]

[citation][nom]house70[/nom]As for commercial pilots relying on GPS for their daily flights... good luck with that! So what, if some civilian planes crash? Happened before! We can always blame the weather...[/citation]They're supposed to check the NOTAMs and be aware of the test.
And besides, the ATCs will probably notify the pilots while the tests are in progress.

As for airliners, no worries, they use INS (Inertial Navigation System).

 

[TunaSoda]

It is their satellites...

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]morg[/nom]hope it won't kill crabs and birds[/citation]
Exactly. How will the animals navigate the ocean without GPS signals?

Seriously though, I wonder how long it would take for an animal to evolve to actually use GPS signals in some way, similar to how some animals, mostly birds, use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation.

 

[derek2006]

Can't believe so many people are complaining about loosing their GPS signal for a short amount of time so the Military can do testing. What ever they are testing for is for the good of the nation and our security.

 

[milktea]

They are testing a new weapon which has the ability to move the Bermuda Triangle. 😀

 

[f-14]

GPS 3.0 rollout woohoo. forgot how long ago the airforce said they were going to be upgrading the gps system with new satelittes. what is the newer accuracy going to be again i'm too lazy to google it, 3" or less right?

 

[Ciuy]

they will teleport a US carrier to Mars...

 

[scrumworks]

Pretty obvious that is a military exercise to test knocking out "enemy" local GPS systems.

 

[retrig]

[citation][nom]derek2006[/nom]Can't believe so many people are complaining about loosing their GPS signal for a short amount of time so the Military can do testing. What ever they are testing for is for the good of the nation and our security.[/citation]

Just like the Iraq and Afghan wars (and virtually every other war in US history), right?

 

[maestintaolius]

recalculating....

recalculating....

recalculating....

 

[dalethepcman]

Anti Sky-Net operation's testing. Because you never know when a pissed off robotic Arnold will come back in time to kick your ass.

 

[Guest]

You guys at Tom's Hardware should do your homework. What I read from this is the tests are being conducted during late evening hours for 45 minutes at a time and affect aircraft navigation at altitudes decreasing in area the lower one flies. At 4000 feet, the outages will barely cover half of Florida. The map shows the location of the test out near the what looks like the Bahamas. It's probably a ship based test and because of curvature of the earth, would not affect land based based GPS on the mainland. The coverage area is 325NM at FL250(25,000 feet), 260NM at 10,000FT and 215NM at 4,000FT. I don't know if the Eastern mountains are tall enough to overcome the curvature of the Earth. Now if you are a pilot, different story. I seem to remember my dad telling me that microwave towers for telephone transmission had to be 400 ft tall to see between two towers over 21 miles apart.

 

[razor512]

[citation][nom]f-14[/nom]GPS 3.0 rollout woohoo. forgot how long ago the airforce said they were going to be upgrading the gps system with new satelittes. what is the newer accuracy going to be again i'm too lazy to google it, 3" or less right?[/citation]


Since the country is broke, we wont be getting new GPS any time soon,

the defense testing is really probably a test to see how many GPS units they can take offline before GPS fails to work that way they can probably ignore their duties of maintenance on the satellites


Or they want to see how many people rely on GPS by creating a massive car pileup in the shape of a trollface

 

[maddad]

Did everyone forget the government/military "owns" the GPS system/satelites and allow for commercial use of some of its features. At least they let people know what they are doing. Just curious though, I didn't know about this until I read it here. Shouldn't that be in all the major newspapers and News outlets.