this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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This has, in fact, been a serious problem in the Baltic region, as Russia's military has been jamming GPS there for some time, and it dicks up navigation for ships and aircraft there.
Is this new system, R-Mode, invulnerable to jamming? It uses radio spectrum, so I'd think not, but it's not mentioned in the article.
I'm sure not, but even without looking at any technical details, it will have at least a couple benefits:
First, it's short range. GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, which is a pretty high orbit. Wikipedia says about 22,000 miles away. For GPS, the jammer is going to be far closer than the legitimate signal.
Second, I'm guessing
though we'll see
that this is going to be a civilian system, and I suppose that they could even try to mandate that militaries not use it. GPS was, from the beginning, a military system, and there are weapons being used in Ukraine that use it for guidance. Unless you're solely out to be a dick
which isn't impossible
probably not a lot of benefit to stomping on civilian-only frequencies.
Regarding the second point, militaries have a long history of using civilian products (see GPS in the gulf war for example) if they don't have enough of the expensive stuff, which will lead to incentive to jam the civilian stuff as well. The article suggests that this system should be more resilient against simple jamming though.