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Featured Replies

Wondering if we will see more of this with the rise of "Grey Zone" warfare:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/world/americas/colombia-airline-flights-venezuela.html?_r=0

There was no specific mention of a loss of separation but it was enough to get a "sharp diversion".

China seems to be practicing this also:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/chinas-harassment-civilian-ships-and-aircraft-south-china-sea-reminds-us-why-we-need-more-us-freedom

This article and referenced speech imply they make no distinction or even attempt at distinguishing between civil and military traffic for interception or harassment.

Could ICAO as a governing body respond?  Suspension or some or all certifications or reciprocity of certifications?

  • 1 year later...
  • 6 years later...

Was this really a cyber attack, or just some terrorists who found their best English speaking pal to try and pretend to be ATC on the VHF frequency the El Al flight was already on?

Sounds like a CPDLC hack. The re-route was sent but not accepted, certainly not executed.  Pilots asked for further info via VHF or HF.

For those not familiar: CPDLC is a data link with the regional controlling agency.  You can swap messages, requests altitude or route changes, and more.  Onthe 787, The controlling agency can send route changes and the pilots can ACCEPT, IGNORE, or CANCEL the incoming message.  If the pilots push ACCEPT, the route is loaded into the FMS but you still have to press EXECUTE on the FMS to enter and activate the change.  

Edited by TreeA10

From some discussion on our internal pilot forum, my understanding is that it was voice. The actual ATC controller told them to refer to CPDLC and ignore VHF attempts. It was a female voice and the guys felt if was not the real controller and queried. We fly thru that area quite a bit.


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  • Author
Seems overblown as a “threat” 

Depends as it all ended well, had it been a less security conscious carrier it might have ended differently


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I’ll follow up on my post though and say that something that could be a dangerous development, even over VHF voice channels, is did they use some sort of AI spoofing tech to closely match the voice of the on-shift controller? I saw that mentioned on Reddit. No idea if that’s what happened but that would actually be a concerning threat to civil aviation since VHF frequencies are not hard to access.  

Guys there’s not a lot of ATC control over Somalia. Pretty easy to figure that out…and ignore it. 

2 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

Guys there’s not a lot of ATC control over Somalia. Pretty easy to figure that out…and ignore it. 

This.....as someone who recently flew into/around/and over I can vouch for that statement.

  • 4 weeks later...

I fly the black sea corner routinely as civil traffic.  Couple months ago we made the turn and completely unmasked our GPS antennas to face north and immediately got an ANP of 20+.   It's a bit of a hazard.

Edited by FourFans

  • Author
Been going on for over a year, severely affecting our mil platforms as well, and we haven’t done s$&t about it..

I guess we could jam in response
I’m fine with that but not sure what else non kinetic we could do
It’s bullshit and I’m not sure being the bigger man and not retaliating (openly) is a viable COA going forward
We just seem to be content letting assholes screw around with us


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  • 1 month later...

Thousands of flights to and from Europe affected by suspected Russian jamming | Airline industry | The Guardian

Flights in and out of Britain are among thousands that have been affected by suspected Russian jamming of GPS systems.

More than 2,300 Ryanair flights have reported incidents of GPS interference since last August, according to a report, as well as almost 1,400 at Wizz Air, 82 at British Airways and four from easyJet.

About 46,000 aircraft in total have logged problems with GPS over the Baltic Sea in the same time period, the Sun reported, based on analysis of flight logs with the website GPSJAM.org. Most of the GPS problems reported on the website have come in eastern Europe, bordering Russia... (full story at title link)

Yea they're jammin' more than Bob Marley out there in a somewhat-successful attempt to defeat Ukrainian drones and other GPS-aided munitions. Thanks a lot Vlad!

  • 4 months later...

Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials

If you don't have access to the WSJ, log onto the USAF MWR library website using your DoD Identification Number and DOB, then go under 'Find A Resource' and search for it...  

https://daf.dodmwrlibraries.org/

By the way, I already checked...there are no gun magazines listed! 🤬🤬🤬

  • Author

Had a UPS dude in the JS yesterday and he mentioned this from his recent flying in the ME, they were spoofed and GPS said they were over Cairo when still over 200+ NM away, they reverted to VORs and confirmation of track with ATC, don’t let those radio nav and dead reckoning skills atrophy…

Article posted at drudge with no pay block:

https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/electronic-warfare-spooks-airlines-pilots-and-air-safety-officials-60959bbd

I can't find it but there is a great European airline compnay with a ride along that shows all the jamming/spoofing once they hit UKR & ME.  

Found it

 

Edited by uhhello

The FAA doesn't have guidance or updated mandates in place for US air carriers? Say it ain't so. And the AIM isn't too helpful either, only to report anomalies online. Are there any airline dudes here that fly international that can comment on their procedures to mitigate this issue? Also, its somewhat shocking that the AAL B777 crew in that WSJ article experienced GPS issues all the way back to the US.

5 hours ago, polcat said:

The FAA doesn't have guidance or updated mandates in place for US air carriers? Say it ain't so. And the AIM isn't too helpful either, only to report anomalies online. Are there any airline dudes here that fly international that can comment on their procedures to mitigate this issue? Also, its somewhat shocking that the AAL B777 crew in that WSJ article experienced GPS issues all the way back to the US.

GPS spoofing effectively tells the FMS that the INUs are all off by some degree and should correct their position. Once they change to match the bad GPS signal, even once the spoofing ends, they can't go back to their original, correct position, which means that for the rest of the flight you have the FMS interpolating between good GPS and bad INUs for position, so you won't ever get a really good solution.

https://ops.group/blog/nat-crossing-after-gps-spoofing/

Not an airline guy.. forgive the elementary question.
 

Why is there no ability to exclude the GPSs? Or ability to remove the bias introduced into the INU? Inflight alignment? What do you do if you lose power in flight and have to reboot?

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