Prepare for Disaster: A Resolution for 2024
During the Christmas season, Western infrastructure suffered another perplexing failure. Regardless of the potential culprits, it is crucial for democracies to swiftly extract the valuable lessons from this incident.
Throughout most of Europe, Christmas Day brought a semblance of peace and happiness, albeit fleetingly. However, this tranquility was abruptly shattered on the second day of Christmas when an unexplained failure in the widely utilized GPS satellite positioning system impacted the Baltic Sea region.
It is highly unlikely that we will ever have definitive knowledge about the true culprits, although the most probable scenario suggests Russian involvement. In the autumn of 2023, when three data and energy connections located on the Baltic seabed were targeted, both Russian and Chinese vessels were positioned directly above the affected areas. Subsequently, it was revealed that the Chinese ship had unintentionally severed a gas pipeline by inadvertently dragging an anchor across it. Finnish sources attributed responsibility for another attack to Russia.
Irrespective of the situation, the Boxing Day congestion serves as a stark reminder that aggression can materialize unexpectedly, at any given time, and by employing any available means.The large-scale disruption of GPS signals in Southern Sweden, Northeastern Germany, and substantial areas of Poland on December 26 was evident to pilots, aviation enthusiasts, and users of websites like GPSjam.com.
On a typical day, the GPS interference map of Europe west of Russia is predominantly filled with green, indicating a minimal level of GPS interference ranging from 0% to 2%. Occasionally, a few yellow dots can be observed, representing a slightly higher interference level of 2% to 10%.But on December 26, a large swathe of land and water between Växjö in the north, Stralsund and Neubrandenburg in the west, Łódź in the south, and Białystok in the east was red, indicating a GPS interference level of more than 10%. It wasn’t the first case of GPS phone jamming to hit northern Europe (northern Norway and Finland have been affected before), but it was by far the most severe.
Users of Google Maps, Apple Maps, and other location services encounter heightened difficulty in finding their way due to GPS wifi jamming, as the accuracy of directions cannot be assured, thereby undermining the reliability of these navigation tools.
GPS jamming not only causes frustration for the general public, but it also poses a significant problem for pilots who heavily rely on GPS for navigation and landing. However, it is important to note that pilots undergo thorough training to manually land their aircraft in the event of GPS signal jamming, ensuring that the possibility of them landing on a non-existent runway is completely eliminated.
Comments
Post a Comment