Theme of the Week
Nightmare at 32,000 Feet Portrait of a frightened man: on a routine flight through Saudi Arabia last December, pilots were startled by an urgent warning "Terrain ahead! Pull up!" Strange; they were flying over coastal Saudi Arabia at an altitude 8000 feet higher than the tallest mountain in the world. A similar event startled an American Airlines pilot "when an alert began blaring “pull up!” as his Boeing 777 passed over Pakistan in March—at an altitude of 32,000 feet, far above any terrain."Fortunately, these pilots recognized these false alarms "stemmed from a kind of electronic warfare that hundreds of civilian pilots encounter each day: GPS spoofing."So begins the new nightmare for anyone flying the unfriendly skies: "fake signals that militaries use to ward off drones and missiles are also permeating growing numbers of commercial aircraft."What was once a rarity has become commonplace. By one estimate there has been a 400% surge in GPS spoofing incidents from a few cases a month "to more than 1,100 in August," spurred by technology to deter drones and missiles in Ukraine and Middle East (see below).But it is also a sign of something even scarier: an over-reliance on a decades-old technology.
Last Week's Theme: A More Gradual Independence Day
Industry News
Following the news that Colorado was designated as a Quantum Tech Hub by the US Department Of Commerce’s Economic Development Agency (EDA), Elevate Quantum broke ground on a 70-acre Quantum COmmons campus in Arvada, Colorado.
The National Security Space Association (NSSA) warns that America is over-dependent on GPS, has no real alternatives, and is far behind China and Russia, noting that “Merely the threat of disrupting GPS services might be enough to impact U.S. national security and foreign policy.”
Meanwhile, the US Space Force is deploying "a new ground-based jammer designed to blunt Chinese or Russian satellites from transmitting information about US forces during a conflict."
Are Russian fishing boats sabotaging subsea cables? Experts noticed that "bad things have been happening to some of the subsea fiber optic cables" when "Russian fishing trawlers spent an unaccountably long time lingering over the cables at the precise moment when they met their untimely demise."
The US Air Force announced the expansion of the Space Force Space Systems Integration Office to "include programs at the semi-independent Space Development Agency (SDA) and Space Rapid Capabilities Office...to facilitate better integration across Program Executive Officers to deliver end-to-end capabilities that work, faster.”
The solar superstorm that led to spectacular Northern Lights last May also “caused largest 'mass migration' of satellites in history” as a paper suggested that LEO satellites “were sinking toward the planet at the speed of 590 feet (180 meters) per day during the four-day storm.”
Conferences
2024 OCP Global Summit, October 15–17, San Jose, California
I2A Expo Day, October 17, El Segundo, California
International Conference on Space Optics (ICSO), October 21-25, Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France
IQT Quantum+AI, October 29 - 30, New York, New York
International Timing and Sync Forum 2024, November 4 - 7, Seville, Spain
UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase, November 8, London, UK
UK PNT Leadership Seminar, November 20, London, UK
SLUSH, November 20 - 21, Helsinki, Finland
Q2B24 Silicon Valley, December 10-12, Santa Clara, California
Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems (WSTS), May 12 - 15, 2025, Savannah, GA, US
European Navigation Conference, May 21 - 23, 2025, Wroclaw, Poland
The More You Know...
GPS jamming used to be a relatively common problem because it was so easy that you can easily buy cheap jammers online. Jammers work because they overwhelm your receiver with a stronger signal - an easy feat with GPS, which is 1000 times weaker than a cell phone signal. But jamming is also easy to detect. It is akin to a denial-of-service attack that drops your internet service; there is no doubt that you are off-line.Spoofing, on the other hand, is like a phishing email - much more dangerous, because, at first glance, it looks credible. It works by sending a nearly identical signal to the receiver, modified just enough to change the receiver location or time. It is a wolf in a sheep's clothing - if you aren't paying attention the results can be disastrous.The rampant rise in GPS spoofing is a spillover from the electronic warfare plaguing Eastern Europe and Middle East. And thanks to new hardware, "spoofing is the new jamming...Instead of just jamming the signals and breaking the links with GPS satellites, they're spoon-feeding them false signals."And, unfortunately, these counter-GPS technologies are advancing much faster than GPS.The fundamental problem is that GPS relies on weak RF signals originating from 20,000 km away at a well-known set of frequencies and carrier codes that make them easy prey. It is like trying to protect a package delivered on the exact same route every day. You don't need to block the postal carrier, you can just intercept and swap it out.But there is new entangled photon technology enabled by the Second Quantum Revolution that provides a kind of tracking number that ensures you know it is your package.
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