Russia was funded By US to Build Jammers in 2002, another US military Blunder.
Jamming is the act of broadcasting a signal on the same channel as the intended target service so as to confuse or interfere with reception.
The report said GPS disruption was recorded in some devices in the capital Seoul and two cities closer to the border, Incheon and Paju.
One report said the disruption caused some cell phones to show the wrong time. No more details were provided, but that would be possible if the phones used the accurate GPS time signal to synchronize their clocks.
The jamming signals are believed to have come from a vehicle-mounted mobile jamming units located near the border and were possibly aimed at disrupting the current U.S.-South Korea military exercises, Yonhap said.
Last year a government official said North Korea had imported GPS jamming equipment from Russia.
“The jamming signals came sporadically every five to 10 minutes,” an intelligence official said, adding that North Korea was likely testing its imported devices. — Yonhap News, March 6, 2011.
Defense officials in South Korea and military analysts elsewhere are expressing concern about what they call a new type of threat from Pyongyang. The North Koreans, according to South Korea's government, are now capable of disrupting GPS receivers, which are a critical component of modern military and civilian navigation.
This week, the South Korea Communications Commission informed lawmakers that between August 23 and 25, signals emanating from near the North Korean city of Kaesong interfered with South Korean GPS military and civilian receivers on land and at sea.
Officials say the jammers were repeatedly switched on for 10-minute periods over a number of hours during the three days.
Sources in South Korea, Japan and the United States say defense officials in all three countries are concerned about Pyongyang's apparent ability to disrupt GPS navigation, and are discussing its ramifications.
Military use of GPS receivers
GPS uses up to 32 satellites operated by the U.S. Air Force. It is freely accessible to anyone with a receiver, but it has a range of critical military uses.
Retired U.S. Marine Colonel Andy Harp, a military analyst and author, notes that the military applications go beyond guiding bombs and missiles.
"It can be involved with air support, air delivery, artillery. The entire system, to a great extent, relies on GPS," says Colonel Harp.
U.S. Forces Korea spokesman Colonel Jonathan Withington declined to assess the reported North Korean jamming, saying it is a matter of intelligence and operational security.
"We also would not be able to comment on our assessment of the effects of North Korean jamming on any civilian commercial systems. While U.S. military forces do use GPS navigation technology, our forces are not reliant on the GPS to conduct ground, air or sea operations and routinely train to operate in a contested electronic environment," Willington said.
Military specialists point out that while some guided bombs might be affected by jamming, newer weapons would not be.
North Korea's culture of military creativity
Colonel Harp, who headed the Marines' Crisis Action Team that monitored developments in North Korea, is not surprised by North Korea's new ability.
"The North Koreans are great innovators," he says. "So we have to be greatly wary of what they develop and what they're capable of. The North Koreans are technologically trying to make advances across the entire front and it has to be a great concern to stay ahead of their efforts."
That sentiment is echoed by South Korea's defense minister, Kim Tae-young. He told members of the National Assembly the North Korean GPS jamming poses a "new kind of threat." Kim referred to an intelligence report saying the North Koreans can mount devices on vehicles that can jam GPS signals within a 50 to 100 kilometer radius.
Asymmetrical warfare
Some defense analysts say while the North Korean action is unprecedented it should not have caught the South Korean military by surprise.
Professor Park Young-wook, with Kwangwoon University's Defense Industry Research Institute, says several scholars predicted the North would acquire such technology. This is the first publicly known incident attributed to North Korea, says Park. And she agrees it must be considered a serious threat if it reoccurs because GPS is an integral part of the infrastructure, not only for the military but for many other industries.
An aerospace technology consultant in Japan who did not want to be named says the August incident may have been "some sort of operational test, perhaps, to make a point."
Specifically, he says, that would be to demonstrate "a classic case of asymmetrical warfare." In other words, while the United States has invested billions of dollars in the satellite navigation system, the North Koreans can easily disrupt it with a cheap, portable transmitter on the ground.
U.S. Army awarded contracts to Russian GPS jammer vendor
By Bob Brewin
March 27, 2003 12:00 PM ET
Computerworld - The U.S. Army awarded $192,000 in contracts in 2002 to a Russian company identified in news reports as a supplier of Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming equipment to Iraq.
Moscow-based Aviaconversiya Ltd. has denied selling the jamming equipment to Iraq, according to the news reports. Officials there couldn't be reached for comment this week, despite repeated attempts by Computerworld to do so.
On Tuesday, President Bush personally complained to Russian Premier Vladimir Putin about the sale of Russian military equipment to Iraq, according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. In a press briefing that day, Fleischer said the White House was "concerned" about reports "of ongoing cooperation and support to Iraqi military forces being provided by a Russian company that produces GPS jamming equipment. ... We have credible evidence that Russian companies provided the assistance and the prohibited hardware to the Iraqi regime.
"The President raised with President Putin our ongoing concerns about support [that] would be provided for Iraqi military forces by Russian companies that produced the equipment," he said. Putin promised to look into the issue, Fleischer said.
Iraq evidently tried to use those jammers against U.S. forces after the U.S.-led coalition began strikes against Iraqi targets last week. "We have noticed some attempts by the Iraqis to use a GPS jamming system that they obtained from another nation. We have destroyed all six of those jammers in the last two nights' airstrikes. I'm pleased to say they had no effect on us," Air Force Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart, of the U.S. Central Command, said yesterday.
Air Force Lt. Col. Ken McClellan, a Defense Department spokesman, acknowledged that the Army had let contracts to Aviaconversiya. The company is included on an online list of all Defense Department contracts worth more than $25,000 that were awarded in 2002 (download PDF from Defenselink). But he declined to provide any details.
"Because of the sensitive nature of what constitutes exact military capabilities, or potential vulnerabilities, I doubt seriously whether you'll find anyone willing to go beyond the previously released information from Defenselink or Commerce Business Daily," McClellan said in an e-mail reply to questions about the contract.
GPS experts said the Army most likely bought equipment from Aviaconversiya to test its capabilities, which in turn would help U.S. forces avoid jamming or attack jammers being used against them. But, James Hasik, a GPS consultant in Atlanta, said he doubts that the jammers would have much effect on GPS-equipped smart weapons used in Iraq such as the Tomahawk cruise missile or Joint Direct Attack Munitions, because they have backup guidance systems such as gyroscope-based inertial navigation systems.
Richard Langley, a professor of geodesy at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, agreed and said the jammers would also have a hard time interfering with an encrypted military GPS code broadcast at a frequency of 1227.6 MHz. But the jammers could interfere with signals broadcast at 1575.42 MHz, a band used by commercial GPS receivers. Such receivers could have been bought by individual troops, but the Army tried to derail that practice in January. In the January 2003 "Pathfinder" newsletter (download PDF), the Army warned troops of the "severe risks" associated with the use of commercial GPS receivers on the battlefield. The newsletter is published by the Army's Program Manager GPS in Fort Monmouth, N.J.
"Never use them for calling in your critical position information," the newsletter cautioned, urging the use of a crypto-protected Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver (PLGR) made by Rockwell Collins Inc. in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The newsletter said the PLGR is "your best protection against spoofing and jamming and the mission failure or death that could result from their effect on a commercial" receiver.
Hasik said jamming of civilian signals could be detrimental if pilots of aging aircraft such as the Air Force A-10 or the Navy F-14 have bought handheld commercial receivers to make up for those planes' lack of built-in GPS. Jamming could interfere with critical navigation functions of the receivers, he said.
GPS receivers are susceptible to jamming because of the weak nature of the signals as they travel to receivers on earth from 24 satellites in space, Hasik said.
This week's warning about the sale of Russian GPS jammers to Iraq and the subsequent attack on them illustrate the Pentagon's concern about interference with one of the core technologies of its smart weapons systems. Earlier this year, McClellan said the Pentagon had a "somewhat serious concern about an online article in 'Phrack' that detailed how to build a homemade GPS jammer"
GPS signal jammers are portable devices that literally means gadgets that stop a GPS tracking device from receiving the signal that without which they cannot pick up their position. They emit their own signal at the frequency that GPS tracking devices use, which confuses or blocks other GPS signals.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you,To use cell phone in public places ignoring others' feeling is totally immoral and ridiculous. It should be banned in some certain sites as from my point of view. I'd like to recommend the gov. to install cell phone jammers in some certain public places.
ReplyDelete