ATC Issues after NATO Electronic Warfare Training?

[Yukimura]

Anyone can tell if this makes sense? Is there no way to detect transponder frequency spamming?

(german only)
Österreichs Luftsicherung am Donnerstag lahmgelegt - Österreich-Chronik - derStandard.at ? Panorama (http://derstandard.at/2000001862681/Oesterreichs-Luftsicherung-am-Donnerstag-lahmgelegt)

(google translate)
https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fkurier.at%2Fchronik%2Foesterreich%2Fnato-uebung-flugsicherung-in-halb-europa-lahmgelegt&edit-text=

[jawe]

Austrian Daily Newspaper Kurier today reported, that there was another incident yesterday, that jammed transponer-signals for planes in high altitudes in the ACC-regions of Vienna, Praha, Munich and the UAC of Karlsruhe (EDUU) between 1:30 and 3:00 pm local time.

The incident was confirmed by a spokesperson of Austrian ANSP Austro Control. The reasons for the phenomenon was unknown. Since it was the second transnational issue within 5 days EUROCONTROL and EASA have started investigations.

Austro Control: Wieder Störangriff auf Flugsicherung - KURIER.at (http://m.kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/austro-control-wieder-stoerangriff-auf-flugsicherung/69.912.159) (german only)

Any thoughts on that developments?

[eglnyt]

Certainly makes sense. Not difficult to do,even the least sophisticated military jamming system should be able to do that. Whether they should have done is a different matter. Normally there would be a Notam with a number to call to get it stopped.

[Bumblebee1985]

What do you guys make of this?

http://rt.com/news/165636-aircraft-disappear-radfars-austria/

I have checked on the Austrian News site, Kurier, mentioned in the article and this seems to confirm the RT story. I found 3 references to this all in German which I checked in Google translate, and it seems to point to some sort of jamming device being used by NATO.

This also apparently happened over Munich and Karlsruhe in Germany and in Prague, Czech Republic.


Here are the links to the news articles from the Austrian
newspaper (in German) FYI....


Flugsicherung: Protokoll zweier Störangriffe - KURIER.at (http://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/flugsicherung-protokoll-zweier-stoerangriffe/70.083.561)FYI....

Ausfall der Flugsicherung: Aufregung um NATO-Störsender - KURIER.at (http://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/ausfall-der-flugsicherung-aufregung-um-nato-stoersender/69.326.252)

Austro Control: Wieder Störangriff auf Flugsicherung - KURIER.at (http://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/austro-control-wieder-stoerangriff-auf-flugsicherung/69.912.159)

[Ian W]

Investigation under way after 13 planes mysteriously vanish from radars in Europe for 25 MINUTES in 'unprecedented' incidentFlights briefly vanish from Austrian air traffic | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2656385/Flights-briefly-vanish-Austrian-air-traffic.html)

Anyone seen anything official about this?

[BOAC]

With all the talk of MH370/Primary/secondary radar, how easy/possible is it with modern civil ATC radar to 'see' a target with primary should secondary go down? Does the blip just appear under the previous secondary box or do you have to go down into the basement and throw a large double-pole copper switch to see it?

[CDN_ATC]

PSR data displays in conjunction with SSR

SSR trumps PSR so the PSR target is not displayed on top , unless the SSR target becomes uncorrelated.

Problem is SSR has a range of 200NM and PSR has a range of 80NM

[ATC Watcher]

BOAC, in many new ANSPs ATS units do not have the luxury of combining PRI with SSR, they are SSR only, much cheaper.

In ACCs where PRI is still fed into the system, ( like in Maastricht for instance) yes, the tracking continue, the symbol changes and label stays, but without altitude (and other functions) of course and this is automatic and fast.

[Lon More]

is it with modern civil ATC radar to 'see' a target with primary should secondary go down?

Most centres now use Multi radar tracking as well, PRI returns may be a bit "fragmented" for want of a better word, and correlation lost. As ATC Watcher said, we had the luxury of continued tracking, but I wouldn't habe been happy with say 10 aircraft in the same predicament in one sector. A greatly increased workload and no real guarantee that the tracking continues.

ATC Watcher, we used to be given a contact number to call if this happened; ENDEX. Is this still so?

[Ian W]

Most centres now use Multi radar tracking as well, PRI returns may be a bit "fragmented" for want of a better word, and correlation lost. As ATC Watcher said, we had the luxury of continued tracking, but I wouldn't habe been happy with say 10 aircraft in the same predicament in one sector. A greatly increased workload and no real guarantee that the tracking continues.

ATC Watcher, we used to be given a contact number to call if this happened; ENDEX. Is this still so?

You are both almost right.
IFF the secondary response which is the one that is linked to the flight database is correlated to a primary THEN when the secondary fails the correlated primary will still carry the 'label' that the secondary response was given.
However, if you lose secondary radar before the aircraft is in primary cover the subsequent primary response will be uncorrelated as there was no secondary response. In some systems it is possible to identify the primary response and manually correlate it with a known aircraft from the flight database, but not many allow this.

I would think that an almost immediate ground stop would be put in place if there was a continuing failure over a significant area. Those flights airborne would be back to procedural control.

I have my doubts that it was a military jamming exercise as that would have had considerably greater effect. However, if it was there are normally extensions to call or transmissions that can be made on guard frequency to tell them to desist immediately.

[yhuubert]

Don't trust those radars:
http://rt.com/news/165636-aircraft-disappear-radfars-austria/

"A total of 13 aircraft suddenly vanished off radars for about 25 minutes on two occasions over Austria and neighboring countries, Austria's flight safety monitor said, calling for an EU probe into the “unprecedented” incidents. ..."

[phonix_at]

Would you agree that "jamming" the secondary radar (ADS-B) signal leading to the disappearing of aircrafts from the screen of an ATC would make it also disappear from flightradar24 ?

FR24 uses amateur receivers, which are surely less sophisticated than those used by European air traffic controls.

And I would assume that those amateur receivers would also be unable to pick up or process a jammed signal properly.

Could therefore be interesting to check whether on 5 June and June 10 suddenly disappearing planes could be found on flightradar24.

The affected control areas lie hundreds of miles apart though. And I wonder, how some single local jamming could cause ADS-B signals disappear from Slovak, Austrian, Czech and German (Karlsruhe) area control.

Austro Control is not willing to disclose "flight numbers or airlines" affected by this breakdown and neither the number of "13 incidents" as quoted by Austrian daily "Kurier" has been officially confirmed. So could also have affected more flights.
Alledgedly (also with no official confirmation) the second incident affected "only planes cruising at high altitudes".

If some dumb moron is jamming service frequencies just for his private "amusement" you could call it "inexcusable" and he would surely be treated on criminal charges if caught.

If it would prove that NATO in the course of an exercise on "electronic war(!)fare" would deliberately include civil aircrafts in their "games", well aware to jeopardize the safety of innumerable lives and risking a catastrophe, how should we call that ?

Any further infos on that ?
Anyone, who checked if and which planes also disappeared on fr24 ?
Any pilots reading here and have been involved in these incidents ?

[kcockayne]

1. Radar is a RADIO system &, consequently, very easy to block by broadcasting on the same radio frequencies.
2. This applies to both Secondary & Primary Radar.
3. If this was a deliberate attempt to block ALL Radar systems, that would have been easily achievable. In this event, ATC revert to Procedural control - HUGE delays ! Think "volcanic ash clouds".
4. If it was an attempt to block only Secondary Radar, the Primary could (subject to what has already been stated previously) perform as a temporary substitute - BUT, with large delays due to Primary's inadequacies compared to Secondary.
5. Such action by western military agencies is unthinkable. Who were the perpetrators ?
6. Such events more than adequately highlight the situation where Governments are cynically exploiting the need for radio spectrum from mobile phone companies etc. & selling off Public Broadcast (TV & Radio) frequencies &, more importantly,Primary Radar frequencies - without allocating alternative frequencies for Radar use.
This is CRIMINAL & should be stopped, & reversed.

[jawe]

I contacted Flightradar24. They say they checked their logs several times for the time spans in question and did not find any abnormalities.

As far as we can see no aircraft has disappeared from our system. Also the more advanced and more sensitive MLAT system (4 receivers needed to track a flight) was working during this time.

With about 30 receivers in the area between Vienna, Munich, Karlsruhe, Praha and Bratislava Flightradar24 has probably more receivers than ATC and therefore a bigger redundancy.

We are not saying that there was no interference during these time periods, but if there was some kind of interference it looks like it didn't affect our system.

[RaRadar]

ADS-B works on 1090 MHz for the downlink whereas the secondary radars use 1030 MHz for the uplink and also 1090 MHz for the downlink. If the 'interference' was on 1030 MHz the secondary radars wouldn't get a reply from the transponder but ADS-B receivers would be unaffected.

RR

[Lon More]

if you lose secondary radar before the aircraft is in primary cover the subsequent primary response will be uncorrelated as there was no secondary response.

Not applicable here as it's in a solid area of Radnet (http://www.eurocontrol.int/tags/radnet) cover

[BDiONU]

In this event, ATC revert to Procedural control - HUGE delays ! How many ATC units train for or even have procedural procedures now?

[kcockayne]

BDiONU

Very good point.
All of the ditching of past systems eg Procedural, Primary Radar etc in order to save money has been a retrograde step.
OK, you don't need them all of the time, but you should have reliable systems as a back up, even if they are slow & labour intensive.
Don't worry, though, nothing is going to happen.
Complacency gone mad.

[Ian W]

Not applicable here as it's in a solid area of Radnet (http://www.eurocontrol.int/tags/radnet) cover

It is still applicable.

If there is only primary radar where an aircraft enters radar cover then the flight data label cannot be correlated with the primary return. By saying 'in radnet' you are saying that the aircraft was in secondary cover to become correlated. Also note that any break in primary cover longer than coasting parameter or an unexpected maneuver may decorrelate a primary from the flight data label.

[Lon More]

By saying 'in radnet' you are saying that the aircraft was in secondary cover to become correlated

Yes, it would be. Secondary cover in the area discussed is 100%