Military GPS Jamming trials

[cessnapete]

A colleague of mine has just returned from a flight from USA West Coast to London. Notamed were GPS Jamming trials out of Yuma I believe.
In the initial cruise they lost all three GPS sources. One was regained after a short time and two were operative eventually before the Atlantic crossing. The third remained U/S to destination. They also lost CPDLC, and various feeds to the co-pilot side instruments which remained the entire flight.
Made for a busy and interesting trip!
Is this level of jamming normal, as it seems a bit OTT for the safety of civil flights?

[redsnail]

GPS jamming has been happening for months in the eastern Mediterranean. Bloody nuisance.

[KRviator]

Be thankful they only lost CPDLC and some instruments. On some Embraer's loss of GPS can affect the flight controls...I'm led to believe Garmin finally updated the software in the yaw damper to somewhat guard against the loss of GPS affecting it to such an extent early last year.

EMBRAER HAS RECENTLY RECEIVED A REPORT OF GPS 1 AND 2 SIMULTANEOUS SIGNAL LOSS DURING FMS NAVIGATION IN CRUISE FLIGHT FOLLOWED BY A GPS HSI 1 AND 2 FAILURE INDICATION, ATTITUDE AND HEADING REFERENCE SYSTEM (AHRS) 1 AND 2 FAULT AND, AFTER A FEW MINUTES, A STALL WARNING PROTECTION SYSTEM (SWPS) FAULT, VENTRAL RUDDER FAIL, YAW DAMPER FAIL, AUTO PILOT FAIL, AND CAS MESSAGES ASSOCIATED WITH UNEXPECTED ROLLING AND YAWING OSCILLATIONS (DUTCH ROLL) AT HIGH AIRSPEEDS.
Source (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Notice/GENOT_7110_711_EMB-300.pdf)

[wiggy]

GPS jamming has been happening for months in the eastern Mediterranean. Bloody nuisance.

Yep, though apart from HAL on our Boeing saying he’s not sure exactly where he is, so don’t shoot an RNP approach, we so far at least have been spared the sort of secondary effects described above.

[cessnapete]

Yep, though apart from HAL on our Boeing saying he’s not sure exactly where he is so don’t shoot an RNAV approach we so far at least have been spared the sort of secondary effects described above.

Yes, an A380 in my example.

[Denti]

CPDLC is not really surprising as it relies usually on GPS timestamps, feeds to main instruments are however worrying. The Embraer thing sounds seriously over the top, but that seems like a good indication of interconnected system without sufficient safeguards within those system being able to isolate single source failures in redundant sensors.

[aterpster]

Yep, though apart from HAL on our Boeing saying he’s not sure exactly where he is, so don’t shoot an RNP approach, we so far at least have been spared the sort of secondary effects described above.
Any airframe that is RNP AR certified will alert "Unable RNP" (or alert to that effect) otherwise its okay to fly any RNP AR for which the operator is qualified. (Any non-qualified RNP AR approaches shouldn't be in the database.)

[CurtainTwitcher]

We are shutting down our navaids and installing GLS's. At least they haven't started to purge the ILS's, yet. What could possibly go wrong?

[msbbarratt]

We are shutting down our navaids and installing GLS's. At least they haven't started to purge the ILS's, yet. What could possibly go wrong?

There's a lot to be said for using a system like ILS that has no ordinary civilian purpose, so there is unlikely to be anyone jamming it. GPS's issue is that there's a myriad of people out there motivated to interfere with it, usually something to do with preventing a vehicle being tracked.