Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe

> Do Romanians give a fuck?

A Ukrainian USV (water surface drone) just exploded the other day in Romania's main industrial port (Europe's 4th largest for a sense of scale), apparently thinking it's somewhere else due to GPS EW interference. Yes they're affected, yes they care

Don't worry though, it's been condemned in a sternly worded letter: https://www.icao.int/news/icao-assembly-condemns-gnss-radio-...

The behavior will continue until a consequence is imposed.

Not on regular Russians, mind. Their ruling class. They're still free to move about the continent, make investments, do whatever. Currently Europe seems to be more interested in breaking away from the US than dealing with the power that has killed hundreds of thousands on their own continent.

Just as Iran jams GNSS, and Venezuela jammed GNSS ahead of the attack. Didn't really help though.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/nasa-satellites-can-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nigsberg_Castle

Killeen, Texas is also a real place.

How many people do you think don’t have at least a 2 degree connection to the US military?

Do you think anyone there is going to think twice about going along with what the military is doing? Or could if they wanted too?

And Killeen is far, far less isolated geographically.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643

[2] https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...

I've definitely seen math done - though I'd have to dig it up again. I think in FAA filings.

A little nudge doesn't do much, it's still a satellite in a substantially similar orbit. Any sort of nudge requires intercept, go up there and match its velocity so you can grab it and push. And still you have to push on it a whole lot to make a meaningful difference. Spin it up? You'd have to do enough to exhaust it's fuel it uses to orient itself.

You're sort of saying if you can chuck an apple hitting a car on the highway, surely you can tow it away to get it off the road. They're significantly different problems.

There has been anecdotal evidence for years suggesting that the latest US inertial guidance technology is sufficiently precise and accurate that GPS correction no longer adds value.

I'm aware of the FAA's MON, Minimum Operating Network.

Exactly: that doesn't help boats. Or people in cars. Or farmers:

* https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-ag-te...

It doesn't help those that use GNSS for precise timing (TCXOes can only 'free run' for a finite amount of time before drift compounds 'too much').

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2981843A/en

Will it help keep my NTP/PTP masters sync'd?

* https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/GNSS_signal

* https://insidegnss.com/something-old-something-new/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

If you're jamming on L1 I don't think it's that much more difficult to jam a little bit over as well.

If you listen to the press conference, Podesta (the press secretary) spoke about the plane circling and not being able to land. When preparing the press conference, she should have checked if this obvious lie can be obviously disproved, but she did not. This probably means that she did not know this was a lie, but then someone who ordered this to be announced knew.

My bet is that von der Leyen or her close aide told Podesta to announce the lie in these terms, and the thing that worries me as a European is that there was none to warn these war-mongering ladies that they are making a mistake. This whole situation screams for an intern that sets up the mics and has a callsign and who can stop Podesta as she walks to the pied de stal of shame and explain that the position of planes is monitored all the time and is public information.

But I bet that all their interns are servile 3rd generation eurocrats.

P.S. The whole press conference (and many others) are fascinating to listen to. The language these people use is softened by the media. What do you think von der Leyen was doing on that plane? She was going "along the frontline" to inspect our preparedness for war where "the frontline" is the Eastern EU border.

P.P.S The story made rounds in EU circles, and there was a parliamentary question offering a chance to apologize, but von der Leyen chose to ignore it.

But in the case where the story is interesting to a larger audience, having a push behind a story across non-academic media is not unheard of. If you can get some media coverage of an academic topic, it can be very beneficial to the researchers’ careers. One goal for a researcher is to bring notoriety to their research, to their institution, and to the field in general. This is the main motivation I see.

The authors may have pushed the arxiv paper out earlier due to the timing of the release of the video.

But even if the paper was "promoted" (i.e. a link submitted), what is bad about it? People seem to find it interesting, and unless there are upvoting bots involved, posting links is the raison d'être of this site.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c707098wkzpo

They have a large nuclear arsenal; I'm sure the news would have covered it being used.

What news do you follow that shows Ukraine as a hot nuclear desert?