FLUG REVUE November 2005: GPS jamming in the vicinity of atomic stations?

November 2005

GPS JAMMERS TO SHIELD NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS?

By Volker K. Thomalla

The politicians in Berlin who have come up with the proposal that German nuclear power stations should in future be equipped with GPS jammers have scored an own goal. The idea is that the jammers will prevent terrorists from hijacking an aircraft and deliberately flying it into a nuclear power station with the aid of satellite navigation. This is a horror scenario, but GPS jammers will not prevent it. Terrorists must be prevented from getting into the cockpit, as then it is already too late.

GPS is not the only system that aircraft use to navigate with. The bigger they are, the more navigation equipment they have. As well as the inertial navigation system (INS), they also have equipment for receiving signals from radio beacons, with whose aid it is possible to navigate very accurately. Anyone who is able to use a GPS, will also be able to obtain a fix with the aid of two radio beacons. Then there are always two further important navigation instruments on board an aircraft, which are not distracted by jammers either: the pilots' eyes. Aircraft are also navigated by sight. I venture to suggest that if the weather been bad on 11 September 2001, the terrorist attacks on New York ans Washington would not have taken place that day.

Installing GPS jammers on nuclear power stations will not improve safety, and is in fact bound to worsen it. Why? All nuclear power stations are close to large rivers, as they need the water for cooling purposes. If GPS signals within a large radius are jammed, then ships travelling on these rivers at night and in the fog will have to manage without accurate satellite navigation. Again, rescue helicopters which, unlike commercial aircraft, need GPS to navigate by street name, will no longer be able to navigate accurately within the vicinity of nuclear power stations. Quite apart from this, GPS receivers in cars would no longer work. GPS is part of our daily life and offers many benefits in many areas that we are not immediately aware of.

If one looks at the map and draws circles around Germany's nuclear power stations, then in future Hamburg, parts of Frankfurt, parts of Stuttgart and other conurbations would have to manage without GPS reception. Are we really expected to accept this just because some ridiculously naive person is unaware of the facts of life?

The demand on the part of the Government that satellite navigation should be locally disabled with jammers also has serious implications for industrial policy, since it makes a nonsense of all the investment that is pouring into the European Galileo satellite navigation system. Galileo is supposed to be compatible with GPS. Hence, any disruption to GPS will also disrupt Galileo. Why should the state spend resources on a system whose reception the state itself plans to hinder in many regions? The idea of using GPS jammers should be consigned to the shredder as soon as possible, before it causes some damage.

From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 11/2005

Last updated 12 October 2005

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