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Date Posted: 08:55:21 07/09/08 Wed
Author: RadioRay
Subject: GPS and 'Sanity Check Navigation' Post-Event?
In reply to: Jay 's message, "Re: This Being a Discussion Group - Old Ali, Two Reviews of Sail-Cool Tools." on 10:14:59 07/08/08 Tue

Well,

This is probably too heavy for a nice sailing site like this. If someone really did want to put the US's nuts in a vice and give'em a good crunch (sounds like divorce court) , there are less obvious ways, as in economic warfare and many others, but here are a few thoughts - since you asked:

here are some thoughts--

Speaking strictly as an individual, one of the scenarios of concern is some small group/nation putting a nuclear device into a ship/boat and putting it into close proximity with either a bona fide target such as Washington DC, New York or a military trans shipment port city or other classical icon. This would be for the propaganda value as much as anything. Anyone doing this would be seen as a Fidel-On-Steroids - hero of the third world and much of the rest.

OTOH - If the USA still obeys it's MAD stance and counter-strike plan, this person/nation once identified - would cease to be an issue. I'm told that bomb forensics are such at identifying the manufacturer of a nuke is very probable, especially if it came from one of the major players, such as ex-Soviet manufacture or some of the Paki/N.Korean spin offs.

Needless to say, the cargo carrying capability of even the trashiest trawler puts 'car bombs' up to a whole new level. The scare of a nuke on US soil would be enough to have the average American lined up to enter refugee camps 'for our own good', faster than almost anything else, simply by seeing it on TV.The loss of communications infrastructure would also leave them 'blind'. It's easy to heard blind cattle.

So much for direct effect nuclear weapons.

The use of a 'clean' attack would be more difficult to counter-strike, because if the effect of the attack is not a large loss of population, then it's difficult to justify the counter-strike, exterminating a half million people in a place where -really- they don't control the weapons. The cleanest Big Punch of the asymmetrical threat would be to use even a low yield nuclear weapon weapon against U.S. or allied (Japan would be easy) infrastructure in the form of an Electromagnetic Pulse. There is a lot on-line about "EMP" (NEMP, HEMP and HERF are related topics for people to google) but in short - a weapon of even modertate yield, launched totally INaccurately to a high altitude and popped, would almost certainly NOT kill anyone intentionally by direct bomb effects and not produce radioactive fall-out. However, the resulting EMP - to the best of our knowledge- would cause catastrophic damage to the nation's electrical power grid, electronic devices and generally crash our economic and social infrastructure.

MORE THAN OIL the USA runs on electronics. Communications as we know it (as most know it) could simple cease to exist. Little or No electrical power grid, ATM's (got cash?), Fancy electronic cash registers, no gas pumps or internet for coordinating deliveries and relief efforts... The power grid itself is seen as a method to hitch-hike the EMP effect well beyond the horizon, to impact those areas not line-of-site with the nuke device. The use of a jack-in-the-box type of missile that does not need to do anything other than put the device high enough to generate enough EMP (see Compton Effect) to have damaging effect. Again, no sophisticated guidance, just get that puppy high and BANG! Remember - to some weirdos out there - just doing this would make them a 'hero'. After all, we're not talking normal human beings here: we're talking about politicians.

You can expand from here the impacts of seriously crippled
electronic/computing capabilities for the USA, but food and fuel deliveries would be a long time in coming. The 'social upheaval' (weasel-speak for massive riots, usually along racial lines) would make Baghdad look like Disneyland.

I would have to believe that the military aspects of GPS are all hardened" in every way, including EMP. However, the social infrastructure required to keep GPS continuously operating from the ground station side may not be, including the ability to keep key personnel operating the various ground stations. I do not know these weak points and naturally if I did, I certainly would not be talking about it on an internet site. You can bet that various attacks against the militarily critical GPS system are in many nations' scenario files.

There is a very inexpensive threat to GPS useage which is simple - jamming.

For the civilian GPS channel(s), this is more common than you might imagine. Much of the approach to Monterey Bay was unusable with GPS for weeks as I remember. It took local Ham radio operators to find and locate the jammer. It was not some sophisticated military satellite beaming interfering signals, nor some ex-Soviet E-WAR ship off the coats. The 'jammer' was a cheap Chinese TV antenna amplifier that was on a live-aboards' boat, accidentally oscillating (transmitting a very weak signal) in the middle of the civilian GPS bands and blocking the reception of the GPS satellites signal which -after all- had to travel all the way down from orbit, rather than a few miles across a bay. Intentional jamming from multiple sites by even a semi-sophisticated enemy would have proven much more difficult to cope with. There were GPS 'spoofers' for sale (E-Bay.ru ??? ha ha) which would 'dither' the signal so that it would offset your displayed position. That's handy to do to an artillery battalion so that their rounds fall a short of target onto their own troops. Put any of these devices on a an aircraft or a weather balloon and you've got an entire region of GPS hell.

So - yes, I love my GPS and use it quite a bit. However, there are many ways that this can become unusable or worse - unreliable - so sanity checks from other methods are always recommended. Mid-ocean, this is almost certainly going to be celestial navigation so that I can at least know whether I am within the 10 Mi(sq) area that my GPS tells me I am in. If celestial says that I'm 250 miles form the coast of Surorov Island and the GPS says that I'm at 5th and Main in Lompoc, Califorina - I know that there's an issue...

On the flip side, maybe this or worse will never happen and what's the WORST for we -the engineless class? We sail, drink, wrestle women and have a great life. I vote 'YES' but should things go 'BOING!' a nearly self contained and very mobile 'cabin' is a great thing. "Investments" are fine to increase your 'assets', "things" are cool to collect, but SKILLS are about the most dependable 'things' that you'll ever own, often fun to learn and to practice and occasionally get out out of lethal trouble, should reality pay a visit.


Be Prepared, but don't destroy a good life doing it.

>RadioRay ..._ ._
s/v Milekna
nr. Irvington, Virginia - USA

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