Cyber ghost ships save fuel, don't endanger anyone, and are therefore good for the environment °v°
Now the russians could prank the baltics by switching on their virtual transponders, and give all the Susi Sommerlochs of the Lügenpresse something to do by reporting countless intrusions of russian aggressor planes into Nahtod-Airspace. (Foaming at the mouth)
add GPS spoofing/jamming. The non-military GPS spoofing/jamming is a usual part in the drone war in Donbass and will probably be so in any future happenings.
In the context of transponder and GPS data faking and spoofing, i think the US destroyers suddenly hitting various things few years back weren't just accidents.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Don't forget that USA military uses the encrypted P(Y)-code GPS signals, which can not be spoofed by adversary. Yes, they can be jammed, but IIRC modern military ships and planes equipped with very presice IMUs, so they are quite immune to a short-term GPS jamming. And even before that, spoofing or jamming which has caused such incident can be easily detected and it would have been immideately publicly reported.
> Don't forget that USA military uses the encrypted P(Y)-code GPS signals
Do they? The whole reason Selective Availability was switched off (and is no longer built-in at all) is that the same US military found that cheap civilian GPS was readily available while specialist military GPS was always back-ordered.
> which can not be spoofed by adversary
Those signals just need a (secret) key, they aren't Hollywood plot magic that prevents spoofing. Your annoying older brother doesn't have the US military secret key for GPS, but I see absolutely no reason to believe that the Russians have somehow never been able to obtain this key.
The more you wriggle on the first point the more salient the second point becomes - if the US military has millions of military keyed GPS units, Russia could trivially steal one. And the less important the second point, the more the first applies - if Russia can't steal these keys because only a dozen military GPS units are deployed, there likely wasn't one feeding this (civilian anyway) AIS transmitter.
Since I do not serve in the US military, I don't know for sure, but I would be really surprised if it was not the case, especially for ships and planes. I'd imagine keys are rotated on regular basis. If you think that Russia has a reliable access to those keys, then USA military has FAR bigger issues than hypotetical spoofing.
And you have not adressed the second part of my comment. Not only we haven't heard about spoofing as a reason for those incidents, but also even with civilian recievers spoofing can be detected by comparing GNSS and IMU data. And even before that you can detect anomalous power of GNSS signal (since spoofing usually has to outpowr legitimate signal) or find that there are "satellites" which produce unconsistent signals.
>If you think that Russia has a reliable access to those keys, then USA military has FAR bigger issues than hypotetical spoofing.
btw, i don't think it was Russia, to me it looks like China who has much better access in particular to the technological layers of the US defense systems. Sailors on these destroyers at night were looking at those screens with "confusing UI" - you don't need to spoof GPS/etc. if you cracked the access to the UI, and that it was the same destroyer type fits well into it.
Wouldn't this likely be using asymmetric encryption though? In that case obtaining the public key from a stolen receiver would only let you read the high-precision P(Y) signals – you couldn't spoof them since you still don't have the private key.
> Wouldn't this likely be using asymmetric encryption though?
It isn't, but even if it was, not in a way that makes this attack significantly more difficult.
The problem you have is that GPS receivers are receiving one or more bit streams and passively discerning their position from the timing of those bit streams.
In something like TLS (except 0RTT early_data) both peers begin by introducing randomness to each session. So this connection must be the new connection I just created, if you try to send me packets from an earlier session, the random parameters are all wrong and it's unintelligible. Verifying this is called "freshness".
In contrast a passive receiver can't check for freshness. It just has to believe whatever it is told, no choice.
So, as an adversary I can spoof your position by simply feeding you stale data. I probably shouldn't try to persuade you this is actually the middle of the Pacific ocean not the Black Sea, nor that it's actually January rather than June, but I can certainly fudge things a little bit without too much trouble.
RT is hardly an independent news organisation. And how many of those are 'near' Russian borders, which is not the same as actually being inside NATO airspace... as you well know.
But they were convenient. I won't invest hours collecting sites to make my point. Besides that 'independence' is relative. Anyway, I'm just wary of one-sided bitching. Above a certain treshold of waryness I tend to bitch back. As simple as that.
That's not what I meant. I meant "projecting" something like 'Mig-31-007@Mach3@somealtitude@somedirection ultrabadaboom' via ADS-B without actually any plane there. For the lulz, you know? (by means of microdrone, from satellite, buoys, their own ECM-planes, whatever...)
Meanwhile NAhTOd scrambling interceptors, AWACS, whatever, because can't really trust the primary radar, no?
The article makes it sound like this could have been mistaken for actual ship movement by the Russian navy. But surely it can't be the case that self reported, public beacon information like AIS is being taken seriously in a military context?
The Russians know as well as the rest of the world does that AIS is totally unauthenticated and wildly spoofable. Any indication by a navy that they were provoked by an AIS track is therefore probably just theater.
The article implies that AIS was spoofed by the Russian side, but I find it more likely it was a case of trolling from the Ukranian side. Considering that USA and Russia have significant SIGINT capabilities in the region, finding source of the signal and determining that its a fake one should be quite easy for them. And it goes without saying that any competent military will not trust easily spoofable AIS data.
>Geopolitical trolling is not a Ukrainian thing, like at all
Trying to get Nazi collaborant's slogan on the national football team uniforms is not a case of geopolitical trolling? Yes, Ukraine has significantly smaller capabilities compared to Russia, so you don't hear about it as often, especially in the western outlets, but it still tries to hurt Russia where it can (not to blame Ukraine, it's a logical behaviour considering the currently dominant narrative in the country).
Also note that I have not said that it was done by the Ukranian goverment (altough I would not be surprised considering its sheer incompetence), AIS spoofing can be done relatively easy by civilians with sufficient knowledge and hardware.
>They would never do something as dumb when it comes to NATO or the US.
Sending a diversion group into Crimea was not dumb? Biden has famously scolded Poroshenko for this. What about sending military ships through the Kerch strait without following adequate procedures (IIRC Ukranian military ships have passed it without issues like month before the incident) in an attempt to influence upcoming elections? Compared to those provocations, AIS spoofing is a child's play.
>There is zero reason to.
Getting Russian military into a state of high alert for effectively zero cost? Not that it would work of course.
> Sending a diversion group into Crimea was not dumb? Biden has famously scolded Poroshenko for this. What about sending military ships through the Kerch strait without following adequate procedures (IIRC Ukranian military ships have passed it without issues like month before the incident) in an attempt to influence upcoming elections? Compared to those provocations, AIS spoofing is a child's play.
Kerch straight is obviously doesn't belong to Russia, and any party free to break the ceasefire at any moment.
Without peace treaty in between Russia, and Ukraine, both sides are formally at war. Casus belli is not needed.
Russia will never order to open fire on US ships in sane mind, they remember Khasham well. A destroyer group + US airforce from Turkey, and Europe can alone make a short work of whatever Russia can throw at them within hours.
Instead, with will use all, and every way to get them out without firing a shot: pressure, intimidation, lawfare, disinformation, quiet sabotage, 5th columnists, informal forces.
>Kerch straight is obviously doesn't belong to Russia
Russia clearly thinks otherwise, so forcing the issue is de facto a clear provocation.
>Without peace treaty in between Russia, and Ukraine, both sides are formally at war
Lol what? Please, watch less Ukranian TV if you can. Neither Ukraine, nor Russia have declared a state of war on other. It's a very simple and easily verifiable fact.
And Ukraine is quite happy to take money from Russia whenever it can. Russia is still a first or second trading partner of Ukraine. Imagine during WWII USSR having similar economic ties with Germany or USA with Japan.
I hope you will not start to talk about "hybrid war". Firstly, it's a legally meaningless term. Secondly, by appliying the same criteria Syria and USA are also at war with each other.
>Russia will never order to open fire on US ships in sane mind, they remember Khasham well.
Neither USA will open fire on Russian military forces since it can very quickly devolve into exchange of nuclear strikes. In Kasham the US hit Russian mercanary forces operating in gray area. I doubt USA would have risked a nuclear war over Blackwater personnel getting killed in similar circumstances. Even the story about alleged bounties for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan have ended without any significant consequences.
> Neither Ukraine, nor Russia have declared a state of war on other
Nobody declares war anymore. And a formal declaration of war isn't a prerequisite for being in a state of war. (By that definition, the United States has been at peace since WWII.)
The slogan "Слава КПСС" ("Glory to CPSU") is Nazi collaborator's slogan, because USSR collaborated with Nazi until Jun 22 1941. Ukraine was part of USSR.
You are saying that Ukraine has zero reason to do this and not so subtly alluding to that it's Russia who did it. But what benefit does Russia derive from this then?
> They would never do something as dumb when it comes to NATO or the US. There is zero reason to.
"American bombers also flew directly towards Soviet airspace, peeling off at the last moment, sometimes several times per week. These near-penetrations were designed to test Soviet radar vulnerability as well as demonstrate US capabilities in a nuclear war." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83#Psychological_o...
Vessels transmitting AIS data over VHF (location, speed, bearing, name, size and rate of turn of vessel etc) help other ships from colliding with it - but it can't really be relied on for tracking and I'd be amazed if any military relied on it (In a military manoeuvre I'd guess they turn it off)
Presumably the GPS was blocked/misdirected 'by some means' and this got published by the AIS systems.
AIS is an aide to navigational safety, but cannot and is not relied upon as a sole source of data. Not every vessel is required to have it, or have redundant systems for it.
As this article suggests it's not verifiable information and can be spoofed in various ways, or just switched off if you're up to no good. Various international bodies are keen to come up with standards to reduce the opportunity for spoofing AIS, but it will likely not go anywhere.
The Project Sandstone series from RUSI digs into various techniques smugglers and sanctions busters use to hide or mask illicit activity at sea.
This isn't manipulation of GPS. Anyone can send a spoofed or manipulated AIS signal, it is quite common in the wild and trivial to do.
Most military systems, and certainly all US ones, rely on inertial navigation systems, not GPS. GPS was considered unreliable for navigation when it was built, which was fine for its intended purpose.
This is patently false. Though we use Inertial, it's one component of an overall system that includes GPS.
When we have degraded GPS we have to allow for larger error margins, based on time since last positional fix. There are other systems that allow us to reset the inertial, including manual fixes, if absolutely necessary.
To say that a modern military doesn't use GPS for navigation is flat wrong.
The US does not use GPS for primary navigation and never has. It is used for small corrections within the (classified) error bounds of INS, which is already very low in state-of-the-art systems. The US largely doesn't rely on a single INS either, but uses large networks of INS and other localization technologies to significantly reduce INS error. The purpose of GPS was to provide a highly accurate model of the world, not to navigate it per se.
Some newer INS technology purportedly can reliably maintain precision within the error margin of GPS corrections for very long periods of time such that it renders GPS corrections largely pointless. The US considers this keystone technology for the military; the state-of-the-art is strictly controlled classified technology.
Last time I looked at INS the state of the art was laser gyroscopes. They were pretty good at maintaining your position, but still suffer from error buildup like any INS system. IIRC the drift became significant (more than 10m) over about a couple of hours of over-land driving. Very good by INS standards, but not something you can solely rely on.
FWIW, state-of-the-art INS is not publicly available technology. No one knows what the real limits are, only that it is much less than what is available publicly. Cheap systems like guided bombs use conventional laser gyros but they don’t need to maintain their precision very long and they only accept GPS corrections within their drift error (a dozen meters?). When real precision is required, they tend to use laser guidance anyway.
The intended purpose of GPS was navigation. It is reckless to rely solely on GPS for your navigation, but it is a very important part of any modern navigation system.
I'm currently living in Odessa, and my apartment has a direct view of the sea. I have seen a number of military vessels sailing past recently — more than usual. I also saw two MV-22 Osprey aircraft flying overhead yesterday, which I haven't seen before.
It's probably in the context of Russia amassing troops on Ukraine's eastern border and Ukraine's current govenrnment's plan to obtain the Action Plan for Membership (MAP) in NATO in 2021. NATO had it's 2021 summit in Busseles this very month.
The port of Odessa is already pretty damn close to Sevastopol, I'd gather the Americans would see two Russian warships stationed in the port of Havana as practically being stationed in Miami or Key West. It's too bad that the Montreux Treaty doesn't mean anything anymore and that things got to escalate this far (I live very close to where all this is happening and it kind of makes me very nervous).
Except Sevastopol is in Crimea which is internationally recognized as being part of Ukraine, not Russia. Gdansk is also basically a stick's throw from Kalinigrad.
The presence of NATO forces in the ports of Odessa, Constanta or Varna would improve the balance of power in the Black Sea, which would otherwise become a Russian lake now that Turkey has its own agenda and it's not such a reliable partner as it was in the past.
Surely that changes when the government of a country has shifted to an aggressively anti-Russian one which will threaten one of your country's few naval ports and will likely welcome American military bases with open arms.
Or should Russia just bend the knee to the US overlords and be a good lapdog?
Your position seems to be that Russia has the right to not respect another country's territorial integrity when that country elects a government that Russia doesn't like. And, yeah, Russia probably does in fact think that.
But if you wonder why everybody in the neighborhood is scrambling for NATO membership, this attitude is exactly that.
> Or should Russia just bend the knee to the US overlords and be a good lapdog?
Funny, you seem to expect that Ukraine should bend the knee to the Russian overlords and be a good lapdog...
The reason everybody was scrambling for NATO membership was the threat of being taken over by USSR. The reason USSR was taking over neighbouring countries was, among other benefits, mainly to create a buffer zone so that in case of attack Russia's "heart", i.e. Moscow, St Petersburg, etc, would be more protected.
Now with the coming of ICBMs, jets, and especially nuclear weapons it is no longer as vital for Russia to have these buffer zones. America on the other hand keeps purporting this outdated myth of scary Russia despite Russia barely even being a threat anymore so that it can keep members of NATO as effectively vassal states. This way it can control them - "you do as I say, or scary Russia will come and take you".
Having American military bases and American influence around its border will only increase tensions between Russia and their neighbouring countries. That is precisely the reason Finland hasn't joined NATO and they and Russia have been getting along fine. Russian troops haven't rolled into Helsinki as of yet.
It should also be noted that Russia's claim to join NATO was rejected in 1954, and Putin has stated that he has suggested Russia joining NATO to Clinton and was again rejected. Now I can see how USSR during Cold War would be rejected, but why was post-USSR crumbling and then Western-friendly Russia rejected? I'll suggest that it was because US would then lose its favourite boogeyman.
Russia's strategy in Eastern Europe and more recently in Crimea was not to fight, but send in little green men with rifles and organise elections. That's how the USSR has installed regimes of their choice in its vassal states which later formed the Warsaw Pact.
NATO and thd US has a new bogeyman called China now. Russua has its own version of NATO called the CSTO and is part of the SCO or Shanghai Pact along with China and their satellite states.
> Finland also beat the crap out of Russia in WW2.
Finland did very well in the Winter War, but it did not "beat the crap out of Russia" because that would be assuming that they have won. Instead they have lost, but Russia has achieved what's called a Pyrrhic victory and Finland has received favourable terms.
> Russia's strategy in Eastern Europe and more recently in Crimea was not to fight, but send in little green men with rifles and organise elections. That's how the USSR has installed regimes of their choice in its vassal states which later formed the Warsaw Pact.
Are you then claiming that Eastern Ukraine is not dominantly ethnic Russians?
> NATO and thd US has a new bogeyman called China now. Russua has its own version of NATO called the CSTO and is part of the SCO or Shanghai Pact along with China and their satellite states.
No, China is not the bogeyman because China doesn't go for hard-power like USSR did or in fact the USA does. Instead they go for soft-power by investing into countries and getting influence through financial means - look at Australia, Greece, and now increasingly the USA itself. Note how the USA didn't even squeak about the Wuhan lab leak theory until recently - would it be the same if a virus has appeared near a virology lab in Vladivostok?
What on God's green earth are you talking about? In what way did Finland "unequivocally win" the war? The Finns had to concede more than the territory demanded by the Soviets before the war[0]
I'm pretty sure that the reason Ukraine is afraid of Russia is not because the US keeps talking about "scary Russia". The reason Ukraine is afraid of Russia is because Russia did in fact come and take at least part of Ukraine.
I'm pretty sure that the reason Poland is afraid of Russia isn't because the US keeps talking about "scary Russia". It's because it's had bitter experience with Russia, going back to the partition of 1772, then the second partition, the third partition, then World War II and the Warsaw Pact occupation. If you were Poland, and that was your neighbor, and you saw what your neighbor just did to Ukraine, would you really need the US to keep saying "scary Russia"? Or would you be running for NATO membership as hard as you could, because of the objective reality of what had happened, and was continuing to happen?
I'm sorry, did you somehow blank out and miss out on the part where I said it's no longer beneficial for Russia to take neighbouring states as long as they do not pose a threat to the country's security.
If a neighbour turns anti-Russian, joins a group whose sole reason is to be against Russia, and installs military bases right at your doorstep - yes, I'd say Russia has a right to intervene, and that doesn't take into account how Eastern Ukraine is very much pro-Russia and populace seems to identify as ethnically Russian and be okay with being part of Russia.
US does much worse things for much less - look at CIA getting rid of democratic governments as soon as they decide not to play in US's favour and installing a more favourable regime to their interests.
No, I didn't blank out. What Russia did talks louder to me than what you said.
So Russia has the right to intervene if Ukraine elects an anti-Russia government? Really? Russia gets to decide which governments of Ukraine are acceptable?
And why doesn't Ukraine get to decide what governments of Russia are acceptable?
> US does much worse things for much less - look at CIA getting rid of democratic governments as soon as they decide not to play in US's favour and installing a more favourable regime to their interests.
So, do you think that's morally right, or morally wrong?
This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.
> So Russia has the right to intervene if Ukraine elects an anti-Russia government? Really? Russia gets to decide which governments of Ukraine are acceptable?
Russia has the right to defend its national security within its means.
> This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.
It's not about who Russia likes or dislikes - if a government acts in a way that could harm Russia why shouldn't they do something about it.
> Russia has the right to defend its national security within its means.
Please explain how do you associate the natural outcome of free and democratic elections in the Ukraine with a "national security " threat to Russia that's serious enough to justify a full blown invasion.
The new government was vehemently anti-Russian and pro-American and pro-NATO.
Russia did not commit a full blown invasion, it annexed a part of the country that had a crucial naval port to use which they had an agreement with the previous government and where the population of that area of the country is predominantly ethnic Russians who self-identify as Russian and didn't support the new anti-Russian government. The only reason that historically Russian land was given to Ukraine in the 1954 transfer of Crimea was due to Khrushev's blunder.
Don't try to pull wool over anyone's eyes here with claims that it was just an innocent change of power. In world politics you can't do things willy-nilly. Ukraine has threatened Russia by going against it, cutting off previous agreements and trying to ally itself with Russia's enemies and Russia did what it had to do stop it in its tracks.
And for your information, Ukrainian citizens are worse off than they were before, whilst the new anti-Russian elite of Ukraine is busy getting rich and robbing the country. But hey, at least they're no longer associated with Russia, right? Because EU and the US cared so much about them in the first place and totally not trying to destabilise Russia's southern border.
> trying to ally itself with Russia's enemies and Russia did what it had to do stop it in its tracks
Russia's enemies are actually its current leaders and the oligarchs that support them. Vladimir Sorokin's Sugar Kremlin is quite telling in this regard.
> The reason everybody was scrambling for NATO membership was the threat of being taken over by USSR.
While it was a sign of being more comfortable with the US than the USSR, for many it was more a hedge against an eventual resurgence of Germany than a perceived imminent Soviet threat. Which, sure, looking back from after the Cold War seems a bit weird, but from the perspective of the immediate aftermath of the two World Wars with a short breathing space in between is less so.
> It should also be noted that Russia's claim to join NATO was rejected in 1954,
No, Russia’s suggestion that if appropriate changes to the structure and character of NATO were made it might be interested in discussing joining (not a “claim to join”), made as part of a multipronged strategy to disrupt the formation of European Defense Community, promote the demobilization of Western European militaries, and gradually push the US out of Europe (which everyone could see at the time, but we know for certain now because we have thr internal Soviet Foreign Ministry memos as the strategy developed) was given a hard pass.
> and Putin has stated that he has suggested Russia joining NATO to Clinton and was again rejected.
Russia was admitted to NATO’s Partnership for Peace, a membership on-ramp program, in 1994, and NATO has been pretty clear about the path forward if Russia wants full membership. Russia’s not interested in membership (though it may have been when it joined PfP), only disruption, so it hasn’t made any recent steps on that path, but that's Russia’s decision.
> but why was post-USSR crumbling and then Western-friendly Russia rejected?
Russia made a bit of progress toward membership during its brief Western-friendly phase, with the support of the Alliance. The 2000 discussions where Putin floated the suggestion of joining were after that period. It was a nonserious empty propaganda maneuver.
> I'll suggest that it was because US would then lose its favourite boogeyman.
Nah, by then Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a bigger boogeyman than Russia; sure, the US had conflict—and almost, in the Balkans in the late 1990s, direct armed conflict—with Russia, but the US government publicly downplayed that conflict, rather than treating Russia as a boogeyman. Russia didn't really get back boogeyman status until it forced its way back to it with its invasions of Ukraine.
> America on the other hand keeps purporting this outdated myth of scary Russia despite Russia barely even being a threat anymore so that it can keep members of NATO as effectively vassal states.
In light of your comment, how do you describe Russia's attack on Georgia and Ukraine, as well as it's threats directed at not only Baltic countries but also Poland?
> Crimea is ethnically Russian and was only part of Ukraine as an accident of Soviet political history.
Every square meter in the world has multiple claims to it on endless bases, including history, ethnicity, etc. Much of the U.S. is ethnically German and was owned by Native Americans.
The only important question is, what do the people of Crimea want? It's their choice, not yours or mine or Putin's.
There's another important question: How do we country-level political changes? We can't have geographical areas constantly switching countries.
I mean in favour of the other countries with Black Sea coastline, including Georgia. And yes in the US' favour, because US companies like Exxon would benefit from oil extraction rights in the Black Sea, which they are quite happy to grant in exchange for keeping Russia at bay.
I was just saying yesterday [1] that as a guy living in the area this stuff makes me incredibly nervous, I hope cooler heads will prevail on both sides.
FSVO "close". Sevastopol is on the west side of the Crimean peninsula, on the Black Sea; Odessa is on the east side of Crimea, on the Azov Sea, and not on the Crimean peninsula at all.
There have been reports (AP, attributed to a Russsian source) of warning shots being fired and bombs being dropped. Anyone know where that is supposed to have happened?
It still surprises me just how much information is out there on the internet. I wonder how much you could track military movements by simply monitoring publicly available webcams. Anyone can see exactly when these two warships leave port by watching the webcam.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadCyber ghost ships save fuel, don't endanger anyone, and are therefore good for the environment °v°
Now the russians could prank the baltics by switching on their virtual transponders, and give all the Susi Sommerlochs of the Lügenpresse something to do by reporting countless intrusions of russian aggressor planes into Nahtod-Airspace. (Foaming at the mouth)
In the context of transponder and GPS data faking and spoofing, i think the US destroyers suddenly hitting various things few years back weren't just accidents.
Don't forget that USA military uses the encrypted P(Y)-code GPS signals, which can not be spoofed by adversary. Yes, they can be jammed, but IIRC modern military ships and planes equipped with very presice IMUs, so they are quite immune to a short-term GPS jamming. And even before that, spoofing or jamming which has caused such incident can be easily detected and it would have been immideately publicly reported.
Do they? The whole reason Selective Availability was switched off (and is no longer built-in at all) is that the same US military found that cheap civilian GPS was readily available while specialist military GPS was always back-ordered.
> which can not be spoofed by adversary
Those signals just need a (secret) key, they aren't Hollywood plot magic that prevents spoofing. Your annoying older brother doesn't have the US military secret key for GPS, but I see absolutely no reason to believe that the Russians have somehow never been able to obtain this key.
The more you wriggle on the first point the more salient the second point becomes - if the US military has millions of military keyed GPS units, Russia could trivially steal one. And the less important the second point, the more the first applies - if Russia can't steal these keys because only a dozen military GPS units are deployed, there likely wasn't one feeding this (civilian anyway) AIS transmitter.
And you have not adressed the second part of my comment. Not only we haven't heard about spoofing as a reason for those incidents, but also even with civilian recievers spoofing can be detected by comparing GNSS and IMU data. And even before that you can detect anomalous power of GNSS signal (since spoofing usually has to outpowr legitimate signal) or find that there are "satellites" which produce unconsistent signals.
btw, i don't think it was Russia, to me it looks like China who has much better access in particular to the technological layers of the US defense systems. Sailors on these destroyers at night were looking at those screens with "confusing UI" - you don't need to spoof GPS/etc. if you cracked the access to the UI, and that it was the same destroyer type fits well into it.
Instead of breaking the encryption, you just replay delayed signals.
It isn't, but even if it was, not in a way that makes this attack significantly more difficult.
The problem you have is that GPS receivers are receiving one or more bit streams and passively discerning their position from the timing of those bit streams.
In something like TLS (except 0RTT early_data) both peers begin by introducing randomness to each session. So this connection must be the new connection I just created, if you try to send me packets from an earlier session, the random parameters are all wrong and it's unintelligible. Verifying this is called "freshness".
In contrast a passive receiver can't check for freshness. It just has to believe whatever it is told, no choice.
So, as an adversary I can spoof your position by simply feeding you stale data. I probably shouldn't try to persuade you this is actually the middle of the Pacific ocean not the Black Sea, nor that it's actually January rather than June, but I can certainly fudge things a little bit without too much trouble.
https://www.rt.com/russia/521283-fighter-jet-spy-plane/
https://www.rt.com/russia/515861-french-planes-intercept-bla...
https://www.rt.com/russia/507633-navy-threat-warship-border/
https://www.rt.com/russia/500016-nato-imitate-missile-stikes...
https://www.rt.com/russia/499908-b52-bombers-intercepted-cri...
https://www.rt.com/russia/496701-russia-intercept-us-plane-b...
https://www.rt.com/russia/496003-us-spy-plane-intercept-blac...
https://www.rt.com/russia/491915-russia-jets-us-bombers-balt...
https://www.rt.com/russia/490168-russia-jets-us-strategic-bo...
And do you think these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EC-135 and these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-135 are only taxiing on their runways at home, just to be prepared? Hm?
Meanwhile NAhTOd scrambling interceptors, AWACS, whatever, because can't really trust the primary radar, no?
2. They would never do something as dumb when it comes to NATO or the US. There is zero reason to.
So, you have to define what the actual trolling here would be.
Trying to get Nazi collaborant's slogan on the national football team uniforms is not a case of geopolitical trolling? Yes, Ukraine has significantly smaller capabilities compared to Russia, so you don't hear about it as often, especially in the western outlets, but it still tries to hurt Russia where it can (not to blame Ukraine, it's a logical behaviour considering the currently dominant narrative in the country).
Also note that I have not said that it was done by the Ukranian goverment (altough I would not be surprised considering its sheer incompetence), AIS spoofing can be done relatively easy by civilians with sufficient knowledge and hardware.
>They would never do something as dumb when it comes to NATO or the US.
Sending a diversion group into Crimea was not dumb? Biden has famously scolded Poroshenko for this. What about sending military ships through the Kerch strait without following adequate procedures (IIRC Ukranian military ships have passed it without issues like month before the incident) in an attempt to influence upcoming elections? Compared to those provocations, AIS spoofing is a child's play.
>There is zero reason to.
Getting Russian military into a state of high alert for effectively zero cost? Not that it would work of course.
Kerch straight is obviously doesn't belong to Russia, and any party free to break the ceasefire at any moment.
Without peace treaty in between Russia, and Ukraine, both sides are formally at war. Casus belli is not needed.
Russia will never order to open fire on US ships in sane mind, they remember Khasham well. A destroyer group + US airforce from Turkey, and Europe can alone make a short work of whatever Russia can throw at them within hours.
Instead, with will use all, and every way to get them out without firing a shot: pressure, intimidation, lawfare, disinformation, quiet sabotage, 5th columnists, informal forces.
Russia clearly thinks otherwise, so forcing the issue is de facto a clear provocation.
>Without peace treaty in between Russia, and Ukraine, both sides are formally at war
Lol what? Please, watch less Ukranian TV if you can. Neither Ukraine, nor Russia have declared a state of war on other. It's a very simple and easily verifiable fact.
And Ukraine is quite happy to take money from Russia whenever it can. Russia is still a first or second trading partner of Ukraine. Imagine during WWII USSR having similar economic ties with Germany or USA with Japan.
I hope you will not start to talk about "hybrid war". Firstly, it's a legally meaningless term. Secondly, by appliying the same criteria Syria and USA are also at war with each other.
>Russia will never order to open fire on US ships in sane mind, they remember Khasham well.
Neither USA will open fire on Russian military forces since it can very quickly devolve into exchange of nuclear strikes. In Kasham the US hit Russian mercanary forces operating in gray area. I doubt USA would have risked a nuclear war over Blackwater personnel getting killed in similar circumstances. Even the story about alleged bounties for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan have ended without any significant consequences.
Nobody declares war anymore. And a formal declaration of war isn't a prerequisite for being in a state of war. (By that definition, the United States has been at peace since WWII.)
That slogan "Cлава Українi!" ("Glory to Ukraine") is Ukrainian national slogan, used for more than a century. Don't be silly.
"American bombers also flew directly towards Soviet airspace, peeling off at the last moment, sometimes several times per week. These near-penetrations were designed to test Soviet radar vulnerability as well as demonstrate US capabilities in a nuclear war." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83#Psychological_o...
You can do it from your basement:
* https://flightaware.com/adsb/mlat/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration
* http://www.multilateration.com/surveillance/multilateration....
Presumably the GPS was blocked/misdirected 'by some means' and this got published by the AIS systems.
The Project Sandstone series from RUSI digs into various techniques smugglers and sanctions busters use to hide or mask illicit activity at sea.
Most military systems, and certainly all US ones, rely on inertial navigation systems, not GPS. GPS was considered unreliable for navigation when it was built, which was fine for its intended purpose.
When we have degraded GPS we have to allow for larger error margins, based on time since last positional fix. There are other systems that allow us to reset the inertial, including manual fixes, if absolutely necessary.
To say that a modern military doesn't use GPS for navigation is flat wrong.
Some newer INS technology purportedly can reliably maintain precision within the error margin of GPS corrections for very long periods of time such that it renders GPS corrections largely pointless. The US considers this keystone technology for the military; the state-of-the-art is strictly controlled classified technology.
> even the best military-grade inertial-navigation systems, which employ lasers, but not atomic interference, drift by kilometres a day.
Though with this new fancy quantum stuff, INS-only might get more viable.
I'd agree with that, so who were they trying to spoof?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations...
The presence of NATO forces in the ports of Odessa, Constanta or Varna would improve the balance of power in the Black Sea, which would otherwise become a Russian lake now that Turkey has its own agenda and it's not such a reliable partner as it was in the past.
Or should Russia just bend the knee to the US overlords and be a good lapdog?
But if you wonder why everybody in the neighborhood is scrambling for NATO membership, this attitude is exactly that.
> Or should Russia just bend the knee to the US overlords and be a good lapdog?
Funny, you seem to expect that Ukraine should bend the knee to the Russian overlords and be a good lapdog...
Now with the coming of ICBMs, jets, and especially nuclear weapons it is no longer as vital for Russia to have these buffer zones. America on the other hand keeps purporting this outdated myth of scary Russia despite Russia barely even being a threat anymore so that it can keep members of NATO as effectively vassal states. This way it can control them - "you do as I say, or scary Russia will come and take you".
Having American military bases and American influence around its border will only increase tensions between Russia and their neighbouring countries. That is precisely the reason Finland hasn't joined NATO and they and Russia have been getting along fine. Russian troops haven't rolled into Helsinki as of yet.
It should also be noted that Russia's claim to join NATO was rejected in 1954, and Putin has stated that he has suggested Russia joining NATO to Clinton and was again rejected. Now I can see how USSR during Cold War would be rejected, but why was post-USSR crumbling and then Western-friendly Russia rejected? I'll suggest that it was because US would then lose its favourite boogeyman.
Russia's strategy in Eastern Europe and more recently in Crimea was not to fight, but send in little green men with rifles and organise elections. That's how the USSR has installed regimes of their choice in its vassal states which later formed the Warsaw Pact.
NATO and thd US has a new bogeyman called China now. Russua has its own version of NATO called the CSTO and is part of the SCO or Shanghai Pact along with China and their satellite states.
Finland did very well in the Winter War, but it did not "beat the crap out of Russia" because that would be assuming that they have won. Instead they have lost, but Russia has achieved what's called a Pyrrhic victory and Finland has received favourable terms.
> Russia's strategy in Eastern Europe and more recently in Crimea was not to fight, but send in little green men with rifles and organise elections. That's how the USSR has installed regimes of their choice in its vassal states which later formed the Warsaw Pact.
Are you then claiming that Eastern Ukraine is not dominantly ethnic Russians?
> NATO and thd US has a new bogeyman called China now. Russua has its own version of NATO called the CSTO and is part of the SCO or Shanghai Pact along with China and their satellite states.
No, China is not the bogeyman because China doesn't go for hard-power like USSR did or in fact the USA does. Instead they go for soft-power by investing into countries and getting influence through financial means - look at Australia, Greece, and now increasingly the USA itself. Note how the USA didn't even squeak about the Wuhan lab leak theory until recently - would it be the same if a virus has appeared near a virology lab in Vladivostok?
Well, Finland did unequivocally won it's war against Russia, didn't it?
I mean, is there any possible room for any doubt whatsoever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Peace_Treaty#Terms
I'm pretty sure that the reason Poland is afraid of Russia isn't because the US keeps talking about "scary Russia". It's because it's had bitter experience with Russia, going back to the partition of 1772, then the second partition, the third partition, then World War II and the Warsaw Pact occupation. If you were Poland, and that was your neighbor, and you saw what your neighbor just did to Ukraine, would you really need the US to keep saying "scary Russia"? Or would you be running for NATO membership as hard as you could, because of the objective reality of what had happened, and was continuing to happen?
If a neighbour turns anti-Russian, joins a group whose sole reason is to be against Russia, and installs military bases right at your doorstep - yes, I'd say Russia has a right to intervene, and that doesn't take into account how Eastern Ukraine is very much pro-Russia and populace seems to identify as ethnically Russian and be okay with being part of Russia.
US does much worse things for much less - look at CIA getting rid of democratic governments as soon as they decide not to play in US's favour and installing a more favourable regime to their interests.
So Russia has the right to intervene if Ukraine elects an anti-Russia government? Really? Russia gets to decide which governments of Ukraine are acceptable?
And why doesn't Ukraine get to decide what governments of Russia are acceptable?
> US does much worse things for much less - look at CIA getting rid of democratic governments as soon as they decide not to play in US's favour and installing a more favourable regime to their interests.
So, do you think that's morally right, or morally wrong?
This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.
Russia has the right to defend its national security within its means.
> This attitude of Russia's - that they have the right to remove a neighboring government if they don't like it - is exactly why so many of Russia's neighbors are desperate to get into NATO. Putin couldn't do a better job of creating and installing anti-Russian governments if he were deliberately trying to do so.
It's not about who Russia likes or dislikes - if a government acts in a way that could harm Russia why shouldn't they do something about it.
Please explain how do you associate the natural outcome of free and democratic elections in the Ukraine with a "national security " threat to Russia that's serious enough to justify a full blown invasion.
Russia did not commit a full blown invasion, it annexed a part of the country that had a crucial naval port to use which they had an agreement with the previous government and where the population of that area of the country is predominantly ethnic Russians who self-identify as Russian and didn't support the new anti-Russian government. The only reason that historically Russian land was given to Ukraine in the 1954 transfer of Crimea was due to Khrushev's blunder.
Don't try to pull wool over anyone's eyes here with claims that it was just an innocent change of power. In world politics you can't do things willy-nilly. Ukraine has threatened Russia by going against it, cutting off previous agreements and trying to ally itself with Russia's enemies and Russia did what it had to do stop it in its tracks.
And for your information, Ukrainian citizens are worse off than they were before, whilst the new anti-Russian elite of Ukraine is busy getting rich and robbing the country. But hey, at least they're no longer associated with Russia, right? Because EU and the US cared so much about them in the first place and totally not trying to destabilise Russia's southern border.
Russia's enemies are actually its current leaders and the oligarchs that support them. Vladimir Sorokin's Sugar Kremlin is quite telling in this regard.
While it was a sign of being more comfortable with the US than the USSR, for many it was more a hedge against an eventual resurgence of Germany than a perceived imminent Soviet threat. Which, sure, looking back from after the Cold War seems a bit weird, but from the perspective of the immediate aftermath of the two World Wars with a short breathing space in between is less so.
> It should also be noted that Russia's claim to join NATO was rejected in 1954,
No, Russia’s suggestion that if appropriate changes to the structure and character of NATO were made it might be interested in discussing joining (not a “claim to join”), made as part of a multipronged strategy to disrupt the formation of European Defense Community, promote the demobilization of Western European militaries, and gradually push the US out of Europe (which everyone could see at the time, but we know for certain now because we have thr internal Soviet Foreign Ministry memos as the strategy developed) was given a hard pass.
> and Putin has stated that he has suggested Russia joining NATO to Clinton and was again rejected.
Russia was admitted to NATO’s Partnership for Peace, a membership on-ramp program, in 1994, and NATO has been pretty clear about the path forward if Russia wants full membership. Russia’s not interested in membership (though it may have been when it joined PfP), only disruption, so it hasn’t made any recent steps on that path, but that's Russia’s decision.
> but why was post-USSR crumbling and then Western-friendly Russia rejected?
Russia made a bit of progress toward membership during its brief Western-friendly phase, with the support of the Alliance. The 2000 discussions where Putin floated the suggestion of joining were after that period. It was a nonserious empty propaganda maneuver.
> I'll suggest that it was because US would then lose its favourite boogeyman.
Nah, by then Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a bigger boogeyman than Russia; sure, the US had conflict—and almost, in the Balkans in the late 1990s, direct armed conflict—with Russia, but the US government publicly downplayed that conflict, rather than treating Russia as a boogeyman. Russia didn't really get back boogeyman status until it forced its way back to it with its invasions of Ukraine.
In light of your comment, how do you describe Russia's attack on Georgia and Ukraine, as well as it's threats directed at not only Baltic countries but also Poland?
Every country is obligated to respect territorial integrity of others. It's not something that you get in a deal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
"Crimean Russians are not exists" - lol.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea
Every square meter in the world has multiple claims to it on endless bases, including history, ethnicity, etc. Much of the U.S. is ethnically German and was owned by Native Americans.
The only important question is, what do the people of Crimea want? It's their choice, not yours or mine or Putin's.
There's another important question: How do we country-level political changes? We can't have geographical areas constantly switching countries.
And by "improve" the balance of power in the Black Sea I'm sure you mean move it in US's favour?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=27590860
There have been reports (AP, attributed to a Russsian source) of warning shots being fired and bombs being dropped. Anyone know where that is supposed to have happened?