Jamming GPS

GPS has become so essential to navigation its been a bit of shock to some to hear that the UK Ministry of Defence has been deliberately jamming it. However it is vital to determine how vulnerable our military's equipment is to jamming, to be able to identify when it is happening and suggest possible mitigations, so I have a lot of sympathy to a limited and controlled real world test.

There was a letter in this months Yachting World on the subject that quoted extensively from this story on the RYA web site.

The letter, unlike the RYA web site, missed out the most useful fact that warnings of these exercises are published beforehand, and there is a free email alert system operated by Ofcom that anyone can signed up to.

You can sign up via this page, and the next two exercises are these:

Dates: 31 March to 4 April 2008
Times: between 08:00 and 18:00 hrs
Location: To sea from Bridlington - N54° 06.842’ W000° 05.045’
Contact: Trial Manager - 07766 134758


Dates: 20-21 April 2008 (26 April 2008 reserve day)
Times: between 09:00 and 17:00 hrs
Location: To sea from The Hebrides - N57° 14.4’ W007° 26.7’
Contact (during jamming exercise only) 07766 134520