I don't think it's even a question of jamming the GPS network.
Once you start doing the math on "I'm going to keep 1,000+ nodes in a mesh network from operating a phased array capable of keeping a lock on the signal from a constellation of satellites", things like jamming become extremely non-trivial, and only operate over relatively short timeframes or with hugely vulnerable base stations.
Most people are thinking about the capabilities of a single drone -- that's really not the way to think about drone swarms. In much the way that it doesn't make sense to talk about the capabilities of cloud services like AWS in terms of the limitations of single computers or switches of hardware, but in terms of the ability of the system as a whole to emulate high(er) performance equipment.
Similarly, once we talk about real drone swarms acting as a locally networked, single functional unit, presenting itself as single emulated devices or functions that the drones carry out, the whole game changes from what's effective techniques against single, standalone drones.
So to recap, drone swarm's GPS downlink is probably a phased array or something like that distributed over the mesh network of drones (using the local radio gear as localized timing and positioning information between mesh nodes), and nowhere near as easy to jam as it is for a standalone drone (at least, for approximate location; then using cameras and local sensors for say, fine bomb placement).
tl;dr: The power of friendship works for drones too, not just comic book heroes.
Jamming drones is easier than you think, the new battleground will be autonomous flying to avoid trivial radio/gps jamming. MIT has open source code for this already.
The problem I see is that jamming GPS / wifi / mobile frequencies once you see a suspicious drone is too late. When the drone is already in view, it can find its target by inertial or camera navigation alone.
But jamming 1km around every possible target, every day as a precaution is going to be too disruptive. It may actually increase risk to life - by jamming 911 calls for any ordinary accident.
Reliably jamming drone comms would also jam all other radio based systems in the area. You could try to narrow your beam, but that could lead to evasive pattern dodge manouvers, and would be harder against a swarm of the things. Even then, the drones could get by with extremely crude, near ballistic autonomy (erraticly fly 500m in that compass direction and detonate on the moving blob near the pool).
Birds and insects are able to swarm without telepathy, and the dynamics of this are fairly well understood. I don't think this is going to be such a big issue for drones; if anything, you'll get swarms of ultra-cheap tiny drones whose job is to swoop around chirping to each other until they get jammed, then take note of where the jamming signal seems to originate, GTFO, and convey that geographical information back to base at the earliest opportunity. The more enthusiastically you jam, the sooner you become the target of a ballistic mortar or guided missile that's fatally attracted to your jamming device.
A drone capable of jamming GPS in any useful area should carry a huge load of batteries to develop enough jamming power, not the best requirement for something strapped to a light flying machine where every gram counts.
Anyone can buy a GPS jammer at the usual online stores, but they draw watts to cover an area of tens of meters, that is, to jam a single airplane you must fly the drone very close to it, and lose all other planes in the process. A flock of pigeons is many times more dangerous than a drone, even if carries a functioning GPS jammer.
To me any concern about GPS jamming is plain bullshit added to the soup to justify further restrictions on drone flying. Drones with cameras are powerful weapons these days.
I suspect that jamming would push people to make drones fully autonomous, so that they're capable of carrying out their mission even is comms are down.
Assuming you know the frequency a drone is flying on, it is trivial to jam. However a lot of the more advanced flight control systems (even on hobbyist drones) will have a failsafe that causes it to return to home or similar in the case of loss of radio contact. I suppose even in that situation you could use a GPS jammer to stop that from happening. Of course this would all be highly illegal.
> GPS jamming is so much easier than spoofing and results in the same thing.
If that drone is in a homogenous-looking area, say a desert with litte habitation, it wouldn't be hard to slowly get the drone to a different target than desired, possibly having it think another car or house is its target.
Depends on the UAVs capability. You can jam RF telemetry and control links, along with GPS/GNSS as well. Without GPS/GNSS, the UAV is forced to rely on dead reckoning (inertial guidance). Unless you've got some very expensive gyros and accelerometers onboard, you're limited to short distances/time frames before you crash.
If you've got some visual guidance on board, you're less susceptible to jamming (in theory).
No, even with millions of drones in the same airspace, all drones (should) have a GPS, that means internal clocks could easily be synced to a microsecond this makes replay attacks pretty hard to do if you use some basic crypto.
To those wondering why we can't just take down the drones, it's not as simple as a jammer or a shotgun.
Jamming drones is a non starter for the most part. You can make a drone operate on just about any frequency you want and with modern equipment becoming more frequency agile, this will only get worse. A simple thought experiment would be a drone using GSM for video and control. Can you just jam all phones? Obviously not. Further, drones can fly without any command and control if they're configured correctly, just using GPS for guidance. Can you jam GPS at an airport where planes are breaking out of an overcast layer at 200ft AGL on a GPS approach? Nope.
Kinetic approaches: projectiles need to come back down. Even heavy bird shot could damage the super thin skin on an airliner when falling back to earth. Also, net guns and similar options are way shorter range than you think.
Birds of prey: stick your hand in a DJI rotor and report back. Now try an industrial drone. Come back when they re-attach all your fingers.
Drones catching drones: you'll need continuous line of sight to be able to chase the thing around. This also assumes it's a quad and not a 100mph+ fixed wing drone. Might be feasible if you have an automated way of detecting and following the drone (future mm band radar?).
Lasers: eye safety of the public and piloted aircraft.
Unless the drones have onboard AI, all you'd need is to jam the signal.
It can't be that hard to shut down drone frequencies seeing as how they have gear to shut down cell phones (to prevent them being used to set off IEDs).
I've seen this or other similar ideas a number of times, and I have no faith that they would work outside commercial copters- I mean, right off the bat, the jamming is more likely to explode any bombs than anything else- and the military already has anti-jamming technology, or you could just use a nonstandard frequency, which from what I understand would also circumvent any jamming.
As far as I'm concerned, almost all anti-drone devices are complete shams.
I think they'd still need a GPS signal to complete a mission offline and most jammers can muck up GPS signals as well. It would be flying by sight (camera) only and I don't know of any drone that can do that.
Does drone need back-to-home signal when flying on a pre-defined route? I guess it only needs GPS and that is what might need to be jammed to stop it from following the course.. but how you jam GPS in the sky? hmm..
I also wonder how many drones are actually there as one would only fly for, how long, less than 1 hour? before battery is dead? If it returns to the base, it shouldn't take 10 sherlock holmes to track it?
No, that's too high latency to control the drone reliably after GPS is jammed (and if it's not jammed, the drone will just return to you when it loses signal anyway).
Once you start doing the math on "I'm going to keep 1,000+ nodes in a mesh network from operating a phased array capable of keeping a lock on the signal from a constellation of satellites", things like jamming become extremely non-trivial, and only operate over relatively short timeframes or with hugely vulnerable base stations.
Most people are thinking about the capabilities of a single drone -- that's really not the way to think about drone swarms. In much the way that it doesn't make sense to talk about the capabilities of cloud services like AWS in terms of the limitations of single computers or switches of hardware, but in terms of the ability of the system as a whole to emulate high(er) performance equipment.
Similarly, once we talk about real drone swarms acting as a locally networked, single functional unit, presenting itself as single emulated devices or functions that the drones carry out, the whole game changes from what's effective techniques against single, standalone drones.
So to recap, drone swarm's GPS downlink is probably a phased array or something like that distributed over the mesh network of drones (using the local radio gear as localized timing and positioning information between mesh nodes), and nowhere near as easy to jam as it is for a standalone drone (at least, for approximate location; then using cameras and local sensors for say, fine bomb placement).
tl;dr: The power of friendship works for drones too, not just comic book heroes.
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