Were the Planes' GPS Systems "Spoofed" on 9/11?

Originally posted by soficrow
...Assuming that airliners really can't be controlled by GPS/Sat Systems, still, couldn't a hack conceivably disrupt things just enough to cause serious errors (as with ships)?

...There was a series of airplane accidents and problems running over about 10-15 years that never were explained properly - I'm thinking this might shed some light...

What accidents? Do you have specific ones you can refer to?

You need to separate the two forms of transportation as their navigation requirements and standards are vastly different.

While I do not know all the requirements within the oceanic shipping business and their requirements, I do fully understand the National Airway System (NAS) and what it entails.

Even if an airplane is receiving GPS positional information, a pilot is not using it to navigate their plane. As Weedwacker mentioned in regards to RNAV and I will expand to even the ADS-B system (which relays GPS positional information to pilots and ATC) that is currently being tested, they are not airliner control systems, but rather tools for Traffic Management in terms of the NAS and for ATC to 'rack and stack' planes in the sky using new jet routes rather than relying upon ground based VORs to provide those jet routes.

So even if the airplane was receiving incremental erroneous GPS data it would not misdirect the airplane into buildings. Also remember that an airplane operates in a 3-dimensional space at a much greater capacity than an ocean vessel.

Now all that said: The dangers in terms of GPS data being solely (which it is not the sole provider of positional data, i.e. radar and radio) used by ATC and Traffic Management could come into play when they are 'racking and stacking' the planes at greater densities and that data is somehow corrupted. Thing is, this racking and stacking is happening at altitudes of 19000ft or greater and deal with vertical separation more so than horizontal separation (except in RNAV systems.)

reply to post by Shadow Herder


Do you happen to know just how modified that 727 was before it was capable of remote flight? Those with knowledge and understanding in the area understand that the capability is there, but this isn't like flying an RC airplane from your local hobby store.

As I have stated before, I saw F-4 constantly being flown as drones (unmanned), but were highly modified and highly degraded in their capabilities.

reply to post by Shadow Herder


How's about providing a link to the source of ALL of your external quotes, please???

I am MOST particularly interested in the first external reference, you posted, about the Boeing 727 Raytheon experiment, where it says "there were no pilots onboard".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edit to add here....I am even MORE interested, because I have many hours in the Boeing 727, dating from 1984 to 1991....and I KNOW the systems pretty well, on that airplane.....I question this 'source', unless I can read it for myself...

I think I'm pretty well in tune with things aviation-oriented, and I WOULD HAVE HEARD of this!!!!!

(Because it rings my red alert bells, right away, as being FALSE!!!!!)

(UNLESS you can substantiate the source.....please)





[edit on 25 February 2010 by weedwhacker]

We had an "electronic Pearl Harbor" in 2007 - but the previous administration didn't tell anyone because they didn't want to admit things were going badly. As early as 2003, the Bush administration was being slammed for not dealing with cyber-vulnerabilities.

Cyber War: Sabotaging the System

"In 2007 we probably had our electronic Pearl Harbor. It was an espionage Pearl Harbor," Lewis said. "Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information."
…the previous administration didn't want to admit that they had been rolled in 2007. There's a disincentive to tell people, 'Hey, things are going badly.'

***

Cyber War Expert Slams Bush, Broadcaster Response to Internet Attacks.

NEW YORK -- NEW YORK, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The broadcasting industry's first specialist in cyber war, nationally syndicated conservative radio columnist Andy Martin, will hold a New York news conference Thursday January 30th to charge the Bush administration's lack of response to Internet attacks could endanger the American economy and military preparedness.

Seems quite plausible to me that a) GPS was in use in 2001, b) a hack buggered the system, c) contributed to 9/11 chaos, and d) got covered up because our leaders never want us to know how vulnerable we really are.

I'd let it go, but those vulnerabilities now are being blamed on Internet hackers - so the Free Web is on the table. Controlling and limiting the Internet is not the right solution.

Time to own up.



'

reply to post by soficrow


What does that have to do with GPS systems? As I have already posted in detail that even if 'spoofed', the GPS systems would never have caused planes to be remotely controlled nor cause confusion as there are a multitude of other systems in use that verify airplane position.

Originally posted by weedwhacker
I am MOST particularly interested in the first external reference, you posted, about the Boeing 727 Raytheon experiment, where it says "there were no pilots onboard".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edit to add here....I am even MORE interested, because I have many hours in the Boeing 727, dating from 1984 to 1991....and I KNOW the systems pretty well, on that airplane.....I question this 'source', unless I can read it for myself...

I think I'm pretty well in tune with things aviation-oriented, and I WOULD HAVE HEARD of this!!!!!

Hey WW,

A while back, I wrote a paper for 9/11Myths.com on the possibility of a 767/757 being remotely controlled. One of the topics in the paper was the "remote controlled, pilotless" 727 experiment that is alluded to above. I'll just copy/paste from my article....

----------

Raytheon and JPALS

Looking into the "remote drone" theory in regard to 9/11, I happened upon an interesting claim. The claim is that a new remote control system is currently be tested by the Air Force and Raytheon and has made pilotless flight possible. Is this claim accurate?

From Killtown's Smoking Guns: "Raytheon and the U.S. Air Force successfully auto lands a pilot-less FedEx Boeing 727 six times at Holloman AFB, NM using a military GPS landing system that will enable ground control to take control of a hijacked airplane and force land it."

This is completely incorrect. I took the liberty of reading the press release from Raytheon and nowhere does it mention a pilotless 727 or "remote control".

Here is where the confusion arises:
...The FedEx Express 727-200 aircraft at Holloman successfully conducted a total of sixteen Category I approaches. After completing a number of pilot flown approaches for reference the aircraft conducted six full autolands using the JPALS ground station....
www.prnewswire.com.../www/story/10-
01-2001/0001582324&EDATE=Oct+1,+2001

The aircraft was not pilotless, it merely flew an automated approach and landing. Most people are quite ignorant of aviation and this is a example of how nonsensical claims arise and later mutate. This is not a super-secret system being used to turn commercial aircraft into drones, it's merely a replacement for the aging ILS system already in place. It’s called JPALS and it uses GPS for approach guidance instead of ILS, which uses radio signals. The FAA has already been developing similar systems to JPALS; WAAS(Wide Area Augmentation System) and now LAAS (Local Area Augmentation System) will be the way forward. WAAS will be a replacement for the VOR/NDBs systems which are used in enroute navigation. LAAS will be used for approach guidance and will replace ILS.

In addition to a slightly misleading Raytheon press release, apparently Der Spiegel has perpetuated the claim by insinuating that this system can be used to free an aircraft from a hijackers control.

(TRANSLATED): "A forced landing system developed in the USA will make plane hijackings more difficult: in case of emergency the crew operates a switch - and the machine steers automatically to the next airport.

The times for an airplane kidnapper are becoming harder: in America engineers are working to land kidnapped machines in the future by an improved autopilot without assistance of the cockpit on the nearest airport - an emergency switch, that a ground control operates crew; the levers in the airplane are then blocked and the kidnappers can no longer control the plane from the hand controls.

According to a recent news release, technicians of US aviation and arms company Raytheon already in August landed a passenger aircraft six times successfully on the military airport at Holloman, New Mexico. The plane was equipped with a special forced landing system without any pilots.
The Boeing 727 oriented itself not, as usual, with the radar signals at the end of the runway, but by a combination of GPS satellite and ground signals, which help, to exactly compute the altitude _ and thus the necessary angle of approach _ with deviation no greater than one meter."

- Der Spiegel

(10/28/01) [Reprinted and translated at:
Cooperative Research]
(I got this excerpt from Killtown's Smoking Guns link above - Cooperative Research provided the translation as the original article was published in German. I cannot find any direct links to the Der Spiegel article, nor can I find the translation on Cooperative Research's site - but I felt that the claim needed addressing)

This is totally inaccurate. Again, the aircraft are in no way being flown remotely from ground stations. They are, however, using ground station Differential GPS signals for guidance in the same manner that ILS uses VHF radio signals for guidance. This is, of course, a very different concept and Der Spiegel mischaracterized it, it has nothing to do with hijackings or "remote control". The pilots have complete control over the airplane and can disengage the autopilot at any time. Also, reading various conspiracy threads throughout the internet on this very subject, all I can do is shake my head. Now I know how structural engineers and demolitionists must feel about "controlled demolition" claims. I get the sense that people(outside of the aviation industry) believe that autoland = no pilots = remote control.
Completely incorrect. Furthermore, it seems that they think autolands are still a super secret USAF/NASA test project. Commercial airliners have been doing autolands since the '70s and the 757/767 were delivered fully autoland capable in the early '80s. An autoland is a landing performed by an aircrafts autopilot computers(FCCs in the case of the 757/767) referencing the ILS radio signals. Autolands are performed routinely, and if you are a frequent flier, you've likely experienced one. Autolands are not the result of ground control. I cannot stress that enough. A remote controlled landing is a remote controlled landing. Two different animals altogether.

--------------

As for the OP. Weedwhacker is correct on both counts.

1. 767/757' didnt have MMRs(GPS) installed in 2001. Some had GPS via EGPWS, which only uses GPS data for terrain floor mapping; not navigation.

2. Even if they did have GPS, IRS(INS) is still the primary form of position and attitude determining. And even if GPS was the primary nav source, so what?



[edit on 26-2-2010 by 767doctor]

I am SO glad you all have straightened this out.

Please, contact Professor Last and the following agencies, at least, to explain that they have nothing to worry about, after all, in your professional, informed opinion:

* National Physical Laboratory in Teddington,
* Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network
* The Royal Institute of Navigation

The above agencies, various governments and others are extremely concerned about the threats of GPS hacking, including to navigation.

...The OP article reports on a conference attended by policy-makers, academics and industry figures who are under the impression that jamming and spoofing threaten navigation (as well as critical national infrastructure).

"Navigation is no longer about how to measure where you are accurately - that's easy. ...Now it's all about how to do so reliably, safely and robustly," according to Professor David Last, a consultant engineer and former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation.

"GPS gives us transportation, distribution industry, 'just-in-time' manufacturing, emergency services operations - even mining, road building and farming, all these and a zillion more," David Last, a consultant engineer and former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation, told the conference.

"...GPS (also keeps) our telephone networks, the internet, banking transactions and even our power grid online."

Please, do let them know they've got it all wrong. And don't forget to tell them about the redundancies and that the fail safes prevent any problems.

reply to post by soficrow


You seem not to understand, nor to care about, how we pilots use OTHER VERIFYING methods, especially when operating in low visibility paradigms, such as in instrument approaches.

YOU SHOULD ALSO understand, and hopefully comprehend the different in AIRSPEEDS, and the various flight environments.

Precision, at VERY HIGH AIRSPEEDS is not attainable, by either AutoFlight Systems, or Remote Controllers.

Even our best UAVs, today, fly at very slow speeds....in the range of a private piston-powered airplane....

BECAUSE the Humans controlling them are, well...HUMAN!!! Trying to control a machine remotely, without the normal auditory, and physical cues a pilot has, when being ONBOARD makes it considerably more difficult.

I fly for a hobby, R/C models, so I KNOW a lot about this topic!!! (ALSO, being a pilot of real airplanes, for over three decades, and with 20,000 hours....myself, I KNOW a lot about this topic!!!)

It is GREAT that President Obama is fully utilizing the UAV 'drones' that exist today....Sheesh!!! You would have thought that former President Bush would have done this???

Regardless.....

You must fully understand how our modern UAV drones are operated, and controlled.

The "pilot" sitting in a room at, say, Nellis AFB outside Las Vegas doesn't 'fly' the drone the entire time, even if it's in Pakistan or Iraq!!!!!

YES, once airborne....he/she sitting in the control room at Nellis can takeover....BUT, the DRONE is taken off, and landed, by the LOCAL 'pilots'....who can SEE the darned thing!!!!!

Control is 'handed off' to Nellis, or where ever, once airborne....don't know how to better explain this to you.....hope this was sufficient.

reply to post by soficrow


You are intertwining two different areas though. People, including myself have shown that GPS is not a control factor.

It still should be understood the effects of distorting GPS signals, but no plane is EVER controlled via GPS. You will continue to ignore that as it blows your post out of the water. Go ahead and remain ignorant when the evidence is against you. It is your choice.

reply to post by soficrow


The reason GPS provides just-in-time capabilities is not for the control factor but for the positional data factor.

You continue either through denial, ignorance, or just plain unwillingness to understand the difference between positional data and airplane control via GPS.

If the GPS is hacked and manipulated, someone in some building that is tracking this data will think the plane is off course or somewhere it is not. That plane isn't guided via GPS and your post has been fully discredited and shown that GPS, even if spoofed did nothing to the situation of 9/11

Originally posted by ownbestenemy
reply to post by soficrow

 

You continue either through denial, ignorance, or just plain unwillingness to understand the difference between positional data and airplane control via GPS.

It's the Royal Institute of Navigation, National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network who flagged the navigation issue, not me. You and weedwhacker say back-up systems and redundancies prevent GPS-related navigation "problems" - I say share your informed experience with the Royal Institute of Navigation.

...I have repeatedly clarified, stipulated and stated that I do NOT think the planes were "controlled" by GPS or GPS hacks, merely that I suspected spoofing may have been a factor contributing to the chaos of the day. YOU and weedwhacker keep putting words in my mouth, and insisting that I am saying something I'm not saying.

The fact remains that it's TPTB who insist that jamming and spoofing puts NAVIGATION at risk - and who intend to regulate and control the Internet in order to protect NAVIGATION as well as critical infrastructure from GPS hacks. ...I simply suggested that such a response doesn't make sense.

I reported that such agencies as the Royal Institute of Navigation, National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network have expressed their GREAT CONCERN regarding the effects of GPS jamming and spoofing on NAVIGATION as well as critical infrastructure. ...You and weedwhacker say there's no problem at all with navigation, insisting there never was, never will be.

weedwhacker accused me of disrespecting pilots and ships captains - when I simply reported current professional concerns about the impact of GPS jamming and spoofing on navigation..

You both say "Problem? What problem? There is no problem," and your associates say, "The only way to solve the problems and protect our navigational systems and critical infrastructure is to control and regulate the Internet, and maybe shut it down."

I'm just pointing out that you can't have it both ways. Maybe you all should go back to propaganda and damage control school?









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[edit on 26-2-2010 by soficrow]

reply to post by soficrow


Man....this is like wading through a dense fog.

You are connecting the potential to the actual. Is there a potential that GPS....oh wait, you have changed the word to 'navigational', systems could be spoofed. I am sure they can be. Anything that is electronic and not highly secured can be, and will be, messed with.

Can spoofing, hacking or altering a GPS signal make a plane crash into a building? Well, anything is possible, but this IS highly improbable as GPS is not used to control an aircraft, to set its course or to dictate where it is flying. It is used for purely positional purposed to show the location of a plane.

Now lets say we have a plane flying somewhere over the United States. GPS gives off to the local En Route Center that is currently handling that plane that it is at 36°3′27″N 112°8′15″W. At the same time, the plane and ATC are receiving readings from VOR, ground based navigational aid systems that it is at 37°4'00"N 112°7"15W. Since there is a discrepancy, the pilot and ATC will verify and being procedures to find out what exactly that planes position was. They will also use radar and on-board transponders to locate and verify the position of the plane.

Originally posted by ownbestenemy
reply to post by soficrow

 

Man....this is like wading through a dense fog.

No kidding.

You are connecting the potential to the actual. Is there a potential that GPS....oh wait, you have changed the word to 'navigational', systems could be spoofed. I am sure they can be. Anything that is electronic and not highly secured can be, and will be, messed with.
....

It's the Royal Institute of Navigation, National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network who flagged the navigation issue, not me. I just reported their concerns.

I reported that professional navigation agencies say jamming and spoofing puts NAVIGATION at risk - and recommend regulating and control lingthe Internet in order to protect NAVIGATION as well as critical infrastructure from GPS hacks. ...I simply suggested that such a response doesn't make sense.

I reported that such agencies as the Royal Institute of Navigation, National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network have expressed their GREAT CONCERN regarding the effects of GPS jamming and spoofing on NAVIGATION as well as critical infrastructure. ...You and weedwhacker say there's no problem at all with navigation, insisting there never was, never will be.

I simply reported current professional concerns about the impact of GPS jamming and spoofing on navigation..

You and weedwhacker say "Problem? What problem? There is no problem."

Your associates say, "The only way to solve the problems and protect our navigational systems and critical infrastructure is to control and regulate the Internet, and maybe shut it down."

...and I say you can't have it both ways.

Originally posted by soficrow
I reported that professional navigation agencies say jamming and spoofing puts NAVIGATION at risk - and recommend regulating and control lingthe Internet in order to protect NAVIGATION as well as critical infrastructure from GPS hacks. ...I simply suggested that such a response doesn't make sense.

Yes but the title and theme of the thread is that GPS was possible the cause of confussion and chaos during the events of 9/11. Pro OS or Pro those that are not buying the OS, weekwacker and I have presented the facts.

The facts, being that GPS cannot, will not and will never CONTROL an airplane.

Also, what does a vulnerable IT/IS system have to do with GPS?

GPS is just another tool. I speak for myself and my experiences. I speak for 7 years plus with working on systems that effect National Airspace.




I reported that such agencies as the Royal Institute of Navigation, National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, and Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network have expressed their GREAT CONCERN regarding the effects of GPS jamming and spoofing on NAVIGATION as well as critical infrastructure. ...You and weedwhacker say there's no problem at all with navigation, insisting there never was, never will be.

I simply reported current professional concerns about the impact of GPS jamming and spoofing on navigation..

You and weedwhacker say "Problem? What problem? There is no problem."

Your associates say, "The only way to solve the problems and protect our navigational systems and critical infrastructure is to control and regulate the Internet, and maybe shut it down."

...and I say you can't have it both ways.

Let´s see: Were the planes "GPS" systems "spoofed" on 9/11?

And the answer is.- NO.
Why?
Because the planes on 9/11 didn´t have GPS in them.

(Not to mention all the other pointless BS you have been pushing in this thread to keep it alive.
You have been shown, explained to, schooled, in the related subjects.
Even if there was GPS involved, it would have no consequence since it is not a "control" of anything.)



[edit on 3-3-2010 by rush969]