Fox News alert: US fears Iraq has transported GPS guided drones to America

Fox News Channel | 02/24/03 | Brett Baird

[Pokey78]

Drones or pieces of drones that have GPS mapping may have been sent to Iraqi agants in US to spray chem or bio weapons over US cities.

[Dog]

Think you all might need to read this article...

If it happened here...

[geege]

Maybe Hollywood????

[harpseal]

Some of us power baoters still regularly use a sextant just to keep in practice.

[Travis McGee]

Strangely enough, no one actually has come out and said that the Iraqis had actually done this.

Not correct. One of the Powell charges had to do with drones flying 500+ miles on a racetrack course in the desert outside Bagdad. That's a test, if they can fly 500+ miles in circles, they can fly 500+ miles in a straight line to a GPS waypoint over a target city.

[SamAdams76]

However, they did say that the GPS software could be used using American cities as maps.

I wonder if the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 9/11 had GPS devices on them that led them to our cities? Food for thought. All I know is if I took control of a plane headed from Boston to LA, I wouldn't have a clue on how to find NYC.

[spodefly]

What would be affected if we scrambled the signal for a few hours? Any life threatening consequences?

GPS is being used in General and Commercial Aviation, so it might be very disruptive and potentially dangerous to scramble the signals.

BTW, I believe this story is at least overblown, if not total fantasy. How on earth would they get something like that across our borders? (that is sarcasm, in case anyone missed it.)

[znix]

Yes if it's during battle as our Rangers, Seals and recon depend on it heavily. I say if they do it, nuke Baghdad and be done with this mess. Make an example of the cockroaches.

I was under the impression that there were two GPS networks in parallel, one for the military (that is encypted and more precise) and one for civilian use. It seems we could shut down the civilian GPS network(which the Iraqis are surely using) in an emergency with relatively little impact on military operations.

Im not concerned really, persoanlly I'm confident this story is BS.

[cajungirl]

So Travis,,what port will you be leaving from,,got an address for us so we might mosey over and look over your boat you know, just to be friendly. If you tell me I will tell you my neighbor's address who has a big ole 50's style bomb shelter, all outfitted with wine and food,,,and best part, the neighbor is a flaming liberal with nary a weapon in the house,,,hahhahahahahhaa,,,that totally amuses my hubby.

[LaGrone]

For safety I would round 'em all up in this country and either deport them or place them in temporary quarters. Then I would turn the lights out on the rest of them in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan...Well you get the message.

Then let the liberals gain an understanding of the real world, not the world as they wish it to be.

[Eala]

As long as you can get the location/motion data in electronic form (serial port or some other means), you can use it for guidance.

[Brad’s Gramma]

What took you so long?

[Travis McGee]

I hate it when those 3 circles plot out on 3 different oceans.

[glock rocks]

.50cal skeet? yikes!

[MPB]

"Guidance" is the word. Heck, we've got a mapping GPS (Garmin 76S), but it's not really going to help send in any kind of bomb. I could duct tape our sextant to a bomb & it'd have the same effect.

It's really more about having a guidance system with a specific target location in mind. An onboard GPS would help the guidance system by showing the speed and current location so that adjustments can be made to the flight plan of whatever delivery method.

Heck, planes use GPS (look on any small plane and you'll find a GPS somewhere). Commercial airliners have 'em (Canadian Air has a cool thing where you can view the GPS map and the plane's current location right there on your TV screen).

They used to scramble a certain portion of the GPS signal which limited the "resolution" of these commercial GPS devices to about 50 feet or so. Military versions can decrypt the scrambled portion of the signal and resolve locations down to feet or even inches, depending on the number of satellites in view.

So basically, they could just scramble more of the data, keeping basic functionality of commercial devices, resolving to within whatever amount... like a square mile area. It would suck for street navigation though. :) Military use would still get all the whiz-bang accuracy they already have, so that's not an issue at all.

[p. henry]

Not to mention the New Jersey river dog rescue.

[Eala]

Im not concerned really, persoanlly I'm confident this story is BS.

I agree. Sounds like an expensive, roundabout and probably relatively ineffective way to do this.

[duk]

A barrett, don't they make .50's?

[Travis McGee]

NE San Diego Bay.

I always joke that I will know when the enemy missiles are inbound when the destroyers and cruisers go flying past outbound at 25 knots throwing 15 foot wakes through the marinas.

[Havoc]

This is the damage all this liberal and pacifist whining causes. It endangers us all.

[Myrddin]

Even if we switch the GPS back to selective availability, that only pushes the accuracy down to about 150 feet instead of around 13 feet with a WAAS enabled receiver. A UAV carrying a bioweapon doesn't need that level of accuracy. It just needs to be in the general vicinity and upwind of the target area.

The U.S. military won't be affected. They will simply sync up on the C/A channel and go to the encrypted channel. The losers in this exercise are civilian GPS users and anyone downwind of the UAV.