I watched the Veritasium episode on it just yesterday! The other theory is that it was actually being used for covert signals and the disruption was secondary.
I thought that was the cover story. They deliberately used a channel partially in the bandwidth for some deniability. It isn’t like they didn’t know what bandwidth GPS used when they designed the satellite.
If I recall correctly, the idea was that they might have used that part of the band deliberately so that it couldn’t be jammed without also jamming GPS. Either way, we’re just guessing.
Considering the impact of these tests, that doesn’t seem likely. You wouldn’t be sending covert messages in a way that would be so heavily scrutinized. I know it was a theory presented during the video, but that’s just journalistic integrity.
And ultimately, even if they were covert messages, now they also know they can disrupt gps
I think the point was less about making the messages undetectable as it was about making them unjammable. In order to stop their transmission, we would have to essentially shut down GPS for the entire EU. So you might use that frequency to send critical, must-have messages.
Especially once a second signal was noticed that was almost exactly the frequency used by the Chinese GPS system, as mentioned in the Veritasium video.
I watched the Veritasium episode on it just yesterday! The other theory is that it was actually being used for covert signals and the disruption was secondary.
I thought that was the cover story. They deliberately used a channel partially in the bandwidth for some deniability. It isn’t like they didn’t know what bandwidth GPS used when they designed the satellite.
If I recall correctly, the idea was that they might have used that part of the band deliberately so that it couldn’t be jammed without also jamming GPS. Either way, we’re just guessing.
Considering the impact of these tests, that doesn’t seem likely. You wouldn’t be sending covert messages in a way that would be so heavily scrutinized. I know it was a theory presented during the video, but that’s just journalistic integrity.
And ultimately, even if they were covert messages, now they also know they can disrupt gps
I think the point was less about making the messages undetectable as it was about making them unjammable. In order to stop their transmission, we would have to essentially shut down GPS for the entire EU. So you might use that frequency to send critical, must-have messages.
Especially once a second signal was noticed that was almost exactly the frequency used by the Chinese GPS system, as mentioned in the Veritasium video.
last I checked that channel was owned by private equity so take it with a grain of salt
Yes, that’s the video I watched. Good stuff.