Armies, transport, financial transactions … Companies such as States are increasingly dependent on navigation satellites. A worrying vulnerability.
In recent years, a curious fog of waves surrounds the movements of Vladimir Putin. On September 15, 2016, the Russian president came to visit the progress of work on the bridge connecting the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula of Kerch, Crimea, annexed in 2014. He returned May 15, 2018, to inaugurate this gigantic book at the wheel of a large construction truck. As luck would have it, these two days, the boats sailing near the bridge had problems of GPS. Their coordinates, suddenly, were false. Other geolocation errors have been identified in the Black Sea, but also near the ports of Vladivostok in the east and Arkhangelsk in the north of the country. Each time, these disturbances coincided with the presence of the Russian head of state.
In the space jargon, these “errors” of positioning are the result of a “spoofing” of the GPS signal. Specifically, a device, using a near frequency, “replaces” the satellite to deceive the navigation receiver with bad information. The signal can also be completely scrambled, by a “cell phone jammer” effect. A very detailed study of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), an American analysis center *, has recorded no less than 9,883 cases of usurpation by the Russians, between 2016 and 2018. “Russia plays a role pioneer in this field, “write the rapporteurs. They reveal that electromagnetic bubbles protect the Kremlin in Moscow, as well as datchas of oligarchs, strategically important infrastructures and the Russian military base in Hmeimim, Syria.