> The theory that they broadcast communication on a band near GPS in order to discourage jamming of their early warning system sounds likely.

Is it? If it is an early warning system, could it be jammed briefly so it would fail to warn, couldn't it? It will be a global disruption of GPS, but a brief one and I'm sure people wouldn't be concerned of it due to other news.

> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless

Do you believe that cutting sea cables is a sensible action? Or sending drones to neighbors? It is what they call "hybrid asymmetric warfare", I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, but presumably it may let them take over the world or something.

Probably they just strive to normalize deviations, to boil frog slowly. When people become used to some stupid actions they widen their repertoire, until everything short of tanks crossing the borders became just normal news noise nobody reads twice.

There is definitely value in having a demonstrated as opposed a simply supposed capability, though. And actions that are 'almost-certainly-but-not-completely-provably-us' is very much something Russia likes to do.

(One question I would have about the comms theory is whether the amount of power being used would be reasonable for that use-case. Jamming tends to be much higher power than just communicating, but also GNSS signals are very low bandwidth as comms channels go)

> Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless, since it's obvious that any state actor who has military satellites in orbit has considered this option or have the capability already.

Forget "state actors", truck drivers have taken out entire airports with GPS jammers:

* https://www.cnet.com/culture/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-acc...

People like the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation have been trying for years to get some kind of GNSS backup accepted:

* https://rntfnd.org

China has certainly put their money into resiliency (both navigation and timing):

* https://www.gpsworld.com/china-completes-national-eloran-net...

* https://rntfnd.org//2026/03/19/china-has-built-a-triad-of-sa...

* https://rntfnd.org/2023/11/28/china-eloran-used-for-critical...

Some folks are certainly cluing in: South Korea has (e)Loran and the UK and France are joining up with them:

* https://rntfnd.org/2025/04/30/the-uks-system-of-systems-appr...

* https://rntfnd.org/2025/11/12/s-korea-leads-meeting-with-u-k...

Unless the actor happens to be a state that puts a great deal of emphasis on flexing & appearances regardless of how pointless it is

Or actual jamming mistargeted for some reason, or used because it was deemed necessary.

>Flexing the ability to jam GPS is pointless

No, Russia does these "tests" all the time to see and gauge the reactions. Ex flying just a bit into EU airspace.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/05/nato-fighters-interce...

Why downvotes?

Here's the press conference where it was announced: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-276341

FlightRadar24 disproved the story shortly after: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1962565122326700178

TLDR: Neither von den Leyen nor her office knew about ADB-S nor about the multiple services that collect ADB-S broadcasts and republish, and there was none around who could stop them from announcing an embarrassing lie.

So Russia may be in violation of a treaty, treaties. I'm shocked.

> You can shoot it down with a missile.

Obviously a bad idea, but frying it with some sort of high powered electromagnetic pulse would seem the smartest option with plausible deniability.

I wonder if the US already has such weapons in orbit.

If you start shooting down stuff in orbit, it'll invite retaliation, but even without retaliation there's a huge risk of a Kessler syndrome (especially with all the stuff that SpaceX has put into orbit in recent years).

>must surely be impacting the Russian residents as well, right?

They don't give a fuck.

Was watching a youtube video by a russian the other day talking about war & sanction impact and things like ride sharing apps literally say on screen the location is going to be wrong and to select pickup spot manually. It's just assumed to be fucked as a given even at an app development level

Yes, it's very wide spread and not carefully aimed at all. It's also not done by satellite but a ground based station.

https://gpsjam.org/

Jamming in general will affect everything using those frequencies (and potentially more besides) in a given area, so if you're using it you're weighing up the effects it'll have on your stuff as well. (early in the current Ukrainian invasion, reportedly Russian electronic warfare units were screwing up their own side more than the Ukrainians)

No one gives a fuck what russian residents are thinking about it. And if they start to talk about issues - police will quickly force everyone to shut up.

1) with the exception of probably a few pensioners (who also depend on gov’t funding), everyone in the area is dependent on the military. It’s a giant military base in the middle of nowhere.

2) anyone not military (and hence in on it), is a pensioner or the like and won’t give a shit about GPS.

This is not a thriving urban metropolis or tourist location.

Kaliningrad is one big military base.

>That jamming near Kaliningrad must surely be impacting the Russian residents as well, right?

Russia does not care, nor does it care about its population.

Where are you from?

I ask because you have western privilege, like me, and assume our governments care about its people. Why I lucked out being born in Sweden, the more I learn about the world, the more I am convinced I lucked out ahahaha.

Agreed about cellphone towers providing accurate position, but not with enough precision and highly dependent on the number of towers in the vicinity.

What i started building is for a highly unlikely scenario which is ; no internet + no GPS + no cell tower.

In the future abstracts will be called Tilldars and no one will remember it came originally from trying to pronounce "tldr"