I have absolutely no love for the US Army under its current Secretary of "war", but here the problem was with the air ambulance pilot(s). Sorry to blame people who died, who do important service for remote places under hard time constraints, but there has been fundamental errors on their side:

https://bsky.app/profile/mikeblack114.bsky.social/post/3mrux...

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rbanffy 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I find it a bit shocking they'd be caught by surprise by a planned GPS outage. The exercise happened as intended, and all aircraft in the affected areas should have received warnings BEFORE they even took off. These are not drug smugglers - they filed a flight plan before leaving the ground.

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gosub100 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The automated weather service was also out. This made it difficult or impossible to use the ILS because they can't set the local altimeter. This was a swiss cheese chain of events. It was a moonless dark night so the mountains weren't visible.

	▲	rbanffy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Would they take off if they knew GPS would be jammed midway through the flight? Had they known they wouldn't be able to rely on GPS, all that back and forth with ATC would not be needed, and they'd already have a plan B and a plan C for navigating. It's unfortunately all slices of swiss cheese aligned perfectly, but I'd still blame the military for poking extra holes on the GPS slice.

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ofcrpls 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://youtu.be/Dcyup4xVQuM This was discussed during the initial reporting. While the GPS jamming is an important technical issue, the broader lesson may be pilot preparedness for degraded-navigation scenarios. This accident also highlights the ongoing debate over whether accumulating flight hours is adequately complemented by realistic defensive training for GPS-denied and other abnormal operations.

One technical point that initially puzzled me was why Spidertrax appeared to retain GPS coordinates while the FMS did not.

My understanding is that certified FMS GPS receivers use Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) and other integrity checks. During GPS jamming, the increased noise and degraded signal quality can cause the receiver to determine that it can no longer guarantee a reliable navigation solution, resulting in a NAV FAIL or RAIM warning.

A tracking device such as Spidertrax, on the other hand being a glorified telematics grade positioning device, is designed for best-effort position reporting rather than certified navigation, so it may continue outputting an estimated position using noisy GNSS data and motion filtering, even when that solution is no longer suitable for primary aircraft navigation.

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epolanski 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I too take random's words on socials over the NTSB. /s

In any case the news (and ntsb report) points that they are tied, not responsibility.

	▲	yread 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They are not in a disagreement. From the report: SRR is serviced by two instrument approaches, the ILS or LOC RWY 24 and the RNAV (GPS) RWY 24. Both instrument approach plate notes section contain the following statement: “When local altimeter setting not received, procedure NA (Not Authorized).” IFR approach was not possible, the flight plan was unrealistic.
	▲	asdf88990 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Trust in governmental institutions is at an all time low. Questions must be asked about how and why we got here rather appeal to submission.

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hagbard_c 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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curt15 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The quotes are appropriate because only Congress, not executive action, can change the official name.

	▲	inigyou an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Congress has, through inaction, approved this

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quietbritishjim 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's very relevant because it otherwise would have been plausible that they were blaming the pilot to unfairly divert blame away from an entity they had a bias for.

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basisword 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You care enough to comment about it and ask them not to do it again because of, not only your feelings, but others too.