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Comment by huhwatnow | Hacker News Reader

Time to update the odds that the two accidents involving navy destroyers in the Malaga straits, weren't ?

Mind you this does not automatically implicate Russia, just because one report calls them pioneers doesn't mean other countries don't posses the capability and China has more concrete issues with US naval presence there than Russia.

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This does not follow. The US Navy uses very high-precision inertial navigation systems, networks of them embedded throughout the ship and measuring position independently in fact (think wisdom of crowds). External corrections are only accepted within the very small aggregate drift error. Spoofing GPS will do almost nothing to a US Navy ship, that isn't how they navigate. Hanlon's Razor applies.

The US military is very, very good at exotic inertial measurement technology, doubly so for a platform like a ship with few power/weight limitations. It is a cornerstone of their technology advantage.

It would be crazy to operate ships solely with GPS data.

I'm sure the navy is aware of the threat and has standing procedures to prevent it - afaic high-ranking officers were sacked precisely because those weren't being properly followed. A huge container ship in a space as tight as the Malaga strait otoh probably has no procedure to deal with GPS being abruptly and subtly spoofed or even a way to detect it.

Yeah, all those military ships having accidents with civilian ships does seem a bit weird, eh?

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