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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Would building something reliant on GPS be the right way to go? We've seen how easy it is to make it not very reliable. Musk has also shown that StarLink/Shield reliability are at the mercy of how he feels that day. Internal navigation still seems the most reliable for Tomahawks

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GPS has a special mode for theater-wide military operations that is much harder to jam.

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2025/regi...

You could still jam this but you need to overcome 20+dB of additional gain in the transmission. If the party you are jamming has anti-radiation missiles, you are forced to make yourself an extremely hot and unambiguous target to participate in jamming at these power levels.

"RMP will be transmitted by the U.S. Space Force’s future GPS IIIF satellite constellatio"

WILL BE is key here.

They work in GPS contested environments.

They work in GPS contested environments by reverting to expensive INS and TERCOM systems.

The US had expensive systems because INS and accuracy is expensive without GPS.

GPS will be denied in any future war environment. That's why we stopped work on things like the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb. It was useless in Ukraine due to GPS denial.

There is no evidence Musk has tampered with either as it relates to Ukraine.

What? Perhaps you're behind on the news:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...

That Starshield was remotely limited is not in dispute, only whether it was just Elon's doing, or at Trump's behest.

There is no evidence Musk did anything. To the contrary, he has flatly denied it and the structure of Starshield suggests he really couldn't. It's all conjecture.

No, it's not:

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...

“three people familiar with the command” — LOL. That article claims he shut them off entirely. Not even Ukraine alleged that. Only that they wouldn’t work if traveling faster than a certain velocity.. It’s all lies dude. Starshield isn’t even controlled by Space X like that. Moreover, to the degree, they want people to contract for their service, why would they even ever do that? None of it makes sense. Lies and more lies.

I'll trust Reuters (and Rubio and Hegseth, see below) over muskfan43890343 on HN, but I'm sure you'll get his attention someday!

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6164055-starlink...

As suspected, Ukraine was hacking civilian Starlink. That ended.

As suspected, Musk ordered the slowdown (he finally admitted it himself): https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-starlink-drone...

> Musk has also shown that StarLink/Shield reliability are at the mercy of how he feels that day.

There is a strong feeling on HN that because Trump is President, Musk holds zero responsibility.

This way the illuminati remain pure, when Trump eventually dies.

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