Another king-level secret of the United States**, a new navigation system that has been sharpened for ten years, may be about to come out. This kind of system that relies on geomagnetic anomaly positioning, you can think of it as a super navigation, extremely stable, ubiquitous, want to interfere with it? Don't dream, unless someone detonates a nuclear bomb, then you may have to worry about more than just navigation.
Want to destroy it? More unlikely! Because it simply doesn't have hardware facilities such as satellites. And it can be used indoors, even underwater, underground, in bunkers, under the sea, and on the ground it is not affected by any weather, and it does not emit any signal, which means that it is almost perfect, making other navigation systems look like schoolchildren who are holding paper maps and getting lost in the jungle.
Magn** comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and developed it with the intention of building a spare tire for GPS.
If you are a loyal observer of the Russian-Ukrainian war, then you must remember the plot twist in 2022, when the Ukrainians got the Seahorse multiple rocket launchers from the United States and began to operate with those high-precision ammunition that seemed to be accurate to the millimeter, and the weather vane of the battlefield seemed to start pointing to Ukraine. However, the plot soon added a new anti-** GPS guidance system relied on by the Hippocampus, which was found by the Russians, and the electronic jamming was in full swing, and in the summer of 2023, the strike effect of the Hippocampus was not as good as before, and Ukraine's big ** finally died down.
Russia then turned on the offensive mode, increasing the offensive of missiles and drones, and the scene once looked like it was about to completely turn the tables. But Ukraine is not a vegetarian either, and they have deployed a mysterious-sounding electronic warfare system called Pokrova across the country, which has made Russian missiles and drones lose their souls by jamming and deceiving satellite navigation systems, and the attack effect has been greatly reduced like headless flies. In this way, the situation on the battlefield has returned to the state of inseparable.
Do you see that? The key and fundamental to all of this is the interference and deception of the satellite navigation system by both sides. At present, there are 4 sets of global satellite positioning systems roaming over the earth, including the GPS of the United States, GLONASS of Russia, Beidou of China, and Galileo of Europe. The most terrifying thing is that if these satellites are destroyed, humanity may have to return to primitive society.
This is what the US Air Force is most worried about, because all their military activities rely heavily on GPS, aircraft, drones and even precision-guided artillery shells such as the Seahorse, once GPS is affected and interfered with, it may lead to mission failure, and being deceived may also bring greater losses.
For example, some drivers driving close to the Kremlin often complain that the navigation inexplicably shows that they are at a Moscow airport, and they are confused. And ships on the Black Sea often find that they are miraculously told by the navigation that they have been driving dozens of kilometers on land, and behind all this, it is Russia's signal spoofing technology.
Ukraine is the same now, recently mobile phones and car navigation may find that their location is hundreds of kilometers away, this is also the masterpiece of the electronic warfare system Pokrova, fortunately, this system is only activated in the face of threats, and it will not be affected in peacetime, but can remind Ukrainians that air strikes are coming, quickly find a place to hide.
This is just jamming and deception, if the satellite is destroyed and destroyed, all high-tech ** will instantly become blind, and all military advantages will come to naught. The U.S. Air Force was so concerned about a single point of failure in this precision navigation capability that it urgently needed to build a new navigation system to become a spare tire for GPS, so it began working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 10 years ago to develop the Magn** system that utilizes geomagnetic navigation.
Many friends may know that the earth's internal heat energy drives the relative motion of the solid core and the molten outer core due to the generator effect to produce the earth's magnetic field, and the difference in the material composition and structure of the earth's crust and upper mantle may lead to the distortion of the earth's magnetic field, such as crustal thickening, stretching, fracture or extrusion, will leave traces of magnetic field changes, and the chemical or magnetic changes of rocks will also cause local changes in the earth's magnetic field, which are different from the original geomagnetic field are called geomagnetic anomalies.
That is to say, the earth's magnetic field you imagine is a magnetic field line that starts from the south pole and crosses the entire earth into the north pole, but each point on the actual magnetic field line is different. This is equivalent to making each point on the earth have a different "magnetic fingerprint", such as the difference in magnetic field strength and direction.
The basic principle of MAGN ** is to use the magnetometer placed in the aircraft and vehicle to measure the magnetic field data in real time to compare it with the geomagnetic anomaly map, so as to determine the current specific location. But this is easy to say, but it is extremely difficult and complicated to do, because the earth's magnetic field is very weak, we are talking about the millionth of a Tesla, the magnetic field generated by the electronic equipment of the aircraft and the car itself will seriously affect the measurement effect of the magnetometer, resulting in huge errors in navigation.
For this reason, MIT and the U.S. Air Force held a magnetic navigation signal enhancement challenge on GitHub, widely solicited technical solutions, and finally made a breakthrough, improving MIT's neural network architecture, using machine learning to separate and eliminate magnetic noise generated by aircraft and other vehicles, and obtain more accurate positioning. I saw on a ** that a researcher at MIT completed the machine training in a few minutes on his notebook and obtained a positioning accuracy of 102 meters.
During a 2020 flight test over Louisa, Virginia, researchers reduced the accuracy of the error to 13 meters.
It is estimated that under ideal circumstances, the accuracy of Magn** can reach 10 meters, which is close to the accuracy of two or three meters of Seahorse, as well as the accuracy of civilian navigation that we use daily, does this mean that Magn** can become a backup of GPS?
The answer is no, at present, magn** also needs a magnetometer and a computer to measure and calculate, and the magnetometer is the size of several suitcases, and the accuracy can vary greatly in different environments, or when using lower quality magnetograms. However, since the accuracy of 10 meters has been achieved, it is believed that large-scale development and utilization can be carried out, and the MAGN** equipment is reduced, or even made into a GPS-like module, may have been put on the agenda, which means that in the near future, MAGN** navigation may gradually be miniaturized. With the advancement of geomagnetic measurement technology and the continuous evolution of machine learning, it is also possible that MAGN** will gain higher and higher accuracy, thus becoming a true GPS spare tire, and it may be too early to predict whether it will turn positive.
But the advantage of Magn** is undoubtedly very obvious, it is almost a completely independent navigation system, and it does not need to rely on any other equipment, just load or update the magnetogram. Once the magnetographic data is measured, it will hardly change again, but the accuracy will become higher and higher, and only the change of geological level or nuclear ** may interfere with the earth's magnetic field and make it unable to navigate reliably.
In addition, Magn** can be used anywhere, whether it is land or sea, even underwater and underground, such as mines and submarines, it does not need to receive satellite signals, nor does it send signals outward, rainstorms and clouds cannot affect it, only you can affect it, such as putting it in an iron box.
In addition, it is theoretically possible to interfere with it with a strong magnet, but don't forget, the strength of the magnetic field is attenuated with the cube of the distance, and it is difficult for you to interfere in a large area, and magn** is originally used to eliminate noise, the magnetic field of the magnet is uniformly changed, so it is easy to be eliminated, and the interference may not play a role.
Do you think Magn** can be integrated into the module and become a GPS-like navigation device? Welcome to leave a message to discuss.