Thats a very strange, even dangerous thing to do. I really cant think of a single good reason to conduct this experiment. Surely it could have been conducted in a virual enviroment or even done at one of the numerous isolated bases that the U.S. military is fond of. Taking out the G.P.S cover for the East coast seems a bit radical.

It is probably a test of some navy radar/ECM equipment.

Think about it, the US knows every little gory detail about GPS and can selectively degrade it's signal at anytime of it's choosing.

The only logical "test" would be something unrelated that may cause enough interference to cause greater than expected error/noise.

There's no reason the US would have to do it in North Carolina - in fact all logic says they simply should not.

Not only do they disrupt their citizens' communications, they disrupt major commercial businesses, they endanger thousands of lives, they disrupt their own major communications, it is completely stupid.

In a case such as this - there has to be an ulterior motive. Think about it - why not off the southwest coast of South America? Why not off Hawaii? The US has control over both areas, but they chose to do this test where it will disrupt the American heart.

Something's up.

Originally posted by Viendin
There's no reason the US would have to do it in North Carolina - in fact all logic says they simply should not.

Not only do they disrupt their citizens' communications, they disrupt major commercial businesses, they endanger thousands of lives, they disrupt their own major communications, it is completely stupid.

In a case such as this - there has to be an ulterior motive. Think about it - why not off the southwest coast of South America? Why not off Hawaii? The US has control over both areas, but they chose to do this test where it will disrupt the American heart.

Something's up.

gps jamming wont cause any real problem, youre over reacting here.

There are lots of reasons do it in that area.

For example, what if they are testing a radar system to detect large missiles. The only places the US has that can launch is Vandenberg on the west coast and a couple of places on the east (An island in VA, Cape Canaveral). That would severly limit the options for testing.

And if it is some Jamming/ECM system there would be tons fo Intel concerns that far outweigh any temporary degredation to civilian use. In that case the natural place would be as close as possible to the continental US

GPS is a Military system to begin with. It is paid for, maintained, and primarily used by the US military, although the entire world benifits from its use.
The GPS signal and location you recieve are purposely scrambled. Locations "float" by design, and are moved at random, sometimes by thousands of feet.
The only group that recieves true accurate location is the US MIlitary and whoever the MIlitary allows.

Tests like this occur on a regular basis. The reason for the warning on this one is because it may disrupt GPS and cell systems. While there's some inconvenience, there's no danger involved. They could have done this without warning but that may have created panic. Quite frankly, I'm glad they're testing the system. There's nothing like a real test to see how it works in the real world. Virtual envvironment testing is fine, but when it comes to national defence, I'll go with the real thing.