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UK military jamming other nations' satellites to defend itself, BBC told

171 points · 213 comments · thm

  1. autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
    > Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said daily lives depend on satellites that power everyday technologies like mobile phones and banking apps, adding the loss of GPS would cost the UK economy £1.4bn a day.

    Oh no! Not our precious banking apps! What a weird thing to call out specifically. It's also kind of strange to talk at such length about how critical satellites have become to people's lives, national economy, emergency services, and people's "daily freedoms", only to conclude with "So now we're using ground-based systems to take out the satellites other countries depend on for all of those things"

    1. tene80i · · focus · HN ↗
      Why is it strange? Millions of people use banking apps daily to make transactions essential to their lives and businesses.
      1. autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
        Those apps can all be replaced by a website, and most banks already have those websites, which means if all the banking apps on earth stopped working right now the solution wouldn't involve anything more complicated than stabbing your finger at different icon on your phone and typing the name of your bank into a search engine.
        1. vallerie · · focus · HN ↗
          not being funny - if the internet goes out how does a website make this better?
          1. autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
            > not being funny - if the internet goes out how does a website make this better?

            The internet for most people doesn't depend on banking apps, or satellites. Wifi would still work great. If the internet actually did go out everywhere, how would an app help you?

            1. vallerie · · focus · HN ↗
              The UK is an island nation that's reliant on undersea cables. If those cables are cut (which is something that Russia seems to threaten) your only fallback is satellite connectivity - so protecting that connectivity is pretty key to ensuring e.g people can access their money.

              I would guess that was how Wes Streeting was briefed (and then completely bungled in public comms).

              1. QDwQ1 · · focus · HN ↗
                ideally British banks would have their infrastructure located in Britain and therefore would not rely on undersea cables
                1. vallerie · · focus · HN ↗
                  Monzo (a major UK bank) use AWS and GCP. Hopefully their DCs don't fail in some way when losing access to the outside world but I would hazard a guess something goes wrong.

                  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;monzo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tolerating-full-cloud-outages-with-monzo-stand-in" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;monzo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;tolerating-full-cloud-outages-with-mo...

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