[Goose]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-put-si...57616.html

Several points to be made here. From the article:

"These were used in two ways," Watling wrote in a September 6 analysis about the risks and opportunities of mobile phones on the battlefield.
"First, the UAV used the network to assist with navigation by triangulating off the bearings of mobile phone masts," he said, using the term UAV to describe an unmanned aerial vehicle.
"Second," he said, "the Russians were sending telemetry data from the UAVs back through the mobile phone network to help plan follow up strikes."

It is clearly not impossible to measure the bearings of cell towers from a drone. To do so precisely is not easy. It is not practical to calibrate each drone in an anechoic chamber. The phase to angle "calibration tables" will need to be a generic one. This limits the ultimate accuracy of the system. That said, the distance from the cell tower is of necessity not large (tens of miles). An approximate angle measurement would work well enough. The first major takeaway is that if Russia can do phase interferometer DF of cell towers on their drones, Ukraine absolutely do the same with GPS jammers. Ukraine's problem is easier. Ukraine wants to maintain a bearing of zero (to hit the target), not measure exactly what the bearing is. Why isn't that happening?

There are also much better ways of navigation using cell towers. The structure and characteristics of their transmissions are known and from that a precise timing reference is possible. That makes using differential delays between several towers to geolocate the receiver. FWIW I can't imagine Russia isn't doing this. It is much easier than measuring the Direction of Arrival (DOA). Remember a drone at 200 ft can see many more cell towers that a person driving/walking on the surface can.

The fact that Russia has a transmitter on the drone gives them the ability to create a cooperative transaction with the cell tower(s). This creates another opportunity to establish an even better timing reference. The problem is that Ukraine doesn't want to shut down its cell phone network. It is next to impossible to know that a particular cellular user is "counterfeit" if a state actor uses its resources to obtain/clone SIM cards. This fact is something the US needs to be painfully aware of. Imagine how easy it would be to navigate without GPS if you can use the cellular system to do it. In WWII the US was concerned about Japanese submarines using US radio stations to navigate. Now there are thousands of radio stations that can be used (and they conveniently transmit their location so you can't get confused).

[Goose]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-put-si...57616.html

Several points to be made here. From the article:

"These were used in two ways," Watling wrote in a September 6 analysis about the risks and opportunities of mobile phones on the battlefield.
"First, the UAV used the network to assist with navigation by triangulating off the bearings of mobile phone masts," he said, using the term UAV to describe an unmanned aerial vehicle.
"Second," he said, "the Russians were sending telemetry data from the UAVs back through the mobile phone network to help plan follow up strikes."

It is clearly not impossible to measure the bearings of cell towers from a drone. To do so precisely is not easy. It is not practical to calibrate each drone in an anechoic chamber. The phase to angle "calibration tables" will need to be a generic one. This limits the ultimate accuracy of the system. That said, the distance from the cell tower is of necessity not large (tens of miles). An approximate angle measurement would work well enough. The first major takeaway is that if Russia can do phase interferometer DF of cell towers on their drones, Ukraine absolutely do the same with GPS jammers. Ukraine's problem is easier. Ukraine wants to maintain a bearing of zero (to hit the target), not measure exactly what the bearing is. Why isn't that happening?

There are also much better ways of navigation using cell towers. The structure and characteristics of their transmissions are known and from that a precise timing reference is possible. That makes using differential delays between several towers to geolocate the receiver. FWIW I can't imagine Russia isn't doing this. It is much easier than measuring the Direction of Arrival (DOA). Remember a drone at 200 ft can see many more cell towers that a person driving/walking on the surface can.

The fact that Russia has a transmitter on the drone gives them the ability to create a cooperative transaction with the cell tower(s). This creates another opportunity to establish an even better timing reference. The problem is that Ukraine doesn't want to shut down its cell phone network. It is next to impossible to know that a particular cellular user is "counterfeit" if a state actor uses its resources to obtain/clone SIM cards. This fact is something the US needs to be painfully aware of. Imagine how easy it would be to navigate without GPS if you can use the cellular system to do it. In WWII the US was concerned about Japanese submarines using US radio stations to navigate. Now there are thousands of radio stations that can be used (and they conveniently transmit their location so you can't get confused).