How about using the stars? ... only at night ?
Use triangulation to known RF transmissions ( ie like direction finding of RF signals )
Geography recognition , rivers mountain's . towns etc ( Lidar ? )
Broadcast this info on some other secret frequency - drones only need to listen to the info
Use radar to track drone and broadcast its position to the item ...
https://www.glennsmuseum.com/items/b52_astro/
https://theaviationgeekclub-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/theav...
Cloud cover, OTOH, is a real killer-- but not a problem for high altitude aircraft.
The cost and scale of disruption matters.
That is true for almost all security. It is not impossible to break cryptography, but it is costly enough as to not be viable in most cases. Most of security is about to make it costly enough to break as to not be worth it.
But yea, calling it inconvenient for most uses is quite an understatement. It did serve many spies well though during the Cold War using numbers stations, even if the Soviets were known to take short cuts by just having a room full of people randomly hitting keyboards rather than using true randomness.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/bps-gps-alternative-n...
Discussed 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43669308
This assumes the jammer stays at the same power output, no? Why wouldn't adversaries just build stronger jammers?
infocollector•8mo ago
dieselerator•8mo ago
Though I do not agree with your reasons, I do think this Xona is not the right replacement for GPS.
icegreentea2•8mo ago
The USG military uses is attractive not as a replacement of GPS, but as a supplement/complement. If they could truly manage to use the same receivers, then this provides an extra layer of redundancy. There are 32 GPS satellites in the current constellation. Being in MEO means you need pretty beefy ASAT to take it take them down, but we could assume that China could pull it off. Xona's constellation would add redundancy (splashing 258 is just a lot more targets).
For non USG uses, I imagine Xona is making two different pitches.
a) You can achieve GPS+RTK level accuracy without needing RTK base stations.
b) Increased jamming/spoofing resiliency, intended for short of war (aka hybrid war/grey zone) situations. For example, I imagine Xona will attempt to setup a private encrypted signal which they'll sell to friendly/allied nation airliners and similar industries.