Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Garbage in, garbage out?-----Was Russian aircraft shot down because its satellite navigation was wrong?

Was Russian aircraft shot down because its satellite navigation was wrong? | Ars Technica:
"Was a Russian Su-24 strike bomber over Turkish airspace earlier today when it was shot down by a Turkish F-16 fighter, as the Turkish government claimed?
Or did it, as the Russians have claimed, fly in Syrian airspace and never cross the Turkish border? The Turkish and Russian governments have published conflicting evidence on the plane's location as accusations fly between the two sides.
But it's entirely possible both sides are right—based on different data sources.
...the Russians have published their own version of navigational tracking data that shows the Su-24 flying south of a part of the Turkish border that juts southward into Syria.
...it's still possible that the GLONASS system used by the Russian military for navigation may have given the aircrew different information than the Turks had.
GLONASS has fewer satellites than GPS, and more of its satellites follow the same orbital path. 
That makes positioning errors more likely..."

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