Naval Academy Reinstates Teaching of Celestial Navigation 350
HughPickens.com writes: At the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, midshipmen studied celestial navigation for more than a century -- until 1998, after a decision that came after months of discussion that began with a 1996 curriculum review. Midshipmen were relieved. Celestial calculations were painfully difficult, requiring a nautical almanac and volumes of tables. Now Tim Prudente reports at the Capital Gazette that the Navy has reinstated the teaching of celestial navigation in the manual issued two months ago. The first midshipmen to receive training were juniors during this past summer school. Future classes will learn theories of celestial navigation during an advanced navigation course. And the Class of 2017 will be the first to graduate with the reinstated instruction.
But is there really any point in knowing how to navigate by the stars in a world of GPS? "In the event that we had to go into a national emergency, we would probably have to shut the GPS down because it can be used by potential enemies," says retired Navy Capt. Terry Carraway. "We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great," says Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, the deputy chairman of the academy's department of seamanship and navigation. "The problem is, there's no backup."
But is there really any point in knowing how to navigate by the stars in a world of GPS? "In the event that we had to go into a national emergency, we would probably have to shut the GPS down because it can be used by potential enemies," says retired Navy Capt. Terry Carraway. "We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great," says Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, the deputy chairman of the academy's department of seamanship and navigation. "The problem is, there's no backup."
Turn key back on? (Score:2)
Re:Turn key back on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wouldn't the military just turn their encryption keys back on so that they can use it but others get worse data? I do agree that teaching your officers celestial navigation is important, but when shit hits the fan, it will be interesting to see which ones actually retain it and can use it without constant practice.
They're not doing this in case they have to turn off the GPS. They're doing this because they realize that the enemy may be able to turn off the GPS (along with everything else that relies on modern microelectronics).
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No?
"we would probably have to shut the GPS down" -Navy Capt. Terry Carraway
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Also no:
"because it can be used by potential enemies" -Navy Capt. Terry Carraway
The big security controversy when GPS became public was that it's much cheaper and easier to make a GPS-guided missile than a cruise missile: "All normal GPS receivers got two limits build into them [...] a speed and height limit so no receivers can be used in automatic guided weapons"
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/b... [wired.com]
Re:Turn key back on? (Score:4, Insightful)
"In the event that we had to go into a national emergency, we would probably have to shut the GPS down because it can be used by potential enemies," says retired Navy Capt. Terry Carraway.
Now granted, what you mention might be another reason to reteach celestial navigation. But you are flat wrong in your suggestion that they are not doing this in case they need to turn it off.
When the military discusses in public what they would do in times of enemy action, take it with a grain of salt, yes? It's not their job to accurate describe their plans to their enemies.
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Why wouldn't the military just turn their encryption keys back on so that they can use it but others get worse data?
What if there are no satellites to turn the key back on for? The Chinese for one are known to have anti-satellite weapons.
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The Chinese for one are known to have anti-satellite weapons.
US shot down the Solwind P78-1 satellite with an ASM-135 ASAT launched from an F-15 already back in 13th September 1985.
"It's not rocket-science nowadays."
Re:Turn key back on? (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind you, there's a significant difference between hitting a satellite orbiting at slightly more than 300 miles up, and hitting one that's 11,000 miles up.
A lot of the low-earth orbit satellites - which includes some reconnaissance satellites - are vulnerable to common fighter-launched ASATs, but hitting something in geosynchronous orbit is a bit more difficult. It would take large ground-based rockets to reach that altitude, and you would have to launch at least six to disrupt the GPS system over a particular area (and even then, the results would be only temporary as the network can compensate for some losses). Even ICBMs aren't powerful enough to reach them; you would need liquid-fueled rockets that need to be fueled up prior to launch (you don't just keep that stuff sitting around in the rocket's gas tank indefinitely) prior to launch, so your preparations would be very visible and very vulnerable. GPS satellites are also traveling at more than 10,000mph, which makes them a tricky target to hit, so you'll likely need to launch more than one rocket per satellite to ensure a successful interception.
It's not impossible but it is difficult and probably more costly in resources than it is worth.
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GPS satellites orbit at 12,500 miles. I don't think a jet launched missile would be able to reach them.
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A quick google shows that the angular resolution of an adaptive optics telescope is about 1e-5 degrees, which translates roughly to 4 meters at that altitude. You see where I'm going with this?
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In space, low orbit and high orbit mean almost nothing to a satellite. The Chinese hit the moon with a couple of spacecraft - WTF makes you think they can't hit something in high earth orbit?
I'll grant that China has given us every opportunity to mislead ourselves - but you are still misleading yourself.
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Details. If I can destroy a target a couple hundred miles up, then I have the skills, knowledge, and probably the resources to reach a couple hundred miles more. Besides which - with energy weapons, range matters not at all after the atmosphere is below you. Range means nothing - if you can make an accurate shot of 200 miles, then you can also make an accurate shot of 20,000 miles. The same is nearly true of kinetic weapons. Unless you are planning on using your rocket/satellite to ram the other satell
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Please try to keep up here. We place the weapon into orbit. We are aiming at targets in orbit. There is no diffraction, unless someone left dirty handprints on the lens. We have a satellite, in orbit, designed to kill other satellites. 20,000 miles is nothing. A laser beam that measures several microns wide at it's origin will still be several microns wide at it's destination. Firing that same laser from the surface of the earth, at an orbiting target, will indeed diffuse the beam over several meters
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It's worth noting adaptive optics for a camera isn't the same as trying to focus a laser beam onto a tiny point thousands of kilometers away. The shape of the earth's atmosphere is somewhat forgiving anyways, from outside-looking-in. It refracts light to a point instead of diffracting outward, for one thing. Then, there's the matter of just looking at light bounced off the sun instead of trying to take a laser designed to melt things. Here, you have the problem of trying to focusing your infrared doom beam
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Uh, the P-code is already encrypted. Selective Availability was turned off only on the C/A (Coarse Acquisition) code.
Civilian GPS usage is C/A only. Military uses the C/A and P code.
In fact, to use the P-code, you must already lock onto the C/A code to get rough positioning. You cannot acquire the P-code directly.
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Err - no.
Modern satellites have many ways of denying GPS to areas or turning off the 'civilian' mode totally.
As well as high power 'spot-beams' to make jamming much, much harder.
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That's all well and good. A lot of bright minds have been studying the future of warfare though. You might peruse some of the future war genre of Science Fiction. David Drake states it quite clearly. When the shit hits the fan, the satellites share first place honors with aviation for "shit to destroy first". In the age of energy and kinetic weapons, satellites are defenseless bits of scrap, just waiting to be shot up.
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It still helps to have the high ground. Aircraft on the ground won't last long, but stealthy aircraft in the air are a hard target. Sats in low orbit, like spy sats, are easy to take down if you can find them. Medium orbit like GPS is more difficult - weapons that can reach them are in limited supply, high tech, and expensive. I'm not sure anyone but the US and Russia could take out GPS sats reliably in quantity (though many countries could now take out 1-2).
High orbit (GEO) sat are a different story.
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"The US, Russia, China, Israel, and even Iran wouldn't do this,"
You presume to much. Any of those actors would do so, if they believed conditions made the satellites more useful to the enemy than to themselves.
can do it with a computer (Score:2)
I wonder how much this can be automated. Seriously, I bet it's fairly easy to program a software that takes a picture at night or of the sun and guess where you are.
Re:can do it with a computer (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been done - some nuclear missiles had star-based navigation systems for mid-course corrections, as did the SR-71.
However, it's still a good idea to have people who can do it manually, because anything that will take out GPS has a good chance of taking out your computers as well. It doesn't even have to be a common thing - a dozen people on a ship crewed by five thousand is enough.
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I would imagine that a small subset of it still taught in SERE school as well - finding your way at night when you are ERE'ing would be rather helpful, and it is almost guaranteed that you wouldn't have a GPS... or sextant, piles of charts, etc
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I think it started in the late 40s - well, the idea and tech. A quick(ish) check on Wikipedia has some cryptic information about the Snark. The Snark used astro-inertial guidance and is the earliest one that I know of and was able to find. According to Wikipedia, the project started in 1946 though I doubt the tech was quite ready at the time for the accuracy desired. Consider, also, at that time we were okay with bombing large areas and it wasn't until later, in Khrushchev's reign, that both sides of the Co
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This is like the 8th wise comment that I've seen from the ACs tonight. Is there a full moon or something?
I understand that they're all hardened and heavily segmented so it'd be pretty difficult to take them all out at once though you could probably take out a centralized monitoring area but I think they commonly have a secondary bridge, not in the superstructure, for just such eventualities.
Re: can do it with a computer (Score:2)
Yes they do. In fact more than one. A secondary conn and even a third deep inside the ship.
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That makes sense. The US Navy takes their shit serious. They're pretty good, all things considered. They are, bar none, the best on the planet. I'm not surprised to hear about a third but I knew I'd recalled hearing about a secondary. I think they'll be okay. That and, well, they're hardly ever just tooling around the ocean at random and all alone. They tend to be in groups.
Re:can do it with a computer (Score:5, Insightful)
On a pitching, rocking ship in the middle of the sea, with a sky that may have cloud coverage so you don't have much choice in the stars that you can shoot? A picture of the sky tells you very little - you need the angle of the celestial object relative to the local horizon. A good human navigator might be able to shoot a few stars through a hole in 9/10ths cloud coverage and get a fix.
Star-trackers work well in space because the platform is relatively stable and you don't have any clouds (usually). Apollo 13 had problems with its star tracker after the explosion because of a cloud of reflective debris around the ship. They had to do a manual burn sighting the Earth's terminator through the reticle.
Not saying a computer couldn't be designed to do it, but getting a robust cel-nav system for sea vessels that can handle the noisy environment that is the sea and sky will be a challenge. Humans still beat computers in some things, this is one of them.
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Yeah, knowing the usual commenting on how easy it should be, because can do it, those geeks would probably implement it so that it'd require a 90% match of a clear sky, would be incapable of dealing with clouds, water or ice on the lens and all other such things that are a pain in the ass.
Plenty of young people going into the military nowadays think that it's pointless to learn how to read a map or how to use a compass. Then they whine about how unfair it is when they are sent on an excercise where GPS is
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The thing that ought to amuse all of us is that they believe the GPS is trustworthy. I've spent a road trip getting regular laughs from looking at where the GPS thought I was--it was utterly convinced that it was in a boat or perhaps a submarine. I had no idea my car at the time was so capable!
The worst part of this is that even your average modern GPS unit will do this to you. One of the things I will do when utterly bored is check to see where my phone thinks it is, which hasn't failed yet to be quite
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The cloud coverage is a valid point. But the rocking ship isn't that big a deal. With a sextant, you are trying to measure the elevation of a celestial body above the horizon. Both images are moving in unison relative to the ship so it's not that difficult to bring the star to the horizon. It is easy to do unless the rocking is so bad you can't keep the star in your field of view.
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Don't forget water or ice on the lens etc
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But a lot of ships don't simply rock to and fro, especially when seas are bad. They pitch, roll, heave, and gyrate in all sorts of weird ways. And the angle is worthless if it isn't down to the nearest horizon (i.e. if your sextant is slightly tilted it is a bad sight). You need to orient quickly to local vertical and stay there, so you would need an inertial system to find the gravitational acceleration vector - on a frame that is pitching and bucking and accelerating in all sorts of crazy ways.
And we also
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Gosh, what did sailors do for thousands of years when all they had was a sextant?
Learning how to navigate starts with understanding how and why a sextant works.
Re: can do it with a computer (Score:5, Interesting)
Allow me to introduce you to the ships gyro. Also referred to as a stable element.
It's the reference plane the fire control systems utilize while plotting a firing solution for the ships guns.
Some of the older manned directors also referenced them and kept the director perfectly stable even in rough seas. Was the best place to be in the event you and the pitching seas didn't get along :)
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On a pitching, rocking ship in the middle of the sea, with a sky that may have cloud coverage so you don't have much choice in the stars that you can shoot?
Why not leave the visual range, and use passive microwave, UV, IR, and radio wave sensors?
The clouds mostly block visible light, but there is a much broader spectrum of particle emissions from the sun to earth than the naked eye can perceive.
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There's probably an app for that.
Dumbing down of Humans (Score:3)
But is there really any point in knowing how to navigate by the stars in a world of GPS? "In the event that we had to go into a national emergency...
National emergency?
Just my 2 cents, but you should have to train a dog to mind you before you have a child, and you should be able to navigate by the stars prior to being allowed to use the GPS.
Makes sense (Score:2)
Even if they didn't shut down GPS in a conflict it's ridiculously easy to jam by the enemy and highly susceptible to EM disturbance if nukes are involved.
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We *need* a backup plan (Score:3)
If the federal government keeps slicing away at our capability for space flight then at some point we might see Navstar GPS fail merely due to lack of maintenance. Ground based radio navigation has been losing support due to the success of Navstar and other GPS systems. Having the US military rely on foreign built navigation systems just sounds like an easy way for an enemy to add confusion in a battle.
The nice thing about ground based radio navigation is that they are easy to maintain, no need for a rocket that can reach orbit. The bad thing about them is that they make easy targets. So if a nation can figure out how to take out Navstar then they can handicap the US military. In the absence of GPS and radio navigation beacons one would hope we'd still have enough people smart enough and knowledgeable enough to find other means to navigate.
This doesn't necessarily mean celestial navigation is the answer but that is probably one of the most reliable and accurate means we have available outside of GPS. Any radio transmitter can be used as a radio navigation beacon, just so long as you know where that transmitter is located, and enough smarts to operate a radio. In fact radio transmitters were used in WWII as beacons for pilots flying from California to Hawaii. Normally radio silence was practiced on the islands so that the Japanese couldn't use them as a navigation aid either but getting bombers safely to the air base was seen as a priority, and therefore an exception to the rule.
Using a commercial radio station as a navigation beacon did several things for the US in WWII. The radio station already existed, so no additional cost for the military. If you are going to transmit something then it may as well transmit music that is soothing to the flight crews as well as the general public. It also didn't broadcast that flights from the US mainland was underway, only that radio silence was lifted for some reason which could mean a lot of things. In modern times, during a real war, I expect creative aids to navigation to pop up like this. However, this isn't the 1940's. Any potential enemy we have today is going to have the technology to take out radio transmissions with greater ease than the Japanese Imperial Navy.
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I agree with you on every point except that of "Air Forces". Having read plenty of history I know that the Allied Forces of WWII came up with several ingenious ways to navigate in war time. You even pointed out a couple in your assessment of the other users of GPS, use of charts, compass, and bubble sextants.
While many of these are most convenient while in a larger aircraft, like a bomber or passenger plane, I've heard of systems that can work even in the confines of a single seat fighter. Examples of th
Ship GPS can go out (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
On the 1991 cruise I was on when in the Navy, our ship's GPS went out. No way to fix it. We had to use compasses and star charts till we got to Pearl Harbor so it could be fixed. If the guys hadn't been trained for it, we'd have been screwed.
Exactly. Tech can fail or be disabled, either deliberately or due to enemy action. Remember how Russia was testing their GPS jamming tech against the US a few years ago in the middle east, by providing it to one of the countries we fought? Similarly, Iran used GPS to bring down a drone. Our guys need to be able to get by without it and, for that matter, to confirm that the computer is right.
It's not like we're requiring every enlisted man to know this stuff--but the officers on a ship of war should damn well know how to navigate by the stars if they have to.
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Or you could have just used the radio and someone would have found you eventually. I don't think you'd have been screwed so much as annoyed and not doing a whole lot. It's not like there were pirates, German submarines, or Japanese battleships. What kind of ship where you on that wasn't part of group? I'm no expert or anything but I bet they'd have noticed you went missing and come to find you.
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They were finding stuff in the ocean back in WWII days with planes and little else. We've got triangulation and last points of contact. I think they'd be okay.
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Having talked to people that were on US Navy ships at about that time I was told that a common means of navigation was by land based radio navigation. One person described to me a rather large antenna array on the bow of the ship that could give the direction of a radio beacon. I was told that normally this was folded down so as to not interfere with the weapons but in a case of a need to get somewhere quickly they'd prop it up so they can get an accurate location and heading.
Knowing what I do about radio
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In 1981 I sailed a small boat across the Atlantic (30' cat, took 22 days). GPS (civilian) did not exist [1996 was when it became useful and accurate], we used the sun, tables, and a sextant. I only shot the sun, not stars. Sight reduction is tedious, but not too bad with tables and perhaps a calculator. I used an HP41c - wonderful gadget.
Even with a calculator, it is not especially quick, and what you get is a position line (LOP) [actually a large circle mapped onto the earth surface corresponding to a cons
Reasons for knowing (Score:4, Informative)
First off you should never completely trust your computers. What happens if a software bug or a hardware problem occurs and says your 10 nautical miles west from where you really are? Not likely but still always good to check to make sure that your systems are running correctly.
The other reason is what if something happens to your ship and you have to abandon it before a distress call could be sent. Quite possible in times of war. You would want to know how to locate where you are so you could paddle the raft in the right direction (if you had a map or knew the location of land) or had some form of communication.
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Well, after your other two redundant systems flag the bad one, you just mark it for maintenance when you get back to shore.
That's great advice if there's absolutely no cost to the time and effort being wasted. Otherwise, it's pretty foolish.
It's pretty damn easy to check that GPS is working... Check that e
Bah! GPS! Give me Astro-Inertial Navigation System (Score:2)
The SR-71 had astro internal navigation [wikipedia.org] long before GPS. This system required quite a bit of calibration at pre-flight, but with the sensors we have available today (gyros, accelerometers), this could easily be added to ships. This system can work day or night as well. It is pretty ingenious. There are several commercially available versions which could easily be incorporated into ships or drones. CelNav is a great exercise in math, but if your ship gets hit with an EMP, knowing your location won't do
TACAMO (Score:2)
Parallet to hiking w/ map and compass (Score:4, Insightful)
As an avid backpacker, I'm amazed how often recent enthusiasts I've come across have little or zero/map and compass skills. Sure, your GPS on your iPhone and hiking app are great, IF you have power, and if it's accurate. But if you lose it, break it, battery dies, then what?
I still travel with Trails Illustrated maps (or other topo maps) and a compass whenever I'm in the backcountry.
I think the Naval Academy made the right decision.
Re:Parallet to hiking w/ map and compass (Score:4, Funny)
Sure, your GPS on your iPhone and hiking app are great, IF you have power, and if it's accurate. But if you lose it, break it, battery dies, then what?
You keep walking along the trail until you hit the next Starbucks.
Let me translate this for you (Score:2)
"In the event that we had to go into a national emergency, we would probably have to shut the GPS down because it can be used by potential enemies," says retired Navy Capt. Terry Carraway."
When the shit hits the fan against a capable enemy ( cough. . . China . . . cough ) the first thing they're going to do is target all satellites considered military assets. GPS, Sigint and recon systems will be the first to go down.
If you, or your weapons, rely too heavily on such things, the War will be a very short one
will they allow pocket calculators? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was learning Celestial Navigation, there were two sets of 'Almanacs' we had to use. One was the Nautical Almanac which gave the positions of the stars, the Sun and the Moon for each minute of each day of the year. These were issued every year by some National Observatory. The other set was just a cookbook of spherical trigonometry. Obviously you can program any modern calculator with the appropriate trig formulas so the Midshipmen would not have to waste time looking up those numbers in the books. I am pretty sure that with modern memory you could put the entire almanac for the year on a USB stick, and so you would not need to look up those numbers either. Add the two together and you can have a rugged, solar powered device that can do the calculations for you. Now all you need to do is get out your sextant and clock, take the sights, plug in the time, the readings and the corrections, and let the pocket calculator do the grunt work.
pgmer6809
As a former naval officer... (Score:4, Interesting)
Celestial navigation was taught in our Naval Science Navigation course. As naval bridge officers, we were required to learn celestial navigation primarily as tradition and to have a working understanding of the mechanics of the process. That being said, one must know where the ship is at all times. Today, we rely on GPS, inertial navigation systems and the gyroscopic compass (as opposed to a magnetic compass). There have been times when we lost GPS or LORAN C while at sea. We did experience loss of the gyroscopic compass in the middle of ocean and our ship didn't have INS. You have a mission to carry out and that entails safely navigating your vessel.
Basic skills such as dead reckoning and visual position fixes are used when near land. At sea, with no landmarks, knowing where you is just as important. Case in point is that there is an underwater mountain in the Pacific that ships still manage to hit. Avoiding those things is pretty important. Murphy's law will ensure that your ship fill find the underwater mountain or shoal waters if you aren't prepared.
Do navigators take celestial fixes every night the skies are clear? No. They do it from time to time to keep the traditions alive. And, should the skills ever be needed, they will have them. The calculations are tedius and no where as accurate as GPS fix. But, it's an interesting exercise and a time honored tradition.
Backup to GPS is great but just use computers (Score:2)
My mostly ignorant opinion manually filling out forms and digging thru sight reduction tables is a pointless exercise.
I think a backup for GPS is worthwhile but all people really need is some experience using a sextant and reasonable ability to quickly spot nav stars and input measurements into a computer. Alternatly use a star nav system that will automatically and accurately compute your position based on image capture of the sky.
No matter what you'll still need an accurate clock to get a fix so there is
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input measurements into a computer.
Computers break or become unavailable due to loss of power, moisture ingress, or due to being hit with an EMP
Computers are also not very effective for navigating life rafts, when there are no batteries to power the computer.
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The next big worry for most modern navy planners is what is carried deep into the modern ship in terms of consumer grade crew electronics.
Was the ship designed to be some clean intranet where every internal computer command is considered as quickly as possible with less consideration on origin and security? Is the ship 'running
Accuracy ???? (Score:2)
Military GPS accuracy = 0.001 nm (a few yards).
Inertial accuracy = 0.1 nm / hour degradation
Celestial navigation accuracy = hundred nm
So unless GPS is gone for days, inertial is still better
That's a result of USA getting rid of LORAN which before GPS was the primary update source for inertial systems, and after GPS was fully operational switched to backup.
Celestial navigation is pretty much strictly a means to getting to the nearest port. Very limited usage for combat operations.
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Astro-inertial navigation is old tech for missiles. There's no reason that someone couldn't slap together a similar system as backup for guiding a ship in lieu of GPS. That's not what this is about. This is about weeding dumb people out of the Naval Academy.
Re:They cant control navigation. (Score:5, Interesting)
What if the issue is not lack of GPS but lack of electrical power? Or, in the case of an EMP, the computers are scrambled? In the time it takes you to work out the issues with the electronics you can also have some people trying to figure out where you are by celestial navigation. That means less down time.
Also, how do you know the computers aren't lying to you? In a sophisticated attack the navigation may not be down but merely rendered inaccurate. Having celestial navigation as an aid means you should be able to correct for electronic navigation errors more quickly.
Also, electronic navigation may only provide one or two points in a triangulation. To complete your triangle of points one might want to know something as simple as which way is north. Reading a compass might seem trivial to you but for some young sailor fresh out of the academy that might not be trivial. Add to that some basics of dead reckoning and just some theory on celestial navigation then we have someone that can get back into the fight more quickly than a sailor ignorant of these things.
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Or, in the case of an EMP, the computers are scrambled? In the time it takes you to work out the issues with the electronics you can also have some people trying to figure out where you are by celestial navigation.
I guess you're assuming that the EMP is going to cause the navigator to forget where the ship was five minutes ago
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I'm expecting that in an EMP attack that the ship under attack is going to have to travel a large distance to either get aid or render it to another ship. This ship is going to have to find port, or another ship at sea, with disabled or unreliable computer systems. That means being able to verify your position over a period of hours or days. They may have to also do this while those of the crew normally tasked with navigation being dead, injured, or otherwise unable to perform their normal duties.
Knowing
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Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
Hell, this is the military, they don't mind forcing a few men to turn a crank on an alternator [googleusercontent.com] around the clock, to generate a little power, when needed. Seriously, who is teaching celestial navigation, instead of just inc
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Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
Then perhaps you aren't thinking hard enough.
Let's also consider a situation given in the linked article, the ship is fully operational but the Navstar GPS satellites are disabled. A GPS unit wrapped in aluminum foil won't save you then. The Chinese or Russian GPS systems might still be operational but in a time of war, where either nation might be the aggressor, they cannot be relied upon.
If during an attack the people responsible for the navigation of the ship are just then seeing a magnetic compass for
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I realized upon re-read that the context of this was proposing instead of teaching celestial navigation that the Navy should instead have computers capable of celestial navigation.
Then you'd better call out the galley slaves with their giant wooden paddles, because I can't imagine any scenario where a ship's engine would be operational, but they couldn't generate a few watts of electricity out of it.
And Tepco couldn't imagine a scenario where they'd lose the generators, batteries, and grid power at the same time. How well did that work out for them? Sometimes the worst can happen and simple things like a sextant, clock, charts, compass, and two weeks of training at the Naval Academy can save a lot of people a lot of trouble
Re:They cant control navigation. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: They cant control navigation. (Score:2)
They're not that fragile.
The housings holding critical systems are very well shielded and shock isolated. In fact, some of the housings around the system I worked on were LEAD LINED. They take their shielding fairly seriously :)
Source: Ex Fire Control type
Re: They cant control navigation. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They cant control navigation. (Score:4, Interesting)
Navigation will be the last of your worries then.
Being up shit creek and all I had was a paddle I'd think that knowing where I was would be the first concern.
Let's gather the situation here. Communication is down, weapons down to .50 M2 and small arms, no GPS, no power. Since the ship is likely steam or gas turbine powered the crew should still be able to get the ship to move. I presume as well that there are crew that are injured. This crew is also going to be in need of food, heat, and shelter. I'd think that what a wise captain would want to do is head for the nearest safe harbor for repairs. At a minimum getting to port would mean the crew can find food, heat, and shelter until the ship is repaired or they can be picked up in another.
Given that situation what should a captain do? Head to safe harbor, right? Okay then, to get there they will have to be able to at a minimum know which direction to sail. With a watch, compass, and charts one can do wonderful things. With a sextant and the knowledge to use it, miracles can be performed.
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What if the issue is not lack of GPS but lack of electrical power?
Then the ship is dead in the water anyway. Duh.
Or, in the case of an EMP, the computers are scrambled?
Then none of the systems that allow the ship to be controlled or to fight are functioning either. Duh.
Having talked with several people that have been on actual US Navy ships I know what you proclaim is not true. Even today US Navy ships are largely powered by steam power plants with mechanical systems to operate them. There may be electronic systems to manage them in normal operation but there is always a manual override.
If the means to generate electricity is lost there is nothing that prevents the ship from being able to still propel itself.
Many of the weapons would also be capable of functioning witho
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I know that all that you say is true. I know that there are repetitively redundant backups for everything. But, one thing I never established for myself. Without electrical power, could we have fired our main guns? I know that after an EMP, our missiles and rockets would have been useless. Torpedos would almost certainly have been useless. But, the main guns? I'm just not sure. Some of the subsystems would be worthless, for sure. And, ammunition would be limited to whatever was in the ready locker,
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Will it survive an EMP?
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Yep. And it is fun. You can pick up a $20 sextant off Amazon to play with (although you'd be better off with a more serious instrument). Like typewriters and other analog tools it slows you down and makes you think.
The "makes you think" part is what's really important here. Thinking leads to understanding ... sounds pretty valuable to me.
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I appreciate the value of a backup navigation system if the electronics stop working. But so many things depend on GPS nowadays that there's a good chance some software bug would disable the ship anyway.
If there's an EMP blast, ships will switch over to mechanical systems. Computer bugs won't come into play. Neither will GPS or anything else that depends on software. Dead reckoning, a slide rule, a compass and a sextant is what you'll have.
But those who need to know that are the pilots and gunners, not everybody else. What this is primarily useful for is weeding out those too stupid to learn celestial navigation or how to use a slide rule. Can't fault them for that. Let the army have the grunts that
Re: Seems weird (Score:2)
In order for officers to earn their Surface Warfare badge, they will have a turn playing Officer of the Deck while underway at some point. ( I assume the sub-surface fleet has similar requirements )
Contrary to popular belief, the Captain is not on the bridge guiding the ship 24/7.
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Even if it is a useful thing to learn, I don't see why everyone should have to learn it.
Seeing as it's being taught at the US Naval Academy it's only the officers that have to learn celestial navigation. I assume the enlisted ranks outside of the navigation ratings won't have to learn it, but those that wish to earn navigation ratings would.
Considering that any naval officer could at some point in their career be in charge of a vessel larger than a canoe it would be helpful, if not necessary, to know what every person under their command must do. They may have to teach someone how to do thei
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Absence of GPS does NOT imply war.... it implies a mad scramble to navigate and synchronize clocks by other means.
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The Trident 2 class submarines also have gravity gradiometry, which allows covert navigation without emitting any signals.
Re:What the frack (Score:5, Insightful)
Analog instruments in a typical aircraft "six pack" are quite useful when in the air but mostly useless if floating on water. About the only useful instrument of those would be the magnetic compass. These instruments are also only useful in getting a rough position in the air, close enough to get within visual or radio range of an airport. When on the water one's visible distance is greatly diminished, and in a time of war one might not want to broadcast their position with a radio.
Also, who says that the USNA does not also teach how to use instruments similar to that on an aircraft? I expect that they do. I suspect that those are also just as fragile as GPS in a time of war. Celestial navigation is cheap, readily available, and impossible to "jam", so long as you know how to do it.
You might think it "utterly retarded" but people smarter than both of us disagree with you.
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Unless it's cloudy then you're fucked.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not if you have a "sun stone". The Vikings used them a few years before I was born. Yeah, I'm that old.
Leif Erikson I presume? When I read your message something in my mind whispered, "calcite" and whaddaya know, it was correct! Check out the science [wikipedia.org] behind it. P.S. when you landed on Erika (mis-named America) did you see any golden arches? I've always thought they were some natural feature, and people later decided to build restaurants under them.
Re:What the frack (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming it's cloudy, you're GPS systems just went down, all radio navigation aids are lost, and all your compasses were demagnetized, then, yes, I assume one could say they are fucked.
One solution to this problem is like what reboot246 says in a sister post, have a sun stone as part of the celestial navigation gear. Another is to sail into a best guess of a safe direction until one can see a point of reference, be it a celestial object or terrestrial one.
Celestial navigation is not supposed to solve all navigation problems. What it is supposed to do is reduce the reliance on GPS to the point that should it go down you don't have a navy full of ships that can't so much as steer towards a safe harbor.
Having talked with people that sailed at sea, both for pleasure and for the US Navy, every ship has a number of readily available means to navigate. GPS is typically the primary means. Second on the list is likely to be radio navigation of one type or another. Third is typically dead reckoning. If you know where you were, what direction you are heading, and at what speed, you can usually keep sailing with relative safety and ease until you can restore one or the other means of electronic navigation. Those knowledgeable of celestial navigation can go without the electronic navigation for much longer and still reach their destination as scheduled. If it's cloudy while you are without electronic navigation aids then, yes, you will most likely arrive behind schedule.
In war you may not have the luxury of reaching your destination late.
Re:What the frack (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an officer for the Royal Canadian Navy. I've spent time on the bridge of some of our American friends' warships and it's sometimes a white-knuckle experience. Sailing into northern waters away from large constellations of GPS satellites can easily bring your dilution of precision to the point where you could be almost anywhere, and yet many of my American friends didn't even know what the reading meant on their display. HDOP would be flashing red on the bridge and they would be all fat and happy sailing at full speed. ECPINS put a dot on the electronic chart as to where they were, so that meant that's where they are.
It was with puzzlement that I first learned that Americans didn't teach celestial navigation to its officers. It's not that celestial navigation by itself is really all that necessary, because yes, even without it, there are other methods. But the training of it produces officers that have a better understanding of when their machines are lying to them. It, and all the related skills you need to learn to make it work, gives more useful things in your toolbox to draw from. Because I will tell you from experience, it is not a matter of if a GPS will give you a wrong answer. It's a matter of when.
It's also, if you ask me, not a matter of if but when a shooting war finally breaks out. And if and when it does, you can guarantee that one of the first priorities for the enemy will be to deny NATO (one way or the other) the use of GPS.
Perhaps with a renewed focus on training techniques that don't rely on toys, the USN will stop having the most collision-dented ships in NATO.
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Someone mod the parent post up.
HDOP would be flashing red on the bridge and they would be all fat and happy sailing at full speed.
In the middle of the North Atlantic what is there to hit?
Perhaps with a renewed focus on training techniques that don't rely on toys, the USN will stop having the most collision-dented ships in NATO.
Oh, yeah, you can hit other ships in your flotilla.
At least you still consider us your "American friends".
Re:What the frack (Score:5, Funny)
In the middle of the North Atlantic what is there to hit?
That's exactly what the captain of the Titanic said!
Re:What the frack (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I wonder if this move is not so much about just loss of GPS but loss of a lot of our electronic infrastructure due to Electromagnetic Pulse, whether man made or from natural events on the Sun. I know of engineers in the US currently working with some of our electric power companies to make contingency plans for such an event. Should we expect any less of the Navy?
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Wow. Just... wow. Of all the things I wrote you focus on a typo I made in the first line. Did you even read the rest of the post?
Re: What the frack (Score:2)
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You're thinking of the cock's son?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Makes good sense (Score:2)
This isx utterly retarded. Pilots learn to use analog instruments, I'm pretty sure the navy has enough back ups. Just seriously, get in the sea
http://breakingdefense.com/201... [breakingdefense.com]
The last few generations have come to rely on technology. If the tech breaks, YOU are fucked. The boys and girls who understand physics, and have studied the ancient arts are a lot less fucked, so they might survive to fuck each other.
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No, I think that would be a bit higher on the scale. [youtube.com]
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You can get a sextant at Harbor Freight for $20, $10 on sale. [harborfreight.com] This is the Chinese military issue version.
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Being off by just 5 degrees can put you hundreds of miles off course. Also 2/3 rds of the fleet is near or around the Indian ocean. Try looking at a map and see why it would be bad.