Navy Resumes Celestial Navigation Course
Remeber the issue with the US Navy boats and the Iranians? This was why they couldn't figure out where to go, and the Navy is just caging the reason as "increased threats" They had stopped teaching a basic nautical skill, and found out "gee we really do need to be able to sail without technology when the bad guys screw us". Proof old skills are not always well replaced by new gizmos.
I was so proud that my three shots with the sextant were well-clustered, and were tight, and verified that we were off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean.
The problem was that we were on a cruise in the Caribbean. But at least my shots were tight!
I gained much humility that night.
At sea though yiou need Polaris. The Southern Celestial point and Orions's Belt. the rest is done with your fingers or a home made sextant. for latitude. The leading star of the belt is always over the equator. Latitude is a function of distance Longitude a function of time. for that you need two watches. One set to Greenwich and one to local apparent noon. the difference in time translates to the distance from GMT. .
These days? You are hard pressed to find a deck hand that can make decent splice.
It's about time that someone finally engaged their mind!
I never bothered. I kept it basic. Even my wristwatch was a wind-up analog. "Never let the plane take you any place your mind has not gone five minutes earlier." When speaking about documentation to software developers, I put up a slide of Sporty's Pilot Shop. They sell 153 tools for flight planning. If programmers were killed by their bugs, they would be more careful.
I do not know how the Federal army trains, but in the Texas State Guard, you have to pass land navigation without GPS. In addition to basic training, we have challenges that earn awards. Again, GPS is not allowed. One of those is called the "Spur Walk" for instance, because you "earn your spurs." Of course, it is not that anyone actually rides horses, but, come to think of it…
On the note, the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in 2013 occurred during VFR descent. Their pilots are trained from day one for instruments at academies. Private aviation is not big in China. So, they never learned to fly a plane, except on the instruments. When I worked at Carl Zeiss another sales engineer was working on his private pilot's certificate, also. Overhearing us talk, one of the Germans said that it is easier to get a pilot's license in America than a driver's license in Germany.
I took a couple of lessons in 1984-1985 but did not get serious until 1993, when I wanted to write a newspaper article about our local airport. Pilots avoid reporters like they avoid doctors. So, I started taking lessons to get to know people. Once I got charts, no matter where I drove or worked, I found a small airport and met their instructors. I probably had 20 instructors, old, young, airline pilots laid off ... Grass strips, Burke Lakefront in Cleveland, lots of county airports, and one close enough to KSC that we could see the shuttle landing strip when we were at altitude. In addition to a slew of Cessnas, I also had lessons in a Boeing biplane, a Schleicher sailplane, some kind of ultralight, and a Piper Tomahawk. I soloed in a Cessna, of course. I had 100 hours, 50 solo when 9/11 happened. The Dot Com Meltdown, and all that, work got hard to find and flying is an expensive hobby, so I never completed the private.
Something they always stressed in the bad old cold war days.
(1) While a president with first hand knowledge of the Navy -- such as FDR, JFK, Nixon, Johnson, and Carter -- can advocate for much, everything starts in the House of Representatives.
(2) Presidents have advisors for a reason. Eisenhower was Army, of course, and Reagan was a civilian. Do you claim that the Navy suffered during their administrations?
(3) If you read the website of the Naval Institute http://www.usni.org, you will find an interesting avenue for unofficial opinions and recommendations, observations, and evaluations, mostly critical - supportive, but critical in the best sense. It is why military academies and schools train leaders by studying defeats as well as victories.
(4) The mission of the Navy is growing evermore complex. Indeed, it never got more simple, from sailing to steam, ironclads to submarines. The first battles that aircraft carriers fought were against admirals who refused to admit that the battleship had been surpassed as the flagship of the fleet. Now, the Navy has to consider riverine and riparian operations. DARPA claims to be ready to launch a continuously operating robot ship. http://www.darpa.mil/program/anti-sub...
(5) China in the China Sea (go figure…) or Iran in the Persian Gulf, sea power will not go away soon; and may never evaporate no matter how far from Earth our "navies" boldly go. But ultimately, the battle goes to whoever controls the high ground. Saddam Hussein had the fifth largest army in the world, but the zeroeth largest satellite reconnaissance.
As to the every growing technology in the Navy, remember, should we be hit with electromagnetic disaster, those men better be trained in basics or they will find themselves lost at sea. It all comes down to the man and his brain, working with the basics when the going gets tough. My dad and uncle were Navy men, and they learned that lesson well. They also learned the importance of the presence of sea power, something our prez seems to conveniently ignore if he has been advised of it.
We agree that learning celestial navigation is an important skill.
Cruz scares me because his wife has become involved, meeting with lawyers in N.Y. She is pals with the world bank folks and was for the North American Union. Either Cruz is lying about his stand, or he is not strongly against her stand. Trump at least knows business and is outspoken. He has some catch up to do in some areas, but look what we have now, a guy who only knows Marxism! He says he is a Constitutional lawyer, except he lost his law license, and did not know how many states in the US when he was first elected! Whoever gets in will answer to the CFR, who vetoed Reagan's plans to kill the Dept. of Ed. , who had control of both one world Bushes, and have their fingers in everything. I shudder to think what an brokered convention would bring, but it would be a one worlder. They have got their last donation from us!
No wonder people are angry. Trump has it right, at least he is anti establishment and will at least try to break up some of the entrenched nonsense. I think he has pretty good business judgment, and once sitting down to make decisions he will calmly concentrate on what will work. He has my vote. The more the establishment trashes him, the more I want him (plain and simple). He has freed us from political correctness (at least me). I say whats on my mind now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_...
We knew all about it, down to the probable causes of the incident. Their Gen1 nukes were badly designed, rushed into service, and they had no real training programs in place. The normal system was for conscripts to replace the crew 50% at a time, you trained your replacement, so the knowledge base decreased over time. K19 was such a horrid design, that they had a lot shorter span The untrained officer had been trained by his predecessor, so overall he did pretty good for what he knew.
Had a conversation with a retired Navy man in the 90s. He explained that in a time of war the enemy would make GPS satellites a target. A functioning Navy would require a back up.
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/emp-...
http://www.survivalnewsonline.com/ind...
http://www.patriotheadquarters.com/2-...
http://jalopnik.com/5937778/how-to-pr...
There is a diffence between a solar flare and a nuke burst, so there are some differnt protection strategies. I do know that just having something powered down and disconnected will add a lot of security as the grid will not surge through the line into it, also UPS and surge protectors will help for solar/lightning EMP.
like hostile invaders. . a nation which just struck a deal
with us should not have behaved like that. -- j
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.
to put it nicely.
Live and learn, kids.
And that's as true in real life as the author of that screenplay suggested it might be in a fictive universe.
In fact, spurious GPS figures prominently in a plot by a modern-day William Randolph Hearst to start a major superpower war just to generate headlines. To defeat him, two secret agents, one from each side, must reason together and figure out what's really going on--and how their true enemy is playing their respective superior officers for fools.
And no one has denied, or can deny, that GPS is inherently vulnerable to such spoofing. But you can't fool the guy with a good pair of eyes, a sextant, and the skill to use them.
They used to say that "if it floats it can sink". I think that applies to modern electronic systems too- especially with hackers on the loose.
If programming were perfect and they weren't constantly trying to accommodate new features, there wouldn't be constant patches revisions.
The point I am suggesting is that it's important for all of us to have backups if our fancy modern day systems fail- especially when the modern day systems are so controlled by collectivistd
http://www.crn.com/news/security/2165...
http://survivallife.com/5-weaknesses-...
http://phys.org/news/2013-06-cybersec...
I certainly think the skill should be taught as a backup, but it will not solve this problem you cite and it cannot those new gizmos.
Emergency Navigation by Jim Burch of Starpath Navigation in Seattle WA which should be titled Traditional navigation contains everything a sailor would need. The rest are just add ons and if you can't navigate in the wood or mountains without GPS nor drive a car without GPS you have no business hiking nor driving. Stupid is as stupid does and if your life is that worth less then die.