NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
USNA Sight Reduction?
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2015 Oct 19, 22:23 +0000
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2015 Oct 19, 22:23 +0000
Okay, the US Naval Academy is resuming teaching of celestial navigation. But has anyone heard what methodology they will teach for sight REDUCTION??
Are they going totally non-electronic by teaching HO229 or HO249 (or maybe even NASR)? Or will they allow the use of calculators (or a fine computer app, like list member Stan Klein's Celestial Tools)?
I guess another way of asking my question is how far back in time are they going? What technologies do they consider "unacceptable" in whatever scenario has caused them to once again teach celestial??
Even more important, what is the scenario? The bad guys knock out all the GPS satellites? Okay, there are other GNSS systems, some owned by countries that logically might be the "bad guys" I suspect they wouldn't shoot down or jam their own systems
Or maybe jamming GPS. I rather strongly suspect that the US has (and has had for a long time) drones that will home in on and destroy a jammer.
Etc, etc, etc. Is there truly a credible scenario, or is the Naval Academy responding to traditionalists but justifying the move by citing some vague and unspecified threat to GPS and friends?