Imaginar la vida sin GPS, para los navegantes y artilleros mas viejos no es extraño , pero para los más jóvenes, es difícil. Pensemos que por cualquier razón el GPS (o cualquier GNSS que usemos ) es repentinamente inasequible. En la US NAVY los cursos de navegación astronómica fueron retirados del plan de estudios en la Academia Naval de los EE.UU. a finales de 1990, por considerarlos anticuados . Ahora , nuevamente se reconoce la importancia de proporcionar a los futuros oficiales de la Armada la capacidad de encontrar su posición en el mar en caso de que el GPS no está disponible por guerra electrónica , interferencia o piratería. Después de todo, un antiguo sextante no puede ser interferido.
Imagine life without GPS. For those of us old enough, that might not be hard to do. For younger people, it’s almost unimaginable. Now imagine that GPS — for whatever reason — is suddenly unavailable. What if you’re not on land, where printed maps are filled with landmarks? What else do you rely on?
Before GPS, early explorers navigated by the stars using celestial navigation and a sextant, the same basic techniques that guided ancient Polynesians in the open Pacific and Magellan around the world (the first sextant device was invented in 1757 by John Bird).
As Don Jewell describes in his gripping Defense PNT newsletter column “Lost Over the Pacific,” a massive electrical failure on his aircraft caused the crew to rely on his skills navigating with a sextant. “The crew regarded me with some skepticism as they realized I intended to use an old-fashioned sextant to determine the speed and heading and then navigate a multi-hundred-million-dollar modern reconnaissance aircraft,” he recalls.
Despite its usefulness when things go sideways, celestial navigation was pulled from the curriculum at the U.S. Naval Academy in the late 1990s, considered “outdated.” The course time was replaced with GPS and electronic navigation. Among the fleet, the Navy ended training in celestial navigation in 2006. A similar course at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy ended 10 years ago, but some instruction remains in theories of celestial navigation, and cadets use a sextant aboard the tall ship Eagle.
Now, however, what’s old is new again. The Naval Academy has brought back celestial navigation courses, recognizing the importance of giving future naval officers the ability to find their position out at sea in case GPS is unavailable through jamming or hacking.
After all, an old-fashioned sextant can’t be hacked.
Fuente: http://gpsworld.com
