The Air Force May Ditch GPS for Earth's Magnetic Field

"One idea that seemingly holds a lot of promise: magnetic anomaly navigation techniques, or MAGNAV."

Just stumbled into this article. Found it interesting.

I don't want to ditch my GTN750

Your thoughts?
 

Cheers.

Edited August 5, 20205 yr by RamonB

I saw the headline and wondered if it was from The Onion. 😄 

I suspect inertial navigation systems will be in use if the GPS goes down.  They were already in use before the GPS came up, and they are probably more accurate then the technology described in that article.  Especially if you are equipped with three of them... if one gives a reading far off from the other two you discard it and turn that INS off.

Hook

Quote

The Pentagon’s reliance on GPS has made its disruption or destruction the number one priority by adversaries in wartime.

Oh, you think??  

I often wonder about the chaos caused if and when someone flicks the off switch to GPS satellites, although there are other nav satellites in orbit which aren't American. (GLONASS etc.)

There's a freeware sextant add-on for flightsims if one wants to practice a little.

I guess we'll have to go back to buying paper maps for car travel 🍻

Isn't the Earth's mag field subject to changes - MAGVAR? which would mean that updates would be required?

Airliners did ok on INS for quite some time didn't they? Even at Mach 2 

GPS is quite often disrupted (deliberately) over the North Sea for the purposes of military exercises, (and I think to annoy Tu95 pilots too). You see NOTAMS about it from time to time telling you to be ready to use other navigational techniques including VORs, ded reckoning etc.

[OT]

"Dead reckoning: you reckon correctly, or you're dead."

Taking out satellites would be an early move in a future war, therefore yes you can't depend on the high tech for too long. It maybe low tech but it is good tech 😎

Bring back LORAN!

In the sixty`s we used the sun compass on the top of the vehicle in the Sahara, we did not have GPS back then.

"With the sextant he made obeisance to the sun-god, he consulted ancient tomes and tables of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded like Indexerrorparallaxrefraction, made cabalistic signs on paper, added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the Grail – I mean, the Chart – he placed his finger on a certain space conspicuous for its blankness and said, “Here we are.” When we looked at the blank space and asked, “And where is that?” he answered in the cipher-code of the higher priesthood, “31 -15 – 47 north, 133 – 5 – 30 west.” And we said, “Oh,” and felt mighty small."

Jack London

Not politically correct here.

 

Our company operated two Learjets in the 1980's, for long range navigation one was equipped with Loran C and the other using a Collins LRN-85 VLF Omega unit. Both units were certified for IFR enroute operation with 2NM accuracy. They worked very well and you would transition to VOR/DME  or yes, NDB  ground based sources as required in the terminal environment. The aviation world got along just fine using paper charts, basic nav systems and your own situational awareness. I can't imagine the panic today if GPS systems so widely in use in everyday life were to suddenly be disabled. I have played around with the Davis plastic training sextant for fun and it takes practice but makes one admire the skills of a qualified navigator. 

I think now a days we could have automatic sextant just like one on space probs.

It would be quite accurate with atomic clock and when flying above the cloud.

 

BTW there is one problem with celestial navigation in FS (at lest P3D), without proper simulation on atmosphere extinction and the limitation of a monitor, it's quite hard to tell the difference between magnitudes, it's even harder to find the constellation in FS than in the real word as there are so many 4+ stars too visable in the virtual sky.

3 hours ago, C2615 said:

I think now a days we could have automatic sextant just like one on space probs.

You could probably get a smart phone app to do that, not as accurate though

8 hours ago, fppilot said:

Not politically correct here.

 

What's not politically correct?

11 hours ago, C2615 said:

I think now a days we could have automatic sextant just like one on space probs.

I think SR-71 had one:

https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics-nas-14v2-astroinertial-navigation-system

 

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by Murmur