US Navy’s new unhackable GPS alternative.
Youngsters these days have no map reading skills. They rely on GPS to get where they are going, whether it is a satnav or more likely, their phone.
Admittedly they are very good at finding places using them, but going back to basics might prove a challenge for most of them.
Admittedly they are very good at finding places using them, but going back to basics might prove a challenge for most of them.
Today you can have databases for terrain and coastlines that don't change even after SIOP. Plus you have got the stars to navigate. Somewhere I read the USN is polishing the sextant skills of their young sailors again.
Salute!
What a change in just 50 years. Number one was incredible accuracy of our clocks.
The "longitude problem" was a bear. The lattitude easy peasy. So the navigators from the middle ages to nearly the 20th century had trouble knowing how far east or west they were. With the watch I wear now, those folks in 1500, 1600, 1700 would have no problem. And the reason our GPS we have in our cellphone is so great is we can deal with nanoseconds versus minutes!
I do not trust the satellite systems in war. But with the great INS systems we now have and super accurate clocks, I have a good feeling. Of course there are still doppler systems that are independent of radio and satellite systems.
Gums sends...
What a change in just 50 years. Number one was incredible accuracy of our clocks.
The "longitude problem" was a bear. The lattitude easy peasy. So the navigators from the middle ages to nearly the 20th century had trouble knowing how far east or west they were. With the watch I wear now, those folks in 1500, 1600, 1700 would have no problem. And the reason our GPS we have in our cellphone is so great is we can deal with nanoseconds versus minutes!
I do not trust the satellite systems in war. But with the great INS systems we now have and super accurate clocks, I have a good feeling. Of course there are still doppler systems that are independent of radio and satellite systems.
Gums sends...
According to the USNI article, the writer states the Russians accept as a given space based Satellite systems shall be rendered inoperative and have plans to use alternative means to replace the space based systems.
One such system was identified as being the "Sprut-N1".
They also have their own version of LORAN called "Chayka" that has three coverage zones in operation with a focus on the far North to facilitate their High Arctic Operations.
https://rntfnd.org/2019/03/01/report...s-inside-gnss/
One such system was identified as being the "Sprut-N1".
They also have their own version of LORAN called "Chayka" that has three coverage zones in operation with a focus on the far North to facilitate their High Arctic Operations.
https://rntfnd.org/2019/03/01/report...s-inside-gnss/
Salute!
I happen to agree with the folks that rule out satellite systems after one hour of a big conflict. I can also imagine a few scenarios where both contestants might want to retain the sats, maybe in degraded modes to deny the accuracy of JDAM bombs, but good enuf for navigation within a half mile or so.
I do not like depending upon the powerful LORAN systems, as their base stations could be easily targeted and destroyed.
I flew with a cosmic nav system in one of my previous lives, and as good as the doppler component was, it had some problems when over water due to ocean currents. For short flights, no problem for nav, but nothing like the current GPS bombs for putting one down in the warlord's tent. I did work with the fellows developing the original JDAM here at Eglin back in early 90's. The test bombs averaged about 4 and half meters using garage breadboard ciruits and such!
Doppler systems are great, but also radiate. So kiss off LO tactics withjout super planning and such, and zero bomb guidance like JDAM.
As an experieced war planner that has flown two extremely advanced avionics systems ( one in combat), a future air force must continue to develop and employ self-contained systems for nav. The super precision sat bombs and missiles will likely not be there for the "big" show, IMHO.
.
So practice DR nav and manual bombing. However, and a big one.... the inertial bombing computers are great for the very short time frames they are used to generate velocities and attitudes. A few knots of drift are not a problem during a weapon time of flight. Further, the new algorithms and filters can greatly improve the performance of navigation inertial systems that are not like the ones we had 50 years ago with the "stable table" and complicated gyro platform with its accelerometers.
Good discussion here, but I still think the hackers will be a problem for the satellite folks, and then there's the actual physical and electronic attacks.
Gums sends...
I happen to agree with the folks that rule out satellite systems after one hour of a big conflict. I can also imagine a few scenarios where both contestants might want to retain the sats, maybe in degraded modes to deny the accuracy of JDAM bombs, but good enuf for navigation within a half mile or so.
I do not like depending upon the powerful LORAN systems, as their base stations could be easily targeted and destroyed.
I flew with a cosmic nav system in one of my previous lives, and as good as the doppler component was, it had some problems when over water due to ocean currents. For short flights, no problem for nav, but nothing like the current GPS bombs for putting one down in the warlord's tent. I did work with the fellows developing the original JDAM here at Eglin back in early 90's. The test bombs averaged about 4 and half meters using garage breadboard ciruits and such!
Doppler systems are great, but also radiate. So kiss off LO tactics withjout super planning and such, and zero bomb guidance like JDAM.
As an experieced war planner that has flown two extremely advanced avionics systems ( one in combat), a future air force must continue to develop and employ self-contained systems for nav. The super precision sat bombs and missiles will likely not be there for the "big" show, IMHO.
.
So practice DR nav and manual bombing. However, and a big one.... the inertial bombing computers are great for the very short time frames they are used to generate velocities and attitudes. A few knots of drift are not a problem during a weapon time of flight. Further, the new algorithms and filters can greatly improve the performance of navigation inertial systems that are not like the ones we had 50 years ago with the "stable table" and complicated gyro platform with its accelerometers.
Good discussion here, but I still think the hackers will be a problem for the satellite folks, and then there's the actual physical and electronic attacks.
Gums sends...
Gums et al , may I commend to you ' Longtitude ' by Dava Sobel . ISBN 1-85702-502-4 . USA publisher Walker Pub. Co. UK one is Fourth Est. Ltd.
Dedicated to her mum .. ' A four star navigator who can sail by the heavens , but always drives by way of Canarsie ' .
Before 'pooters , I always meant to write her ; to let her know we navigated over the pond using INS ' Triple Mix ' . [ which relied on a microchip clock , I think ] but also ' drove by way of Canarsie ' to get onto Rwy 13 L/R at JFK .
Fascinating thread , please keep tales coming .
rgds condor .
Dedicated to her mum .. ' A four star navigator who can sail by the heavens , but always drives by way of Canarsie ' .
Before 'pooters , I always meant to write her ; to let her know we navigated over the pond using INS ' Triple Mix ' . [ which relied on a microchip clock , I think ] but also ' drove by way of Canarsie ' to get onto Rwy 13 L/R at JFK .
Fascinating thread , please keep tales coming .
rgds condor .
I see that the mini-helicopter on Mars uses a blend of gyro inertial reference, corrected by terrain scanning to allow for gyro drift rates...
Unfortunately there was a software glitch which caused the terrain scans to be processed out of synch with the inertial system, causing violent oscillation until the terrain scan was disabled. The helicopter landed OK, but had used a lot of uneccessary power due to the nav errors.
TERCOM has moved on a long way since it first came into existence, as have optical sensors and system memory. With occasional rad alt updates, TERCOM aided INS looks like a good potential on board system?
Unfortunately there was a software glitch which caused the terrain scans to be processed out of synch with the inertial system, causing violent oscillation until the terrain scan was disabled. The helicopter landed OK, but had used a lot of uneccessary power due to the nav errors.
TERCOM has moved on a long way since it first came into existence, as have optical sensors and system memory. With occasional rad alt updates, TERCOM aided INS looks like a good potential on board system?
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I was reading an article the other night on the downing of Yamamoto re accurate navigation..
It was Palm Sunday, April 18, 1943. But since there were no religious holidays on Guadalcanal, we took off at 7:15 am, joined in formation, and left the island at 7:30 am, just two hours and five minutes before the planned interception. It was an uneventful flight but a hot one, at from 10 to 50 feet above the water all the way. Some of the pilots counted sharks. One counted pieces of driftwood. I don’t remember doing anything but sweating. Mitchell said he may have dozed off on a couple of occasions but received a light tap from “The Man Upstairs” to keep him awake.
Mitchell kept us on course flying the five legs by compass, time, and airspeed only. As we turned into the coast of Bougainville and started to gain altitude, after more than two hours of complete radio silence, 1st Lt. Douglas S. Canning––Old Eagle Eyes–– uttered a subdued “Bogeys! Eleven o’clock, high!” It was 9:35 am. The admiral was precisely on schedule, and so were we. It was almost as if the affair had been prearranged with the mutual consent of friend and foe. Two Betty bombers were at 4,000 feet with six Zeros at about 1,500 feet higher, above and just behind the bombers in a “V” formation of three planes on each side of the bombers.
Mitchell kept us on course flying the five legs by compass, time, and airspeed only. As we turned into the coast of Bougainville and started to gain altitude, after more than two hours of complete radio silence, 1st Lt. Douglas S. Canning––Old Eagle Eyes–– uttered a subdued “Bogeys! Eleven o’clock, high!” It was 9:35 am. The admiral was precisely on schedule, and so were we. It was almost as if the affair had been prearranged with the mutual consent of friend and foe. Two Betty bombers were at 4,000 feet with six Zeros at about 1,500 feet higher, above and just behind the bombers in a “V” formation of three planes on each side of the bombers.
As the Mod's have to read all linked material....I shall only describe an Article I found very interesting about the early days of aerial navigation over long distances or over water by Lindberg, Weems, and others.
I recall reading with great. interest about the proving of Air Mail Routes and other aviation ventures like Immperial Airways and Pan Am Airways.
Lindberg used a very simple Dead Reckoning System to navigate and made landfall within a few miles of his intended point of arrival....after about 30 hours of flight with no sleep and no auto-pilot of any kind.
His accuracy was amazing...but what helped was a unique situation over the North Atlantic where the Winds worked to create a near zero drift situation.
Lindberg later got lost on a night flight over th waters south of Florida and nearly became a statistic common to early aviators....running out of fuel and landing in the water.
The first attempt to fly to Hawaii from California by the US Navy ended that way and the Sea Plane crew finished the. trip by sailing the airplane several hundred miles to the islands....which took them ten days.
The article can be found in the February 2013 Edition of the Air and Space Magazine under the title "In the 1920's Only One Man Held The Key to Aerial Navigation" and is an interesting account of how US Naval Aviation was instrrumental in improving Aeronautical Navigation and the role that a Naval Officer named Weems played in that.
I recall reading with great. interest about the proving of Air Mail Routes and other aviation ventures like Immperial Airways and Pan Am Airways.
Lindberg used a very simple Dead Reckoning System to navigate and made landfall within a few miles of his intended point of arrival....after about 30 hours of flight with no sleep and no auto-pilot of any kind.
His accuracy was amazing...but what helped was a unique situation over the North Atlantic where the Winds worked to create a near zero drift situation.
Lindberg later got lost on a night flight over th waters south of Florida and nearly became a statistic common to early aviators....running out of fuel and landing in the water.
The first attempt to fly to Hawaii from California by the US Navy ended that way and the Sea Plane crew finished the. trip by sailing the airplane several hundred miles to the islands....which took them ten days.
The article can be found in the February 2013 Edition of the Air and Space Magazine under the title "In the 1920's Only One Man Held The Key to Aerial Navigation" and is an interesting account of how US Naval Aviation was instrrumental in improving Aeronautical Navigation and the role that a Naval Officer named Weems played in that.
Salute!
Great stuff so far.
I thot TERCOM was a winner, and it, or its brother, seemed to do well certain applications like cruise missiles. I was flying the SLUF at the time and on one flight from Hicham to Guam I did not fully align the INS and flew for about 11 or 12 hours in the "doppler air mass mode" using predicted wind, the doppler and the air data computer for TAS. After all that time I was between 5 and 10 miles off, as the doppler was detecting ocean currents. Wasn't worried about getting lost as was with 5 other SLUF's and a KC-135 tanker, heh heh. Trust me, Amelia would have loved that!
Problem with TERCOM is it emits. True, the enema has to have a reciever underneath the missile flight path to detect it, but the less you emit the better.
If you can "see" a star in daylight, as this new system claims, we have a great solution to the "longitude" problem due to our cosmic, new clocks. Still have clouds and storms, but those stars can't be jammed and won't be put out of action at the initial strikes. BTW, my last job with Draper Lab was verifying performance of the Trident missile guidance system by flying it in an F-18 - yank the thing from a missile aboard the sub, fly it in a pod on the Hornet and gather/analyze data. It had a cosmic inertial, but just before launch they inserted the position of a star ( or two). After the stage quit and the "bus" floated free, the inertial shells about the gimballed sections rotated until a telescope could acquire the star. It then corrected the trajectory and the result was that a sub-launched missile from 4,000 n.m. away could put a nuke inside a soccer field. Gotta tellya, those guys at Draper were and still are very good.
Gums sends...
Great stuff so far.
I thot TERCOM was a winner, and it, or its brother, seemed to do well certain applications like cruise missiles. I was flying the SLUF at the time and on one flight from Hicham to Guam I did not fully align the INS and flew for about 11 or 12 hours in the "doppler air mass mode" using predicted wind, the doppler and the air data computer for TAS. After all that time I was between 5 and 10 miles off, as the doppler was detecting ocean currents. Wasn't worried about getting lost as was with 5 other SLUF's and a KC-135 tanker, heh heh. Trust me, Amelia would have loved that!
Problem with TERCOM is it emits. True, the enema has to have a reciever underneath the missile flight path to detect it, but the less you emit the better.
If you can "see" a star in daylight, as this new system claims, we have a great solution to the "longitude" problem due to our cosmic, new clocks. Still have clouds and storms, but those stars can't be jammed and won't be put out of action at the initial strikes. BTW, my last job with Draper Lab was verifying performance of the Trident missile guidance system by flying it in an F-18 - yank the thing from a missile aboard the sub, fly it in a pod on the Hornet and gather/analyze data. It had a cosmic inertial, but just before launch they inserted the position of a star ( or two). After the stage quit and the "bus" floated free, the inertial shells about the gimballed sections rotated until a telescope could acquire the star. It then corrected the trajectory and the result was that a sub-launched missile from 4,000 n.m. away could put a nuke inside a soccer field. Gotta tellya, those guys at Draper were and still are very good.
Gums sends...
Gums , if you don't mind thread drift , not INS gyro drift ...
My ancesters were beach launching fisher folk on the North Norfolk coast . They reckoned that a compass worked really well whilst you were in sight of land ...Out of sight , it was useless.
By observation on a few years of Pond crossing . Westbound if setting initial course correctly from a VOR or waypoint ..to keep nearish to nav. flt plan ..just turn Left about 5 degrees every hour . Landfall won't be a million nm out .
Eastbound , no idea .. it was normally dark .
Please keep the tales coming , I'm learning a lot . But some is going straight overhead .
rgds condor .
My ancesters were beach launching fisher folk on the North Norfolk coast . They reckoned that a compass worked really well whilst you were in sight of land ...Out of sight , it was useless.
By observation on a few years of Pond crossing . Westbound if setting initial course correctly from a VOR or waypoint ..to keep nearish to nav. flt plan ..just turn Left about 5 degrees every hour . Landfall won't be a million nm out .
Eastbound , no idea .. it was normally dark .
Please keep the tales coming , I'm learning a lot . But some is going straight overhead .
rgds condor .
Salute!
Problem with the thousand year old compasses was they were not stabilized like we started to get in the 1920 and thirties. I do not unnerstan the offshore war stories, as the ones in my boats and others worked great, but unless stabilized, the ring floated about left and right and such... basic whiskey compass.
I only had one gyro compass failure in 4,000 hours, and had to use the whiskey compass. After violating some sensitive areas north of Nellis I caved in and asked for a gyro out procedure to reach my destination in California... maybe 30 minutes away. You know, "turn left, stop turn". "turn right, stop turn".
The biggie today is we have plenty of nav programs already in our watches and iPhones. With good algorithms and Kalman filters plus newer ones, you can calibrate your watch with position updates, so can correct for drift.
I would not bet my future on GPS or LORAN. I like the new sensors and nav programs that will still work when many navaids are toast.
Gums sends...
Problem with the thousand year old compasses was they were not stabilized like we started to get in the 1920 and thirties. I do not unnerstan the offshore war stories, as the ones in my boats and others worked great, but unless stabilized, the ring floated about left and right and such... basic whiskey compass.
I only had one gyro compass failure in 4,000 hours, and had to use the whiskey compass. After violating some sensitive areas north of Nellis I caved in and asked for a gyro out procedure to reach my destination in California... maybe 30 minutes away. You know, "turn left, stop turn". "turn right, stop turn".
The biggie today is we have plenty of nav programs already in our watches and iPhones. With good algorithms and Kalman filters plus newer ones, you can calibrate your watch with position updates, so can correct for drift.
I would not bet my future on GPS or LORAN. I like the new sensors and nav programs that will still work when many navaids are toast.
Gums sends...
