Is old school navigation better than modern technology?

SSgt Alex Robinson we have become too reliant on technology, which while is convenient, is also fallible.

All navigation should be taught and practiced the old fashioned way along with the technology route. Technology fails, batteries die, there are these things called EMP weapons and satellites can be knocked out of the air. You better know both or you could very quickly know nothing.

Better? No. Invulnerable to outside attack? Absolutely. The military needs to spend more time training to fight in scenarios where all the fancy gadgets are gone.

May not be better, but it doesnt need a battery

To much dependence on technology is never a good thing. I think of all those ships stacked out in the Gulf waiting for the Houston Ship Channel to reopen after Hurricane Ike. Most of which had to deal with the storm at sea. How much damage did they suffer? How many antennas did they loose? How much seat of the pants navigation had to be relearned?

My big fear is the computer charting system. What happens when you're heading up the channel, and your computer crashes? You can't use the paper charts, because even if you have them, they aren't updated. So what do you navigate by?

An anecdote - when I was on Shenandoah AD44, we had the 56H repeaters, which had the automated CPA calculator. The JOOD would calculate CPA by "stacking dots". One day the system went down, so all we had was the Feruno. I told the Quartermaster of the Watch to get me a grease pencil and a popsicle stick, and I did scope-head plotting to help out. I was the Senior Watch Officer on the ship, and while a qualified SWO, I had not gone to SWOS. A LT (who did go to SWOS) asked me why I was writing on the radar. I could not believe that this officer didn't know about scope-head plotting.

Bottom line, when watchstanders are totally dependent on tech, and the tech crashes, where are you? (Literally - pun INTENDED).

SSgt Alex Robinson Wait, what? The Navy stopped teaching this? Anyone that goes to sea on a vessel without at least 2 or 3 people who can operate a sextant accurately is a fool. WHat the hell? Has the Navy removed itself too far from battle damage?

What the hell took them so long? When I was in back in the late '70s, I said that modernization is fine, but don't throw away the old methods just because they're old. GPS was starting to be extolled. Solar flare blows out those satellites, what do you have left? Stars.

Having a good sense of direction is always a useful skill as technology is not always reliable SSgt Alex Robinson :-)
I have amazed my wife sometimes by applying what I learned as an Infantryman and taught many others to do - use the sun, stars and terrain forms such as mountains an drivers to help you navigate with or without a map.

The problem is that we discard the manual operations for automated ones, but then forget the muscle memory of the original task.