It's a scene straight out of a Tom Clancy novel. An adversary, seeking to gain the upper hand, manages to blind GPS satellites in a first strike. As alert levels rise and military leaders attempt to assess the situation, ships at sea must somehow get an accurate fix of their position . . . without the use of modern technology.
The United States Navy recently recognized modern vulnerabilities by bringing back an old method for navigating at sea: the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has just resumed training officers in the lost art of celestial navigation. Although this training used to be standard in the U.S. Navy, the advent of GPS technology so simplified and improved the ability to find a ship's position at sea that the Navy ROTC ended celestial navigation training in 2000, and the U.S. Naval Academy phased it out as well in 2006.
But the U.S. Navy and the Department of Defense are taking cyber threats to technological infrastructure seriously. Commercial GPS jammers are now readily available on the internet. And while the U.S., China, the European Union, Russia, and India are all moving to assure they have their own exclusive GPS network in orbit, a deliberate attack may not even be necessary. A space debris chain reaction known as an ablation cascade could knock out our GPS capability, or a strong Earth-directed solar storm such as the 1859 Carrington super-flare event could do the job just as well.
mo
Navy Resumes Celestial Navigation Course - Sky & Telescope
The United States Navy recently recognized modern vulnerabilities by bringing back an old method for navigating at sea: the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has just resumed training officers in the lost art of celestial navigation. Although this training used to be standard in the U.S. Navy, the advent of GPS technology so simplified and improved the ability to find a ship's position at sea that the Navy ROTC ended celestial navigation training in 2000, and the U.S. Naval Academy phased it out as well in 2006.
But the U.S. Navy and the Department of Defense are taking cyber threats to technological infrastructure seriously. Commercial GPS jammers are now readily available on the internet. And while the U.S., China, the European Union, Russia, and India are all moving to assure they have their own exclusive GPS network in orbit, a deliberate attack may not even be necessary. A space debris chain reaction known as an ablation cascade could knock out our GPS capability, or a strong Earth-directed solar storm such as the 1859 Carrington super-flare event could do the job just as well.
mo
Navy Resumes Celestial Navigation Course - Sky & Telescope
