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From: Lu Abel (no email)
Date: Wed Apr 05 2006 - 12:18:10 EDT
Andrew Corl wrote:
> In an interesting to note the dependence on GPS, during the invasion of Iraq
> a company commander apparently did not program or know how to use his
> military GPS unit. So his company wandered into a village filled with what
> ever the civilian militia and government terrorists Saddam had created.
> They ended up in a gun battle, several of his men and women got killed and
> several more got taken prisoner. Now I am not saying that as a military
> commander you should whip out your sextant and take a sun sight to try to
> figure out where he is, but thank God the U.S. Marines still teach basic
> land navigation with a map and a compass.
This is blaming a failure to know how to use a technology on the
technology! If one took a wrong turn with a truck and got ambushed,
would one blame the truck?
It's not a matter of either-or, it's a matter of using the most
appropriate technique. I sure as hell wouldn't be plotting L/Lo off my
GPS in the middle of a city. On the other hand, it's pretty hard to
navigate with a map and compass in the middle of a featureless desert.
Let's not forget that during the first Iraq war there was a shortage (in
the US, at least) of GPS receivers because soldiers in Iraq were begging
their fathers and mothers to buy a GPS and send it to them (the US
military, as is so often the case, had only a few receivers because they
were being built to military specifications).
I've owned a boat for 30+ years. I've used one form or another of
electronic navigation on it for 20+, so I thought I was pretty familiar
with techniques for electronic navigation. The US Power Squadrons
recently updated their coastal navigation courses to presume that people
carry GPS receivers on their boats and not sextants. I took these
courses and learned a LOT. (Fastest way to plot your location on a
chart? Forget L/Lo -- put the center of the compass rose in as a
waypoint and ask for bearing and distance from the waypoint!). So, just
like navigating with a sextant, *good* navigation with a GPS takes
learning and practice.
That, to me, is a central problem with GPS (or, more correctly, GPS
usage). One had to *learn* traditional navigation, whether coastal or
offshore. GPS gives one the misimpression that one can simply turn on
the power switch and not have to learn how to use the box. Not too
much different than owning a sail boat vs a power boat. Sail boats have
a learning curve. Power boats can give the impression that one is
simply dealing with a waterborne version of the family car. I have on
more than one occasion been asked for a compass course to get to a
harbor a dozen or more miles distant by a power-boater who was
navigating with a road map(!) and had gotten lost! (BTW, I'm not trying
to start a rag- vs stink-boat war, just to point out that's it easier
for an inexperienced person to get into trouble with a powerboat.)
Lu Abel
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