US Coast Guard Intends To Kill LORAN-C

adaviel writes "LORAN (Long Range Aids to Navigation) is an electronic navigation system using low-frequency radio, used by many boaters (including me) before GPS. It has an approximately 200m accuracy and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war. The US Coast Guard, part of the Department of Homeland Security, intends to turn it off starting February 8." This is in spite of $160M spent on modernizing LORAN stations over the past 10 years.

Comments

I am the Loran

[hguorbray]

and I speak for the Cs -I mean Seas

-I'm just sayin'

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 doctor seuss?

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. With LORAN being shut down and the US government desperate for quick cash, there may finally be some surplus cesium-beam standards for sale on eBay that aren't completely dead.

Re:I am the Loran

[MichaelSmith]

and I speak for the Cs -I mean Seas

-I'm just sayin'

Are you going to pick yourself up by your pants and fly through a gap in the clouds?

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it seem stupid to anyone else to disable all of the lower-tec nav aids? What if some crazy decides to use anti-sat missiles and take all of the GPS satellites out or as in COD MW2 detonates a nuke in space to disable all communications?? I guess we can just go back to using sextants if that happens...

Re:I am the Loran

[Gerzel]

A "nuke in space" wouldn't' do that much. Space is big and already filled with a wide range of radiation. The flash from a single nuke wouldn't blind too many sats for that long, and while it could certainly take out a satilite it wouldn't be able to take out many at once.

Re:I am the Loran

[jcr]

Does it seem stupid to anyone else to disable all of the lower-tec nav aids?

No, it seems stupid to spend millions of dollars on a service that very few people are using anymore.

I guess we can just go back to using sextants if that happens...

Anyone who sails out of sight of land without knowing how to use a sextant is a damned fool.

-jcr

Re:I am the Loran

[plover]

The only people with anti-sat missiles are the same people who are operating the GPS satellites (the USAF); and the Chinese. (I suppose we can presume the Russians or Japanese could come up with something if they needed to, also.) And in both cases, the anti-sat missiles demonstrated were able to strike low earth orbit targets, in the range of a few hundred kilometers in altitude. GPS satellites are in medium earth orbits, which at 20,000km are considerably further away than any anti-sat missile ever tested has struck. Consider that the highest private rocket ever flown hasn't even reached orbit yet.

Detonating a nuke in space to disrupt communication is a video game plot device, not an actual strategy. It could theoretically disrupt or destroy nearby earthbound electronic chips, (taking out both GPS and LORAN-C receivers at the same time,) but at those distances even a big nuke would deliver little more energy to the satellites than a flashbulb. The birds themselves are separated from each other by distances of over 30,000 km, so even if your nuke got close enough to damage one it's safely distant from all of the others.

Space is really, really big. Mind-bogglingly big. These satellites are very, very safe right where they are. Not even James Bond could take out enough of them to be disruptive, but I'd suggest keeping a close eye on Chuck Norris.

Re:I am the Loran

[Calinous]

The best hope of hitting this kind of targets would be lasers. However, I think only USA has lasers that maybe approach the level of power and accuracy needed to hit a target floating very fast at several thousand kilometers "up there"

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

wasn't there an incident with china testing lasers some years ago?

Re:I am the Loran

[vtcodger]

You'd be astonished how badly sextants work in fog or in a rainstorm.

In September 1923 in pre-Loran days, the US Navy ran seven destroyers onto the rocks at Honda Point in California. http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/ev-1920s/ev-1923/hondapt.htm Those ships had plenty of sextants and navigators that knew how to use them. ... and they did not know where they were.

Re:I am the Loran

[arethuza]

There are also examples of quite amazing navigation done using sextants, particularly the voyage of the James Caird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_James_Caird

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

Meteor showers/coronal activity FTW! :)

Re:I am the Loran

[icebrain]

Consider that the highest private rocket ever flown hasn't even reached orbit yet.

Wanna try that again?

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you for the most part, though I might also throw the EU and India into the discussion of who has or could readily obtain an anti-satellite capability. What it boils down to is that the only way GPS goes down is if the USA wants it to, we don't maintain it as satellites age, or we are in the midst of WWIII and are probably about to see a LOT of nukes go off and have more important worries. I hope that they mothball this stuff as much as possible just in case as deploying new systems in wartime is not easy.

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some bullshit right there.

The highest private rocket ever flown has reached orbit, thankyouverymuch. SpaceX, anyone?

A nuke in orbit doesn't have to deliver much energy directly. A nuke in orbit simply throws a lot of energetic particles around, and they are in the beautiful environment of vacuum, like, you know the particle accelerators on Earth are, and all that jazz.
What's worse, those particles are just of the right kind to wreak havoc in semiconductor-based devices.

On Earth the high-energy particles from a bomb blast can't travel very far. In space, though, it's a whole another story.
It doesn't take much to take a satellite off line. All you need is to zap a few key transistors. It doesn't take all that many particles of the right energy to do that.

What's worse, due to presence of Earth's magnetic field, many of those energetic particles won't simply escape into deep space. They will be kept orbiting the Earth. That dramatically increases the chances of them hitting something useful.

Re:I am the Loran

[TheTurtlesMoves]

You are both right. Yes the particles from a bomb are trapped. But the volume at a radius of ~20,000km is HUGE and it won't add much to the background. Its unlikely to do much damage since they are designed to be rad hard for 20 odd years.

Now LEO based satellites are a different story.

Re:I am the Loran

[Maximum Prophet]

Detonating a nuke in space to disrupt communication is a video game plot device, not an actual strategy. It could theoretically disrupt or destroy nearby earthbound electronic chips...(

Checkout Starfish Prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

From the article:

While some of the energetic beta particles followed the Earth's magnetic field and illuminated the sky, other high-energy electrons became trapped and formed radiation belts around the earth. There was much uncertainty and debate about the composition, magnitude and potential adverse effects from this trapped radiation after the detonation. The weaponeers became quite worried when three satellites in low earth orbit were disabled. These man-made radiation belts eventually crippled one-third of all satellites in low orbit. Seven satellites were destroyed as radiation knocked out their solar arrays or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite ever, Telstar.

This was a small bomb, and it disabled several satellites. A larger bomb, placed right, could do real damage.

Re:I am the Loran

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suggest keeping a close eye on Chuck Norris.

Why bother? Even if he starts punching down satellites, what are WE going to do about it? Well, shall I say, what *Could* we do about it?

Re:I am the Loran

[BJ_Covert_Action]

To be pedantic, any country with launch capability to GEO technically has 'anti satellite missiles.' At the velocities things travel in orbit, you don't really need any kind of explosive device to cause critical failure. Hell, if you can deliver a baseball to same orbital position of a spacecraft, you will destroy said spacecraft. They are incredibly delicate. That being said, yes, Russia certainly has the capability and know how to destroy any satellite up to GEO. The Japanese certainly could figure out a design within a couple of years (I honestly don't recall what their native launch capabilities are. The Indians, too, are starting to become better at space based systems (which, in turn, can be used as anti-satellite collision objects.) In fact, there are quite a few small countries attempting to get launch operations into gear. Brazil and South Korea come to mind. There is also the Arianne 5 vehicle which could be used as an anti GEO sat object. Really, if you can get a launch vehicle close to the orbit (meaning same altitude, close mean anomaly) that the target is sitting in, and then detonate or perturb your launch vehicle into breaking up (easy to do with the proper deflection burn, you can collapse the structures if you sheer the vehicle right), then you have created a pretty effective flak type device that will have a high probability of causing critical failure of the target.

So basically figure out which vehicles can make GEO orbit and those companies/countries all have 'anti satellite missiles.'

Cheers.

Re:I am the Loran

[shentino]

EMP?

Re:I am the Loran

[sremick]

A "nuke in space" wouldn't' do that much. Space is big and already filled with a wide range of radiation. The flash from a single nuke wouldn't blind too many sats for that long, and while it could certainly take out a satilite it wouldn't be able to take out many at once.

Hmm...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion#EMP_generation
http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm

"The potential as an anti-satellite weapon became apparent in August 1958 during Hardtack Teak. The EMP observed at the Apia Observatory at Samoa was four times more powerful than any created by solar storms, while in July 1962 the Starfish Prime test damaged electronics in Honolulu and New Zealand (approximately 1,300 kilometers away), fused 300 street lights on Oahu (Hawaii), set off about 100 burglar alarms, and caused the failure of a microwave repeating station on Kauai, which cut off the sturdy telephone system from the other Hawaiian islands ... Because of the very large radius associated with nuclear events, it was nearly impossible to prevent indiscriminate damage to other satellites, including one's own satellites. Starfish Prime produced an artificial radiation belt in space which soon destroyed three satellites (Ariel, TRAAC, and Transit 4B all failed after traversing the radiation belt, while Cosmos V, Injun I and Telstar suffered minor degradation, due to some radiation damage to solar cells, etc. ... The worst effects of a Russian high-altitude test occurred on 22 October 1962 (during the Cuban missile crisis), in 'Operation K' (ABM System A proof tests) when a 300-kt missile-warhead detonated near Dzhezkazgan at 290-km altitude. The EMP fused 570 km of overhead telephone line with a measured current of 2,500 A, started a fire that burned down the Karaganda power plant, and shut down 1,000-km of shallow-buried power cables between Aqmola and Almaty"

Re:I am the Loran

[Big_Breaker]

The Chinese lasers were used to "dazzle" optical cameras on US spy sats, not affect the GPS sats. Spy sats are in particularly low orbit as well. Close up sats need smaller zoom lenses to see the bad guys.

Re:I am the Loran

[ibsteve2u]

The best hope of hitting this kind of targets would be lasers.

Discounting homing on the signals the satellites are continually emitting, I presume.

Re:I am the Loran

[Calinous]

You need sattelite launch infrastructure for that. If you have them, have the satellites in space and can actually maneuver them accordingly, all is fine and good. If you don't have them, if your launch infrastructure is compromised, if the satellites you launched are actually low earth orbit and your targets are medium earth orbit or geostationary, or if your satellites do not have enough fuel to manoeuver against their targets, ground-based lasers (or even air-based) are better.

hmm

[nomadic]

It has an approximately 200m accuracy

Wow, I didn't know it was that inaccurate.

and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war.

If the US implements selective availability of GPS, they can certainly also just turn off Loran-C.

Re:hmm

[Ethanol-fueled]

But what about GMDSS for the "oh, shit" moments when your bilge pumps and your GPS both go out in rough seas? Is LORAN-C the IE6 of maritime detection and rangefinding suites?

Disclaimer. I have an FCC GROL with ship radar endorsement, collecting dust, never used it :(
Anybody who actually uses theirs wanna chime in?

Also, from Google's Sponsored Links:

Loran C Sale
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BuyCheapr.com/Loran+C

Re:hmm

[Sycraft-fu]

Yes the real answer seems to be a complimentary system, that isn't owned by the US. Fortunately, people realized this and the Galileo project was born. After some initial hissing on both sides, the US and EU have worked it out so they'll be compatible, and a single receiver will be able to get data from both GNSS systems. That way should one be turned off, or break or whatever, the other still works, and when both are up it should be even more accurate.

Unfortunately, Galileo is being run by the EU who seems to be able to make the US congress look positively efficient by comparison. As such there are currently 0 Galileo satellites operating. The whole system was supposed to be online by the end of 2008, however now they are targeting having a single satellite up by the end of 2010.

Thus as it stands, the US still does have complete control over GNSS systems.

Re:hmm

[Rockoon]

200m is good enough

hell, 1km is good enough.

The submitter needs to learn how to use a sextant. They appear to get you about 500m accuracy.

Re:hmm

[ivan_w]

200m is good for what ?

- Retrieve a crab/lobstrer pot ?
- Retrieve a Man Overboard ?
- Fetch a gill net ?
- Meet with a sister ship during a seine net operation ? ... No.. lemme tell you.. 200m is NOT good enough !

(No personal experience here - but my Old Man did !)

--Ivan

Re:hmm

[mysidia]

Does anyone else see the irony? in using LORAN US implements selective availability, when LORAN is only accurate to 200m ?

Selective availability was a (currently disabled) feature of GPS that adds intentional errors up to 100 meters / 328.08 ft to publicly available GPS signal...

Before SA was turned off in 2000 the typical SA errors were 32ft horizontal, 98ft vertical.

SA is easily defeated using Differential GPS.

One thing to note about LORAN, vs GPS, however is: GPS is basically owned by the United States. The US government has full control over it.

On the other hand, LORAN is an international system, used by many countries... Many countries, the US, Japan, Europe, use LORAN.

I'm sure the US government can't stand being part of an international system... they've got to turn off their receivers, to tighten their stranglehold on navigation control systems.

There can't be an alternative to GPS available, when the US needs to switch it off or block the signal over/around certain areasw in an emergency or time of war...

Re:hmm

[Clueless Moron]

200m is the absolute accuracy (and is a bit pessimistic). The repeatable accuracy is much better.

That is, if you sail into a port's harbour channel and save that as a LORAN-C waypoint you will typically be able to get back to that same spot within 20m or so easily.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's mostly useful for shipping and boating making it an unlikely target for terrorism and not very useful for foreign militaries for say bomb guidance. The level of accuracy is adequate for shipping. Once they are in sight of a port it tends to be more by sight than instruments. What it really means is were will be totally dependent on GPS from here on out. What if several satellites went out? It would be a disaster. People think of GPS for satellite navigation for cars but everything from ships and planes to trucks depend on it. In a sense our whole economy is centered around it since transportation is dependent on GPS.

Re:hmm

[bugs2squash]

So far as I am aware, the error was pretty much the same for everyone in the same area. By which I mean that if you gave a position by Loran the coast guard could find you with excellent accuracy even if the absolute position was 200m off.

Re:hmm

[bugs2squash]

The Russians and the Chinese have systems too - I don't know how usable they are by the public.

Re:hmm

[afidel]

And 200m is no better than GPS with SA on! In fact with differential techniques or something like WAAS you can still get ~10m accuracy which is why we don't turn it on any more.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked better than the stars which have a ~200 Mile uncertainty

Re:hmm

[mschuyler]

Actually, yes. When I was commercial fishing on a troller in Alaska we used Loran grid coordinates, spoken in Danish, to tell our brothers where the fish were. No one else could understand us. If we said "Over and out" the conversation was finished, but if we said "I'm off," that meant to change frequencies, tell how many King's you'd caught, and give the coordinates. Without the Loran our sneaky ways will have to be changed.

Re:hmm

[russotto]

If the US implements selective availability of GPS, they can certainly also just turn off Loran-C.

Besides, GPS with S/A is accurate to 100m, still better than the figures given for LORAN-C.

Re:hmm

[geekmux]

200m is good for what ?

- Retrieve a crab/lobstrer pot ? - Retrieve a Man Overboard ? - Fetch a gill net ? - Meet with a sister ship during a seine net operation ? ... No.. lemme tell you.. 200m is NOT good enough !

(No personal experience here - but my Old Man did !)

--Ivan

Sit in the middle of the ocean and turn off GPS. Perhaps you'll quickly see the value of "good enough". I'm all for a backup plan, and a backup plan to the backup plan, especially if we can avoid pissing away a $160M investment.

Re:hmm

[plover]

The U.S. is not the only country providing GNSS services. Russia has long had the GLONASS satellites; although their constellation has had some problems and does not currently provide 100% coverage over the globe (Russian coverage is at 100%, though, and I suspect U.S. coverage is near 100%.) Magellan makes commercially available GLONASS receivers, and I suppose others do as well. You can purchase dual GPS/GLONASS units, and the U.S. and Russia are in talks regarding bringing them to a common protocol so they'll be interchangeable if you have a receiver that picks up both frequencies. And the GLONASS program is receiving assistance from India, so there's more of an international approach to their program than just a Russian system.

I also know that China has their COMPASS satellites, but I don't know their status, or if there are commercially available receivers.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

There can be and there are alternatives to GPS. Get your head out of your ass with your American bashing and your conspiracy theories. Jesus fuck, is everyone around here so fucking stupid?

Re:hmm

[afidel]

GLONASS has 16 operational satellites currently with 2 new birds coming online and one in the process of being decommissioned, they need 24 for full coverage. There are (expensive) commercial units with support for both GPS and GLONASS primarily targeted at surveyors because having the additional signals available makes very accurate (sub-meter) locks significantly faster. There are also commercial providers of GLONASS only units (Septentrio, Topcon, JAVAD, Magellan Navigation, Novatel, Leica Geosystems and Trimble Inc according to wikipedia) if you wanted them. The only reason the constellation will be back to full coverage is that the Indians pitched in a bunch of money to fly a bunch of the new birds. As of 2007 it has been official that the signals can be used for free by consumers in any country free of charge (not that they could stop you before since most devices don't need the L1 key to get accurate positioning, it just speeds things up).

Re:hmm

[afidel]

Huh? Thanks to India GLONASS will back to full coverage by the end of this year and some time this decade Galileo should be operational so it's not like the US has any kind of monopoly on positioning.

Re:hmm

[ddxexex]

Um LORAN-C just sends a radio signal. It won't really stop another country from using it in their own country (unless you bomb theirs). Also for selective availability, DGPS is a pretty good work around for it.

Re:hmm

[plover]

Are you always this paranoid about the U.S. government? Seriously, the Russians have had their version of GNSS flying for 35 years, and you can buy a completely non-American GLONASS receiver that will give you the same data as an American (made in China, of course) GPS receiver. We know full well that we don't have a monopoly on global navigation.

They are shutting LORAN-C off because it's expensive to maintain a separate system, especially one that is not nearly as accurate as GPS, and is at risk of terrestrial attack (a determined terrorist group could easily destroy a critical LORAN-C tower, but the same group does not have physical access to the GPS satellites.) In addition, its consumers are not widespread, and are already using GPS for their primary navigation systems.

You should think before you make up bogus conspiracy theories. They make you look kind of crazy.

Re:hmm

[Sir_Lewk]

200m is good enough for a lot of things. Including a few small things like general navigation.

Sailors used to use the stars, are you telling me that 200m is too inaccurate to get you back to port safetly? Hell, sailors used to do all of those things without GPS, as a backup system LORAN-C is great.

Re:hmm

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

200m is good for what ?

Not hitting St. George Reef in the fog.

Re:hmm

[fm6]

LORAN doesn't have the same military applications as GPS. If you want your missile or bomb to hit within a few meters of your target (essential if you're trying to take out a well-hardened bunker) you need military-grade GPS.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I am beginning to think that many of them ARE that stupid.

Re:hmm

[djupdal]

500m accuracy for sextants seems unrealistically good to me. My experience is approximately 2km in good conditions and with an accurate clock available. But even that is good enough for navigation.

Re:hmm

[EvanED]

- Retrieve a crab/lobstrer pot ?
- Retrieve a Man Overboard ?
- Fetch a gill net ?
- Meet with a sister ship during a seine net operation ?

I can't speak to the first three, though I suspect 200m is pretty good there, but the last one? Definitely.

(That is 200 meters, or barely over 650 ft, not 200 miles.)

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

200 meters is the absolute accuracy, in reality you can get to like 60 feet. The big reason for keeping it around is GPS is extremely easy to jam, and is easily blocked by buildings. Loran C uses pulses that are extremely hard to jam. Of course I don't want to confuse an issue on /. with actual facts from someone who has worked on the system over the last 20 years...

Re:hmm

[MichaelSmith]

Actually, yes. When I was commercial fishing on a troller in Alaska

Trolls in Alaska get paid? Maybe its worth living there and putting up with the climate. (I think your meant trawler).

Re:hmm

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Thus as it stands, the US still does have complete control over GNSS systems.

Which is cool, because like, the US citizens paid to launch it and get it going?

Re:hmm

[pandello]

On the ocean you have a good chance of having 200m visibility so you're close enough to do all the things you mentioned. You don't have trees or hills or whatever in the way.

If the waves are super big you'll get blown 200m in a second anyway so more accuracy isn't going to help.

If you're trying to find a crab pot in the Fog then maybe it would help. But you're F'ed anyway. Turning around and backtracking on a boat is not that easy.

You could also argue that if the line from the pot to the buoy is longer than the dept of the water you're going to be off by a hundred feet easy.

It's not the same on the water, you're not looking for some geocache hidden under a rock. It's usually big orange things on the ocean if not other boats or ports.

Re:hmm

[kallen3]

Actually 200m is very good you will normally be in eye sight of each other by then. You will be surprise what can and have been done with only a 200 meter error and a pair of eyeballs I know this from practical hands on experience. Long before there was GPS or NAVSAT ships were meeting in the middle of a vast empty ocean using only LORAN-C.

Re:hmm

[techno-vampire]

Wow, I didn't know it was that inaccurate.

When I was in the Navy, back in '72, one of my best friends aboard ship was a Quartermaster's Mate. (They do things like navigation.) He told me, once, that when we went from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines, they calculated distances assuming a nautical mile was exactly 2000 feet instead of 2018, and that all turns were "point turns," instead of trying to calculate the size of the arc the ship went through. Over a voyage of several thousand nautical miles, the systematic error just wasn't enough to worry about. Yes, I'd say that a 200 meter error isn't enough to worry about.

Re:hmm

[Penguinshit]

Your post is a trawl.

Re:hmm

[Shakrai]

Your friend wasn't the navigator on the USS San Francisco by any chance, was he? ;)

Re:hmm

[FlyByPC]

It has better *resolution* than that, although I can't speak for the accuracy (meaning repeatability).

Back in the day, I actually rigged up a Loran system and a surplus Compaq Plus luggable computer in my car, and wrote a program in QuickBASIC to log lat/long data points while driving back to college from vacation. Just to see what it would look like, I drove completely around a cloverleaf interchange (four 270-degree turns), and continued on. When I got where I was going and ran the data through a really cheapo plotting program I wrote, I could clearly see all four loops (some a little flattened, probably more due to the 1-second time resolution than anything.)

Granted, this was in the middle of nowhere (low noise), at night (nice propagation), with a long whip antenna on the top of the car -- but it was still impressive for Loran-C. (And yeah, I know it would be a piece of cake for any half-decent GPS receiver.)

As for selective availability, I think this could be implemented over Loran -- although Loran's repeatability without modifications is probably no better than the ~50m accuracy of GPS+SA...

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

In order for loran to function as a backup, you would need loran equipment to be installed on your boat. I can't speak for larger commercial boats, but I can say that a vast majority (over 99%) of small craft have ditched the old loran unit as dead weight.

Re:hmm

[pookemon]

And then you can turn GPS back on and see that "good enough" is pointless. Of course the US is not in the middle of an ocean - it's in between oceans, and other countries will still be providing LORAN services so chances are your "good enough" solution will still work (because we're in the middle of the ocean - which would be nowhere near the US). Personally I don't actually care about "good enough" because from the middle of the ocean (which I found with my GPS - LORAN would have me in the middle +- 200m) with a map and a compass I could probably find a piece of land somewhere. With a sextant and a bit of training I could probably find a specific piece of land. So really I'm not sure what the value of the "good enough" solution is.

Adding one more item to Ivan's list of LORAN fails

- Avoid a submerged obstruction (eg. Reef)?

200m is still not good enough - but I'm sure that's where a depth sounder is useful - unless your on an oil tanker - in which case you'd have GPS.

Re:hmm

[b1t r0t]

Actually, internet trolling started out back in the early '90s as "trolling for newbies". Trolling for fish was the origin of the term. Ah the good old days of alt.religion.kibology.

Re:hmm

[techno-vampire]

No. Wrong ship and, he was an enlisted man, not the Navigation Officer.

Re:hmm

[loose electron]

Loran C is good to about 30 feet - I have a Loran C system in my boat in addition to GPS

Re:hmm

[Rorschach1]

"Without the Loran our sneaky ways will have to be changed"

Come up with a list of 100 words. Danish, Esperanto, Klingon, or whatever. Assign numbers from 00 to 99. Read off your GPS coordinates using one word for every two digits. Save time by pre-defining large grids with special names to avoid having to read off more digits than necessary.

I've got notes around here somewhere on a more sophisticated version of that I was playing with for search and rescue use - not to conceal anything, but to be more efficient and accurate than reading strings of numbers. The words were simple, of a consistent number of syllables, phonetically distinct (long Hamming distance) and with multiple lists you can make it tolerant of transposition of words. The idea was for the encoding to be done on a GPS receiver - you wouldn't need to do it manually.

Re:hmm

[FlyByPC]

Ah the good old days of alt.religion.kibology.

Oh, now you've done it. And here I thought we were finally done with the whole Kibo/Xibo thing...

Re:hmm

[StreetStealth]

As long as you have a decently accurate clock, you can get a lot closer than that without any externally-dependent navigational system.

Re:hmm

[Eil]

One thing to note about LORAN, vs GPS, however is: GPS is basically owned by the United States. The US government has full control over it.

The U.S. has full control over the LORAN-C transmitters in the U.S. too. Hence their ability to shut them down.

On the other hand, LORAN is an international system, used by many countries... Many countries, the US, Japan, Europe, use LORAN.

And those countries can continue to use LORAN within their own borders. The U.S. has no power to turn those off.

I'm sure the US government can't stand being part of an international system... they've got to turn off their receivers, to tighten their stranglehold on navigation control systems.

What I want to know is why the U.S. didn't shut off LORAN-C as soon as cheap GPS receivers were widely available. All military vessels had GPS receivers not long after the constellation was active. GPS is extremely reliable: You need a minimum of 4 satellites in view to get an accurate position (3 in a pinch) and with 31 satellites currently in service, there are usually at least 8 visible in the sky at any time. The (implicit) argument of LORAN-C as a necessary fallback is bogus.

There can't be an alternative to GPS available, when the US needs to switch it off or block the signal over/around certain areasw in an emergency or time of war...

In the private/commercial sector, LORAN-C was really only used for sea navigation. When's the last time you saw a hiking gadget or car navigation unit that used LORAN-C? Never, because the required antenna is enormous no matter how small the electronics get. And as I already mentioned, the U.S. government certainly has as much capability of turning off LORAN-C transmitters as they do GPS signals.

Simply put, the U.S. will not ever voluntarily turn off GPS signals within U.S. borders. I highly doubt they would even re-enable SA. Too many consumer, commercial, medical, and scientific devices depend on the accuracy of GPS these days. We would have to be facing a full-on armed invasion which I doubt is something I'll ever see in my lifetime.

Re:hmm

[TooMuchToDo]

If I'm in the middle of the ocean, I'm probably switching to using the sun or the stars for navigation.

Re:hmm

[crispin_bollocks]

Knew a lobsterman who told me he'd steam for two hours, come up on his Loran set point - cut the throttle, stick his gaff out the port side of the boat and grab his trawl, without fail. In the dark. Sounds a bit better than 200 m. He had the lobsters to prove it!

Re:hmm

[Jeff DeMaagd]

If the US doesn't like being part of an international system, then why keep a woefully obsolete, far less accurate system running into 2010? It's like complaining that a new Dell doesn't offer built-in floppy drive. One person's redundancy is another's dead weight. There is still GLONASS running now, even in a weakened state it has to be better, and hopefully Galileo will be up soon enough.

Re:hmm

[mysidia]

Simply put, the U.S. will not ever voluntarily turn off GPS signals within U.S. borders. I highly doubt they would even re-enable SA.

Well, never say never. If the US thinks Korea is launching some missiles at the US, and using GPS for guidance, you bet they will shut down the standard GPS service. It's not as if the nature of GPS permits the satellites to exclude certain regions from accessing it, either.

What I want to know is why the U.S. didn't shut off LORAN-C as soon as cheap GPS receivers were widely available. All military vessels had GPS receivers not long after the constellation was active. GPS is extremely reliable: You need a minimum of 4 satellites in view to get an accurate position

Huh? No it's not. In fact, GPS is notoriously unreliable. It's more accurate, when you manage to get a reading from 4 satellites, but you are more likely to be unable to get any reading, especially under adverse weather conditions, thunderstorms, periods of high solar activity, etc.

It's so bad, that many GPS receivers include tricks like inertial navigation as an assist or re-using the old altitude, in order to estimate position using 2 or 3 satellites. And that the functionality to display (less reliable) information is necessary for GPS receivers to be particularly useful in many situations.

This is before we count the possibility of solar storm activity, electromagnetic activity near the satellites, or other acts of god, destroying satellites in orbit.

In case you haven't noticed, getting GPS reception can be quite difficult, especially in urban areas, and forested areas, and locations lacking a direct line of site to satellites.. GPS is also subject to radio frequency interference, and is easily jammed.

LORAN-C is much more resistant to jamming attempts.

LORAN-C is more reliable under a greater variety of conditions. It is more suitable for applications with high-reliability requirements, particularly where human safety, or security may depend on the position locating technology.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia has long had the GLONASS satellites

In America, GLONASS has you?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the US participates in Loran transmitter chains with Canada and Russia. Those are not being turned off due to international treaties.

Re:hmm

[Sycraft-fu]

Indirectly, yes through taxes. GPS was a US military project. The military decided it would like to be able to accurately locate craft, personnel, weapons, and so on. There were some previous systems, like NAVSAT, but they were pretty inaccurate and of limited use (the Navy used it to help subs get a general position fix). They did all the R&D on it. When it was nearing final development stages, a Korean airliner got shot down by the USSR for straying in to Soviet air space and the president ordered that GPS was to be made available for civilian use when it was ready.

However, it remains a military owned project. The Air Force controls it, and the government has asserted that it can do as it pleases with GPS. The military paid for it, it is their toy. What's more, they developed the technology back when it was rather expensive, and unproven. No civilian company thought something like that would be at all worth the cost.

While some other nations have grumbled about this, there is nothing they can do as it is a US system. Hence the answer is to build their own. Would be great for everyone except, as I mentioned, the EU has been playing politics rather than launching satellites.

Re:hmm

[grolaw]

That would really be a bummer, Brother Jonathan.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can continue using the Loran grid coordinates - most marine GPS units have the option of displaying coordinates in LORANese

Re:hmm

[scheme]

Sit in the middle of the ocean and turn off GPS. Perhaps you'll quickly see the value of "good enough". I'm all for a backup plan, and a backup plan to the backup plan, especially if we can avoid pissing away a $160M investment.

Well if you were in the middle of the ocean, you probably wouldn't get a LORAN-C signal at all so your backup really isn't a backup. Check the LORAN-C coverage maps, anywhere outside the Caribbean, North Atlantic and North Pacific simply can't get any fix from LORAN-C signals (so if you're south of the equator you're probably SOL). Anywhere out of sight of coasts doesn't really get a great signal and has a fairly poor resolution.

Re:hmm

[aonic]

Actually GLONASS is so different (uses a different reference ellipsoid, for starters), that only recently has anyone been able to add GLONASS measurements to GPS and not made the resulting solution worse. But hopefully that will change. With GLONASS modernization, they're supposed to make it all more GPS-like (use WGS-84, switch from FDMA to CDMA, etc)

Re:hmm

[Calinous]

You're in the middle of the ocean in a storm. Or even better, you're NOT in the middle of the ocean in a storm, and want to know if you can drift a couple more hours before hitting some rocky island or not.
      Having even 1 kilometer accuracy is very good in this situation, not to mention 200 meters. On the other side, in this case, 10 meters accuracy would be overkill.

Re:hmm

[Calinous]

Late-era navigation by stars, and air-navigation by stars (see bombers in World War II) got by with about a nautical mile precision.

Re:hmm

[Calinous]

As the celestial coordinates are usually read daily (as training, if for no other reasons), a 1% error in navigation is not important (considering all the dangerous/interesting things are detectable either visually, by radar, by radio beacon or whatever.
      Trying to navigate from Pearl Harbour to Philippines without daily fixes and with that 1% error could send you to destination a day earlier (or later) than assumed.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

When's the last time you saw a hiking gadget or car navigation unit that used LORAN-C? Never, because the required antenna is enormous no matter how small the electronics get.

Oh, really?
Most AM (MW, LW) pocket radios use ferrite antennas, which are, admittedly, directional (which is bad for time-difference location finder system), but receiver can have two of them perpendicular to each other to alleviate the problem.
I'd grant it to you that transmitting antennas for long wave LORAN-C have to be enormous, but it is not so for receivers.
I guess the real reason there are no hand-held LORAN-C receivers is because the necessary integration (for same usability level) wasn't available in pre-GPS era.

Re:hmm

[AGMW]

... Would be great for everyone ...

Well, there is a potential fly in the ointment because the people pitching Galileo are hunting around for any applications that they can make money on and have been bombarding the EU Governments with 'vehicle tracking' style system which would be great as part of a general 'road pricing' system, not to mention the ultimate way to track everyone's movements!

Unfortunately we seem to have to be ever vigilant to stop our governments from trying to sell us down the river into some Orwellian nightmare ... and don't think they don't want to either. They've had multiple attempts at pushing this sort of tech on us over the last 10 years and so far they've been stopped, but much like Ireland's voting on the Lisbon Treaty, they'll keep pushing until they succeed and it's going to be VERY difficult to reverse it once it's done - notice Ireland voted NO the first time and YES second(last) time. Hands up all those who think there's going to be a "Best of Three" referendum about it next year!

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

After some initial hissing on both sides, the US and EU have worked it out so they'll be compatible, and a single receiver will be able to get data from both GNSS systems.

This seems to be a bit misleading, as it suggests a two-way deal. The hissing was mostly on the US side, and "working out" meant the EU did what the US ordered them to do. There were no concessions whatsoever from the US side.

Unfortunately, Galileo is being run by the EU who seems to be able to make the US congress look positively efficient by comparison. As such there are currently 0 Galileo satellites operating. The whole system was supposed to be online by the end of 2008, however now they are targeting having a single satellite up by the end of 2010.

One of the main reasons was that the EU first tried to organize this as a private public partnership, involving industries in financing the project- but private got cold feet in view of insufficient ROI.

Also, the number of satellites is a fairly coarse indicator for project progress. Tests with the GIOVE satellites were largely successfull (GIOVE-B is currently in orbit and functional btw), and what follows now is "mass-production" (the contracts are awarded to OHB, a german space company) and "mass-launch".

Thus as it stands, the US still does have complete control over GNSS systems

Not at all, the Russians have a near-global system of their own.

Re:hmm

[Registered Coward v2]

It has an approximately 200m accuracy Wow, I didn't know it was that inaccurate. and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war. If the US implements selective availability of GPS, they can certainly also just turn off Loran-C.

While LORAN was certainly not very accurate by today's standards; it was fine for most navigation at sea. Most navigation was done by dead reckoning anyway; with LORAN / celestial fixes merely position checks. Inertial Navigation on warships is also widely used and very accurate when needed, it still needs periodic checks for when the SINS start walking in different directions. Sure GPS can replace that, but an advantage of LORAN is reliability; especially in high electronic noise environments. Of course, many "sailors" of today probably wouldn't recognize a sextant; let alone be able to use one. Yet if it becomes unusable do to loss of "signal" we have bigger issues than the inability to navigate to worry about.

Re:hmm

[SharpFang]

Navigation By Cockney?

Re:hmm

[argStyopa]

"You know, I'm suspicious of that darn US government, they might arbitrarily turn off the GPS system at any time...so I'm going to use either the Chinese or Russian systems, because those governments have a FAR longer history of openness, tolerance, and a lack of autocratic behaviors than that darn America!"

Basically, if you believe that the Russians or Chinese aren't even MORE likely to turn off their systems when geopolitically convenient than the US, truly, you need
- a history lesson
- an understanding of 'willful cognitive dissonance'
- to have your tinfoil hat checked for 'unreasonable' bias.

Before the inevitable flame replies, let me state clearly: the US has done some bad stuff. No question. But by ANY measure I'd say it hardly quivers the needle on a Russianor Chinese-calibrated scale.

Re:hmm

[Shihar]

I don't know jack shit about the value of LORAN, that said, your argument about the cost is a poor. If something isn't worth the cost you are dumping into it, it doesn't matter if yesterday you spent one dollar or a billion, it isn't worth the cost. How much you have spent on something in the past does nothing to justify spending more in the future.

Re:hmm

[Registered Coward v2]

Unfortunately, Galileo is being run by the EU who seems to be able to make the US congress look positively efficient by comparison.

Off topic comment - the EU's main problem is that it is a Confederation, which by nature makes it difficult to accomplish things. The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.

Re:hmm

[Registered Coward v2]

Sit in the middle of the ocean and turn off GPS. Perhaps you'll quickly see the value of "good enough". I'm all for a backup plan, and a backup plan to the backup plan, especially if we can avoid pissing away a $160M investment.

While I agree with the desirability of keeping LORAN, it's not because otherwise we'll avoid pissing away a $160M investment. That money is spent no matter what we do; the only question is the value of any investment in it going forward. I often hear such sunk cost fallacy arguments made; that doesn't make them correct.

Re:hmm

[vlm]

Well if you were in the middle of the ocean, you probably wouldn't get a LORAN-C signal at all so your backup really isn't a backup. Check the LORAN-C coverage maps, anywhere outside the Caribbean, North Atlantic and North Pacific simply can't get any fix from LORAN-C signals (so if you're south of the equator you're probably SOL). Anywhere out of sight of coasts doesn't really get a great signal and has a fairly poor resolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEGA_Navigation_System

Thats what the Omega system was for. Operated from 1971 to 1997. For reasons unknown the USAR put me thru a correspondence course on the Omega system in like 1996 (1995?). Omega had worldwide coverage. Its interesting that Omega could be heard with those "ELF" receivers as the carrier frequencies were in the audio range, made it quite annoying to listen for "whistlers". Its interesting that LORAN relies on chains where a master TX sends a pulse, then the remotes send another as they hear the master, so each chain has a single point of failure. Omega on the other hand had each station send a different pattern of tones, so you'd sync to each pattern/station, then measure the relative time (and/or phase) difference between them to get the ratio of distances to each station, so no single point of failure. GPS is basically Omega with the following differences, about a zillion times higher frequency, a much fancier spread spectrum modulation than the four tone Omega, and of course the GPS satellites move...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)

The russian transit sat equivalents are still up there and transmitting as of a few years ago. All the systems generally transmitted two data carriers very close to 200 and 400 MHz. Receivers measured the ratio of frequencies, thus figuring out the doppler shift directly without needing an accurate oscillator on the ground. Doppler hits zero when the satellite is overhead, and its no great task to calculate and distribute plots of where a satellite is directly overhead at any moment. That gives you only one fix, but you can also measure the rate of change of the doppler effect, giving you quite accurately how high the satellite was above the horizon, that gives you a 2-D position.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately there are no LORAN towers in the middle of the ocean... idiot.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the EU version be redundant? Won't it be in metric?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.laipac.com/gps_tf50_eng.htm

It's a GNSS receiver board that does GPS, GLONASS, and COMPASS (know as Beidou-2 which is a Chinese ran system)

Re:hmm

[jdagius]

Technology similar to the Omega system is still in operation in Russian, known as "Radiotehnicheskaya Sistema Dal'ney Navigatsii", RSDN-20. In the West it's known by the nickname "Alpha" and is based on a system of three VLF transmitters located in western, middle and eastern Russian. It provides nearly world-wide coverage and is used primarily by the Russian maritime fleet, some using very ancient semi-mechanical receivers still in operation.

http://www.vlf.it/alphatrond/alpha.htm

If you want to see how these Alpha signal look like, take a peak at this Web Softwarre Defined Radio located in the Netherlands, operating in the VLF band. It is picking up 2 of the 3 stations (Krasnodar and Novosibirsk). They look like long Morse dashes around 11 to 15 kHz frequencies.

http://websdr.pa3weg.nl/

Johanus

Re:hmm

[guruevi]

You got miles and miles of sea, much more than land and you don't have any 'streets' to worry about - it's like a big open field. 200m is a small tanker length. For any closer you have radar and eyesight.

Re:hmm

[imp]

As someone who worked on the refit to the Loran-C US chains, I can tell you that the secondary transmitters do *NOT* listen for the master station pulse to send out their pulse. It is all controlled by custom hardware that is fed off atomic clocks that are fed off GPS (when available). If the MASTER station goes down, the secondary stations continue to chirp, and most receivers can work out the master's missing pulses.

The stations, transmitters and arrangements of pulses in LORAN-C were all designed to be redundant to failure of one component wouldn't shut down a station or the network.

Re:hmm

[TheTurtlesMoves]

You are also permitted to use your eyes when required.

Re:hmm

[fprintf]

You sure it was the port side? Here on the East Coast of the US almost all lobstermen pull their pots up on the starboard side of the boat. They need to drive and pull the pots at the same time, so the winch system is typically right next to the wheel. Every lobster boat I have seen has the wheel on the starboard side, not sure why but it seems almost universal.

That said, I completely agree about the repeatable accuracy of LORAN-C. I was navigator for many years on a sailboat in Long Island Sound, off the coast of Connecticut. We used LORAN many times to get us within 20M or less or a specific spot, and since it was a sailboat it was helpful when we ended up in the channel, not on the shoal that a particular buoy was indicating. Some channels are only 5M wide (entrance to Watch Hill, RI for example). We used to call it Instrument Flight Rules - you couldn't see the rocks and buoys until it was too late.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for a backup plan, and a backup plan to the backup plan, especially if we can avoid pissing away a $160M investment.

Sextant and chronometer, anyone?

Re:hmm

[molo]

Sounds like the Maidenhead grid system used in ham radio. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System and here for an example: http://qth.map.googlepages.com/

You can get to a pretty small area with about 8 characters, less than 1km^2.

-molo

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just use encrypted packet radio? It's been around forever, and provides a reasonably secure channel to send whatever data you want.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, that's not what he said. You are presenting a false dichotomy, where one must pick a single country. Obviously a receiver that supports GPS and GLONASS is obviously more reliable than a receiver that only supports GPS, EVEN if GPS is more reliable than GLONASS.

But you turned this into a "the US is bettar than the chinese and russians!" thing, which is completely irrelevant, and it makes you seem very insecure. Now gtfo.

Re:hmm

[Thiez]

> The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.

More importantly, why would we want such a thing?

Re:hmm

[akgooseman]

No, he meant troll.

Re:hmm

[Registered Coward v2]

> The US tried that before they established a federal system; but judging by how hard it was to get 13 newly independent states to agree back then makes me wonder if the EU, whose states have an even more complex history and longer independence will ever be able to move to a strong federal EU government.

More importantly, why would we want such a thing?

Good question - I think the EU is faced with a lot more national identity and independence than the US faced in the 1780's; although our War between the States showed that there was often a stronger identity with one's state than with the concept of America. The US needed a federal system in order to survive as an independent entity; European countries don't need that although for economic reasons a strong EU may make sense.

Re:hmm

[cffrost]

The points you brought up have no bearing on the fact that three independent operators would have to agree to shut down their respective systems in order to deny GNSS access worldwide.

Re:hmm

[argStyopa]

"...it makes you seem very insecure. Now gtfo." ...says the person who posted as "Anonymous Coward"?

Ironic, +2?

To your point: I see where you might draw that conclusion, taking the discussion as if it began with the original /. post.

HOWEVER, let's recall that the original impetus behind Galileo and Glonass more than a decade ago was the US military's ability to 'fuzz' GPS (since discontinued) and probable ability to either encrypt (burying useful data into a constant stream, for example) or simply deny GPS usage somehow to selected receivers.

The point behind Galileo, Compass, and Glonass was to provide a system 'not owned by the US' DESPITE THE FACTS THAT:
- the US developed the tech
- the US put up the system at its own expense
- the made it available to ANYONE (from the start)
- the US GPS system has - as far as I know - functioned pretty much flawlessly since start.

So...the question would be: if the SOLE goal was 'reliability', why would Europe, China, Russia all develop THEIR OWN SYSTEMS? Why not support (ie help fund) the US program, making it more and more redundant, instead of offering competitive systems that, while yes, they can operate complementarily, essentially only improve in overlap, not intrinsically.

Loran-C?

[Camel Pilot]

What's Loran-C some strange C dialect? Did Loran-C++ eat its lunch or something.

Re:Loran-C?

[ivan_w]

Well.. Guess Loran isn't object Oriented.. Functional is all that's needed for Loran.. (Latitude.. Longigute.. That's all you need to know really)..

And yes - it's just a troll troll..

(Although a professional wouldn't really care about that !)

Re:Loran-C?

[drop table user]

They apparently used PDP-8 (google cache) which means PAL-8 assembly language source code on paper tape.

Re:Loran-C?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Loran-C some strange C dialect? Did Loran-C++ eat its lunch or something.

Actually Apple bought them out, so the next iteration will be Objective-C.

Costs and benefits

[MaXintosh]

This is in spite of $160M spent on modernizing LORAN stations over the past 10 years.

There's this thing called the Concorde Fallacy that is relevant here. It doesn't matter how much money you spent, all that should matter is anticipated future costs and benefits. And I think for a 200m redundant navigation system, future costs >> benefits.

Re:Costs and benefits

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While, as you say, not taking sunk costs into account is Econ101 stuff; looking at your sunk costs does have value.

Some amount of sunk cost writing-off is inevitable, just because of future uncertainty; but excessive amounts of it are a warning sign that your organization is directionless, myopic, or otherwise dysfunctional.

I don't have enough information to say whether or not TFA's example falls into the normal range or not; but, just because sunk costs are not a good guide to future decision making, they are not irrelevant.

Re:Costs and benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't throw good money after bad" is a nice way of phrasing it. The fact that we already spent $160M doesn't mean that's it's *worth* $160M.

Date confusion?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is dated Jan 6 and claims that "tomorrow" is Feb 7.

The name Bowditch comes to mind

[baomike]

Of course you would need an accurate clock and maybe a sextant?

As for the comment on "only 200 meters", that might not even be all the way to the other end of the ship.

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[ivan_w]

Humph...

AFAIK, Loran-C was only for coastal operations.. Who would operate a 600ft ship in coastal waters ?

--Ivan

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[zippthorne]

LORAN also works when it's cloudy, and it gets the same accuracy during the day as it does at night.

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[baomike]

>
We did , everytime we came into SFRAN. and everytime we went to SDiego, and Port Hueneme.

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[dziban303]

Who would operate a 600ft ship in coastal waters ?

Sailors, I guess.

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[captbob2002]

Hmm, up here on the Great Lakes we operate 1000ft ships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_freighter#List_of_1000-footers_on_the_Lakes

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[anethema]

There are no 600ft sailboats.

The Maltese Falcon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maltese_Falcon_%28yacht%29

is the biggest at ~290 ft LOA.

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, Loran-C was only for coastal operations.. Who would operate a 600ft ship in coastal waters ?

Anyone who wanted to get back to the dock.

I hear even aircraft carriers do this on occasion.

Re:The name Bowditch comes to mind

[GSMacLean]

Negative. I have a Loran-C (Apollo 612B) receiver in my airplane that is about to be turned into an inoperative brick.

Accuracy

[benjamindees]

I was under the impression that selective availability is still more accurate than 200 meters.

Re:Accuracy

[mce]

That is correct. And on top of that, recent satellites no longer have the technical capability to implement selective availability anyway (see http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11335). It is no longer needed for anything after having been turned off several years ago. That's because civilian users had developed multiple techniques - e.g. differential GPS - to get better accuracy even when back SA was still on. In short, SA is dead and buried forever.

Re:Accuracy

[ivan_w]

SA made GPS accurate to 10m.. With the "SA" feature disabled, you're down to 2m... And with Satelite enhancements, it's more like 20cm !

But that's irrelevant.. Because SA was intended to disable any enemy force from using GPS for accurate positioning - until they realized D-GPS (Differential GPS) made the whole point moot (you take a reference point - you send the signal to the receiver - And therefore - the receiver can deduce the SA introduced clock error - because now you have a ref point .. And believe it or not - it is a United Stated Uniform service - the US Coast Gard - that came up with it to overcome the artificially introduced uncertainty).

However, the military still keep exclusive use of the 1Mhz band (with the 10Mhz being public) - for the only purpose of being able to make real time measurements on tropospheric distortions - so - what happens - is that the military can make 1m accurate reading WITHOUT sat aids.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Idiotic.

[Ewann]

I believe the GPS III constellation will be the modernization effort you're looking for.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Last time...

[RedBear]

Last time I saw a LORAN-C device was on my family's sailboat that we used to motor-sail to Alaska from Washington through the Inside Passage. That was 1990. It wasn't much use even at the time. Radar and charts were much more helpful with navigation. I haven't even heard mention of the term LORAN-C for a very long time. I don't think most vessels have a LORAN-C receiver installed anymore. Maybe big ones, but not the hundreds of thousands of small to medium size vessels. Hard to justify keeping it running if nobody is using it. What's the benefit if almost nobody owns the necessary hardware anymore? Just playing Devil's Advocate. I'm sure it's still useful to somebody, somewhere.

Cost/benefit

[girlintraining]

LORAN (Long Range Aids to Navigation) is an electronic navigation system using low-frequency radio, used by many boaters (including me) before GPS. It has an approximately 200m accuracy and is a functional replacement in case GPS fails or the US implements selective availability in time of war.

Wait -- they're talking about decommissioning a redundant technology and relying on one that the military spends millions on and is mission-critical to its functioning (and thus in no danger of suddenly going offline)? Why is this sudden outbreak of common sense being maligned? I wish our government did this more often!

Backup?

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the world does this qualify as a backup for GPS?

For one, any sudden and immediate loss of GPS would probably impair LORAN as well, at least to some extent, unless its a failure of the GPS equipment on the boat. For two, what happened to Mark 1 Eyeball, ye ol map, sextant, etc...? Depending on electronic system #2 to backup electronic system #1 has a lot of problems when you're talking about something as essential as shipboard navigation...

Re:Backup?

[zippthorne]

LORAN stations are ground stations. If the Chinese (or other enemy. The Chinese are the ones who have actually demonstrated the capability) execute a satellite intercept strike on a sufficient number of satellites, there goes GPS availability for a region.

LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is WAR and if we the good guys have to turn off some shit so you the bad guys can't use it to fuck with us good guys then that's just too fucking bad !! That's what I say. And FOX NEWS is behind me !! Anyone not is a fucking treasonous traitor !! Are you a fucking treasonous traitor ??

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[MrNaz]

As trollish as your post is, I would wager that it is more than a little likely that LORAN is being turned off precisely because it is a beacon based system that selective availability cannot be implemented over. There is no way that LORAN could be used to provide positioning data to select parties.

Personally, I don't think this is a safe thing to do. Maritime equipment is notorious for being long lived. I would highly doubt that there are no boats that are still dependent on legacy systems. Well, I guess this is one way to ensure that they upgrade.

Feb 8:
First Officer: Captain! We've lost navigational systems!
Captain: Damn! That can mean only one thing. Arm photon torpedoes!
First Officer: Err.... we're a 32 year old fishing trawler and we don't have any...
Captain: Quiet! There's no time! Transfer engineering to the bridge and make sure we've got warp if we need it.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You call someone trollish, then pile on the Trek Shtick? Ha. But I digest...

It's more likely they're planning to turn it off because the European GPS equivalent is set to go online soon.

And, you know, it costs money... especially old systems like that. There's probably 25 guys who can fix it still.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[bmo]

>because it is a beacon based system that selective availability cannot be implemented over

You forget why selective availability was turned off.

During the years of Selective Availability, if you took your GPS receiver to a "known point" (like a USGS marker), you could adjust for the "fuzzing" (it wasn't a real fuzzing, it was just an offset) of the signal and get accurate readings anyway. This is known as "Differential GPS" and was widely used by people having an interest in using it (land surveyors, civilian navigation, etc).

Differential GPS made selective availability useless as a security tool.

Turning off LORAN isn't about being able to turn SA back on again. It's about costs.

--
BMO

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[jmac_the_man]

According to Wikipedia, Selective Availability of GPS was eliminated in 2000. Currently produced satellites (i.e. launched since 2007) can't implement the feature even if they wanted to.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[camperdave]

... at least, that's what they want you to believe. If you think they can't do it, then you'll rely on that fact. Then when battle time comes and they switch it on, you'll be lost.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[TooMuchToDo]

Actually, you don't need to go to a known point. Differential GPS works by having a stationary receiver send corrections over FM or cellular networks to a moving GPS receiver. The stationary GPS receiver can eliminate both atmospheric anomalies, as well as selective availability. Most DGPS stations were run by......the US Coast Guard up until selective availability was turned off. Unfortunately, you were limited in how far your mobile GPS could be from the stationary GPS receiver, as the corrections were fairly location specific (at least with regards to atmospheric anomalies).

The "new" version of DGPS is called WAAS (wide area augmentation system), which is where airports in the US will have local DGPS stations send their correction data to the WAAS satellite, and these corrections will be distributed to aircraft flying over the US for use as precision approaches (instead of the use of radio equipment at the end of runways).

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Dun Malg]

Differential GPS made selective availability useless as a security tool.

No, DGPS is only useful if you have some way of of taking the pseudo-random variable offset recorded by the fixed GPS at the known point and sending it to the GPS you've stuck in the nose of your cruise missile or whatever. SA was a perfectly useful security tool. The real problems with it were twofold: First, the commercial applications for full-accuracy GPS were just too great to keep them locked up. Second, the military had such a difficult time procuring useful GPS units capable of accessing the encrypted full-accuracy signal that they gave up and acknowledged that most ground troops were walking around using commercial GPS rather than than the god-awful issue units and that they might as well have full accuracy.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ha. But I digest..."
What do you normally do?

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[icebike]

Exactly.

SA wasn't even used in the gulf war. Its unlikely ever to be used because so much relies on it, and a Euro system or a Russian system would make it pointless.

It was never all that great (the claimed accuracy is optimistic), the receivers are hopelessly expensive and all commercial use has, for all practical purposes, ceased.

Even during SA use periods, GPS tended to be more accurate anyway.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[fyngyrz]

It's more likely they're planning to turn it off because the European GPS equivalent is set to go online soon.

All it'll take to turn every one of the satellites in both systems into fried orbital junk is one little hiccup from the sun in the right direction. It is extremely foolish to turn off this system; once off, it will degrade even if left physically in place, and it won't be functional when needed -- which will be very suddenly.

The odds of non-satellite based navigation being needed eventually near 100%. Such solar "hiccups" have happened several times since the middle of last century. Some destroyed equipment on the ground -- and at those energies, nothing in orbit is likely to survive intact. That's not to say we've seen the worst the sun can do, either. Prior to the last century, high energy solar events had only non electronic technologies to induce current in; most likely weren't even noticed beyond a curious increase in corrosion here and there.

It never fails to astonish me how foolish our government can be.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Mr. Freeman]

Sure, SA was eliminated. But the US bitched about the Galileo system that the EU is making until they changed the frequency to one that was farther away from what GPS uses. The reason was because if they used the same frequency it would be impossible to jam Galileo without also jamming GPS. The US threatened to launch against Galileo satellites if they didn't change frequencies. The point being, if they were this pissed off about not being able to jam Galileo then they obviously have a way to jam Galileo if they deem it "necessary". It doesn't make sense to jam Galileo and at the same time run GPS at full accuracy, so they obviously also have a way to jam non-military GPS receivers. It might not be called SA anymore, but they have some method of jamming it.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that both GPS and Galileo (and GLONASS for that matter) include quite a bit of redundancy; it's unlikely that a significant portion of the satellites would be affected by any single event. And GPS and Galileo are easily interoperable, so a single receiver can use a combination of the two systems to get a fix even if any one system does not provide enough functional satellites.

I'm not saying it's impossible for the whole shebang to fail, but it's not nearly as likely as you'd like to pretend. Nor is traditional navigation nearly so helpless; it might take a few minutes for an inexperienced navigator to get a fix with astronomical observations, but it only takes 2 pages of cheat sheet, a 4th grade education, and a few minutes to use a sextant.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[profplump]

http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11335

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[profplump]

The airport system is LAAS. WAAS is a general-purpose accuracy improvement system with signals broadcast from geosynchronous satellites. WAAS provides a 95% probability of 25-foot or better accuracy both vertically and laterally (with real-world measurements closer to 5-feet) for any compatible receiver over almost all of North America. It also provides an integrity guard; GPS signals that are out-of-spec can be invalidated in under 10 seconds.

LAAS uses a local VHF link to provide additional accuracy within ~25 miles of a LAAS ground station. It's similar in function to WAAS but uses ground stations exclusively, and is intended primarily for use in aircraft navigation in cat II and cat III approaches.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[profplump]

Well they can simply turn GPS off (entirely or over certain areas) or introduce large-scale errors; since they don't control Galileo that's not an option and jamming is the only solution. And since jamming is not a precision tool it would be nice if jamming operations didn't interfere with the more selective control available for GPS.

They're probably also worried about unintentional interference from Galileo. Or jamming from third parties -- if someone starts jamming radionav systems it would be useful to know if they're targeting the EU or the US.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[AGMW]

... then they obviously have a way to jam Galileo if they deem it "necessary".

I sure hope us Europeeeens have a similar ability to jam GPS, and the stones to use it, if the US _ever_ jams Galileo!

It'd be better if the US could use it's obvious might more like a big brother and less like a school bully!

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Very close. LAAS (Local Area Augmentation System) is where airports have local DGPS sending the corrections based upon ionospheric disturbances, timing, and satellite orbit errors. The LAAS stations can be used for percision approaches with a lateral error of approximately 1 foot, and a vertical error of approixmtely 25 feet.

WAAS is a series of 25 (approximately) base stations across the country that send the updates. These locations are chosen to ensure complete availability (although there are many places where geography makes it impossible right now). The WAAS correction are within about 3m both vertically and laterally.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[swale44]

A beacon based system operating on 100KHz. LORAN A was allowed to die out around 1980. Pairs were decommissioned when one of the stations died. Anyone still using LORAN for nav might still use the LORAN charts. I used to repair aircraft LORAN, EDO 345 and others.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[gman003]

One hiccup from the sun... or a high-altitude thermonuclear detonation.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[GooberToo]

I sure hope us Europeeeens have a similar ability to jam GPS, and the stones to use it, if the US _ever_ jams Galileo!

You can jam GPS for roughly $20.00. Ask US pilots who have flow over Iraq during the early part of the war. The Iraqies would jam GPS and light tire fires in hopes of preventing laser locks because of the huge/dense black clouds of smoke. That's the reason some bombs missed their target, causing collateral damage. I guess they forget that most countries can lock via visual tracking, radar, IR, RF, and that jammers can be targeted too.

Jamming localized GPS is well known, cheap, and technically easy.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to link an article and maybe a specific section on Wikipedia next time. Anyway, sure SA was eliminated, because they now have something better. They can now do something like SA to a specific theater. So you still have to consider that as a problem, just a problem with a different name.

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[True Grit]

The US threatened to launch against Galileo satellites if they didn't change frequencies.

No.

The frequency overlap was a separate issue, and it was an issue that had other NATO members concerned as well, not just the US: NATO relies on GPS as well.

The US threatened to shoot down Galileo satellites if that system was used by, for example, China for precision-guided attacks against US forces in some hypothetical future conflict. Since China is, or was, a participant in the Galileo project, that hypothetical scenario was not an academic one.

And the only reason that 'threat' was ever made was because of the initial stance of the Galileo people that they would never turn off the Galileo system even if it was being used for weapons targeting by someone in a war with the US.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html

The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.

A senior European delegate at the London conference said his US counterparts reacted to the EU position "calmly".

"They made it clear that they would attempt what they called reversible action, but, if necessary, they would use irreversible action," the official was quoted as saying.

Seriously, what did you expect us to say? If the tables were turned, what would you do?

Whatever was actually said, the US and Europe came to an agreement over Galileo way back in 2004, so this is all old (and misleading) news...

Re:LISTEN, TERRORIST-COMMIE LOVERS !!

[sglines]

One problem in using Loran is that only older craft still have it and few still know how to use it. I'm not sure I could even buy a LORAN-C receiver anymore. The real question is when will they stop putting the LORAN lines on ships charts. Once that happens LORAN is really toast.

Re:Idiotic.

[mce]

And on top of that, other GPS-like systems are being built. Yes, Galileo has been delayed, but it will eventually be launched nonetheless. And it's not the only one.

One down, many more to go.

[viking80]

There is absolutely no use for Loran C. You currently have the following systems in place backing each other up. Many cheaper and better. In fact, many of these most likely will vanish soon.
1. GPS, LAAS, WAAS, DGPS
2. Galileo, EGNOS,
(as well as GLONASS and Baidu)
3. Inertial
4. Visual navigation (computer with terrain sensors, including sonar and radar)
5. Also VOR, DME, ADF, NDB, ILS, TLS, MLS, Marker beacon
with the final fallback
6. Old fashion navigation with compass, light houses, sextant, chronometer etc.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[TechForensics]

Well, pilots of small aircraft (myself included) found it the best, cheapest nav choice prior to GPS. Dunno if it's worth having as a fallback in case GPS is degraded or taken offline or not. Maybe I'm just nostalgic because being able to navigate "Loran Direct" was so superior to flying from VOR to VOR.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[Kjella]

TLA WTF IMO, YMMV.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[Obfuscant]

Well, pilots of small aircraft (myself included) found it the best, cheapest nav choice prior to GPS.

Unless you happened to fly anywhere near any of the LORAN transmitter sites. Ever see a C172 doing 400 knots? My LORAN told me I was...

And horse and buggy was the best, cheapest transportation prior to the automobile. Anyone keeping a horse and buggy in the garage just in case the oil supplies go away?

Maybe I'm just nostalgic because being able to navigate "Loran Direct" was so superior to flying from VOR to VOR.

Try GPS direct. It's even funner.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[shutdown -p now]

Galileo

There are no operational Galileo satellites in orbit yet.

(not that it makes any of your other points less valid, just a factual correction)

Re:One down, many more to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright now lets count the ones you listed that ACTUALLY WORK!

1. GPS... well GPS can't backup itself
2. Galileo, EGNOS. GLONASS... Valid
3. Inertial... On a BOAT, Rocking back and forth, in water that has currents, this is just "Dead Reckoning" but more costly.
4. Visual, aided by Sonar and Radar... Ok this sort of works but only in well documented areas and only if you have the appropriate terrain maps, the Sea is one of the least explored places on the earth by percentage so there's alot of places (namely almost everywhere not along a coast) where this will do no good at all.
5. VOR, other aviation aids... perhaps your best idea
6. Old Fashion Navigation... did you know they called this "Dead Reckoning" for a reason, may as well use inertial sensors.

In summary alot of your ideas are not applicable to anything larger than a Fishing Boat within sight or still in the same channel it started on. Once you got into any open water or traveled any significant distance from your start point the error rate's are just to high to become acceptable. In modern maritime navigation along rivers you need to be able to stay in shipping lanes also, if you don't then you will crash into shore, run aground, or become 2 boats in one with another freighter. The shipping lanes are marked with buoys but its not like you can stop or turn a 1000 ft. freighter on a dime.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[SvnLyrBrto]

> 6. Old Fashion Navigation... did you know they called this "Dead Reckoning" for a reason, may as well use inertial sensors.

Celestial navigation is quite far from being the same thing as "Dead Reckoning". It is only somewhat less accurate than LORAN and, like GPS, works anywhere in the world, not just within range of the shore-based transmitters. The sun, moon, and stars will also never suffer an electrical short or dead battery. You simply need to be able to do a little bit of math, which shouldn't be too much to ask of the navigator of a ship at sea.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, pilots of small aircraft (myself included) found it the best, cheapest nav choice prior to GPS. Dunno if it's worth having as a fallback in case GPS is degraded or taken offline or not. Maybe I'm just nostalgic because being able to navigate "Loran Direct" was so superior to flying from VOR to VOR.

LORAN is/was a decent transitional technology between VORs and GPS, provided you could find an aircraft (rental aircraft in my case) with a Bendix/King LORAN-C receiver.

I personally never found any need for using LORAN-C beyond "moving" VORs to where you wanted them to be, i.e. at the point of a published fix. I guess that may be due to the more "manly" feel of being able to successfully and safely navigate to a fix consisting of the intersection of VOR radials or even a VOR radial and ADF bearing.

Sure GPS is the "wave of the future", but even today VORs are still very much the backbone of the aviation navigation infrastructure.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[MichaelSmith]

Thats aviation for you.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[dangitman]

There are no operational Galileo satellites in orbit yet.

I bet that makes Galileo so mad that he's spinning in his... uh... satellite coffin. Yeah, that's the ticket. That guy was really out there, you see.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[ffflala]

I would think that the line of sight principle and limits of VHF range both would make VOR completely impractical for navigation at sea. You'd have to dot the ocean with VOR platforms.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Celestial navigation + dead reckoning, although nowhere near 200m it's great for Ocean passages.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Cell phone tower trilateralization (sp?). i. e., using the non-GPS location services that various carriers offer. Obviously no good in the deep ocean, but last dive trip I was on, the crew were making cell calls left and right and you could see the tower on land from the boat. Might as well have been a lighthouse.

Ironically, however, the guaranteed position precision is only about 1km for cell trilateration. Not as good as Loran's 200m.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[CompMD]

Inertial navigation is only useful if you have reference points. Also, AHRS sensors aren't perfect, require calibration, and require some math (i.e. Kalman filtering) to be useful.

With the FAA's NextGen mission, NDBs and VORs could be things of the past. As of right now, NDBs are getting shut down. VORs are only really useful if you have a chart anyway and know which one you are tuned into. DMEs are part of VORs and again are only useful if you have a chart and know which VOR/DME you are tuned into. ADFs are only useful for those who have them, I don't know of any aircraft built in the last 10 years that include an ADF. They are handy though, I used an ADF to listen to Cubs games, and could follow the needle to fly to Chicago. ILS systems are expensive and of limited use.

Everything you mentioned, except for GPS and LORAN, requires the user to have their own reference.

Re:One down, many more to go.

[viking80]

ADFs are handy though, I used an ADF to listen to Cubs games, and could follow the needle to fly to Chicago. ILS systems are expensive and of limited use.

I agree, and I still like to tune in the ADF to a destination radio station. Radio Luxembourg was always tuned in on trips to continental Europe. You were already in the mood on arrival.

Want to add that Galileo will work like GPS, and by (4)visual nav, I meant terrain following computer nav. together with (eveb course)inertial that works to any precision. Many cruise missiles use this.

Sunk cost

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in spite of $160M spent on modernizing LORAN stations over the past 10 years.

Econ 101: don't make decisions on the basis of sunk costs.

Re:Sunk cost

[Hurricane78]

Aaaand another saying that has never been proven in reality. (No, your anecdotes don’t count.)
Maybe you can get the Mythbusters to do it... if you find a way to make it explode. Just like the econo... damn...

Re:Sunk cost

[Hurricane78]

How can a trolling moderator be more obvious than with my above comment?? EPIC FAIL.

Re:Sunk cost

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in spite of $160M spent on modernizing LORAN stations over the past 10 years.

Econ 101: don't make decisions on the basis of sunk costs.

Business 101 - Boss will shoot new guy who walks in saying "You know that $160 million you've spent? Throw it out, it's garbage."

Re:Sunk cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Government 101 - Spend more money. Who cares! We didn't earn it anyway!

Re:Sunk cost

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the sumitter (or probably kdawson) didn't want to torpedo his own post by including such a lame pun.

-mobby_6kl

Re:Sunk cost

[Hurricane78]

What the FUCK? Is there some idiot with a grudge or what?

Metamoderators: Could you please take this moderator out and whip him with a spoon? Cause this is fuckin’ silly.

Re:Idiotic.

[jpmorgan]

No country wants to maintain them? What are you smoking?

The GPS system is launched and operated by the US Air Force, first and foremost for US military activities. It wasn't some magical pan-national committee that put the satellites into orbit and built the ground stations. And the USAF maintains them and modernizes them. If GPS goes offline, all those fancy GPS guided weapons go offline too.

As for redundancy... put two GPS receivers on your ship.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[LWATCDR]

"This is especially idiotic considering GPS satellites that are currently in orbit are beginning to fail, and no country wants the responsibility of modernizing them, or repairing them."
Okay...
1. The DOD depends on GPS and matains the network. So what are you talking about countries wanting to take responsibility for the GPS network? The US DOD does.
2. You do not repair or modernize GPS satellites... You replace them.
3. GPS is going to keep working until it is replaced with something else or the US stops being a nation.
"Further, what if a GPS receiver goes offline on a ship?"
You use the backup? You don't really think that a ship would only have one do you?
The reason to keep both was that many operators spent a lot of money on Loran and GPS was expensive. Now GPS is cheaper and more reliable than Loran.
Your arguments are along the lines of "We should keep paying for hitching posts on our streets so we can keep horses as a back up for cars."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Idiotic.

[Obfuscant]

This is especially idiotic considering GPS satellites that are currently in orbit are beginning to fail, and no country wants the responsibility of modernizing them, or repairing them.

Except the US.

So what happens when GPS doesn't work anymore?

Given the military use of GPS, that's unlikely.

Further, what if a GPS receiver goes offline on a ship?

If A GPS receiver goes offline on a ship, you turn on any of the leventy-dozen other GPS receivers on board, including the handheld you bought for a hundred dollars that outperforms the models available just five years ago.

You simply can't get the handheld performance from LORAN that you can from GPS, and it is no big loss for the US LORAN chains to be turned off.

Re:Idiotic.

[ivan_w]

[[citation needed]] - GPS sats are failing

Re:Priorities!!

[couchslug]

"Thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people die in Haiti due to a massive earthquake and we're talking about freaking LORAN-C??

Get some PRIORITIES!"

Haiti isn't worthy of discussion. It's tragic, there are lots of tragedies, but that a thing is tragic doesn't make it worth discussion in a tech forum.

Haiti is BTW a hopeless case, the people who live there maintain it so, and their choices aren't my concern. Go to an appropriate forum to whine about Haiti, or go there yourself ("PRIORITIES!") and help out.

I don't know ask sig hansen

[Joe The Dragon]

I don't know ask sig hansen

More USCG and DHS waste

[lyinhart]

This isn't terribly shocking. Both agencies also wasted millions of tax payer dollars on the failed "Deep Water" initiative, which sought to modernize some of the Coast Guard's old vessels: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/17/60minutes/main2823448.shtml

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong.

There are currently 4 (FOUR) different GPS networks orbiting this planet, with another planned to be launched by a private conglomerate in the next 10 years.

The US and its DoD have nothing to do with 3 of them (possibly 2).

GPS will only keep working as long as the satellites have power, arent shot down, or fail in any other way (and many of them are).

Satellites are expensive, to build, launch and maintain. There is more than just physical maintainence, and i would expect a slashdotter to know that he (and I) are speaking of software.

Killing LORAN, a cheap, reliable system that doesnt require vulnerable satellites, is a stupid and idiotic move. since you seemingly know nothing about either system, you shouldnt speak.

Re:Priorities!!

[mschuyler]

Excuse me, fella. This is /., not the Red Cross. Do you really expect us to discuss news stories on here? Why not Reid's remarks about Obama, the Massachussetts senate race, or what ever will Conan O'Brien do now, or your mama's corn bread recipe? Because they are largely irrelevant. You wanna talk earthquakes, go where they are discussed.

Complimentary Systems

[Anonymous Coward]

What a complimentary system sounds like: "My, what a nice position. That lat/long looks so good on you."

Of course, such a system would only be useful as a complement.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

also, recievers are not cheap. many ships, especially smaller privately held ones, DO only have a SINGLE reciever.

A drop of piss in the bucket

[east coast]

This is in spite of $160M spent on modernizing LORAN stations over the past 10 years.

Do you know how many times that the government shits out every day on projects they know will probably never see the light of day? It's so bad at this point that I find 160 million into a 10 year old functional project (open to the public, no less) to be the bargain rate.

Satellite versus groundstation

[sabre86]

My main worry about this that the GPS system has a particular set of vulnerabilities that either don't exist or are less significant for a terrestrial system. Solar flares and other space environment risks come to mine, as does capture via hacking and attack via interceptor satellites.

Re:Satellite versus groundstation

[gordguide]

" ... My main worry about this that the GPS system has a particular set of vulnerabilities that either don't exist or are less significant for a terrestrial system. Solar flares and other space environment risks come to mine, as does capture via hacking and attack via interceptor satellites. ..."

The particular set of vulnerabilities for Loran-C is it's only available in coastal areas and the Great Lakes.

Maybe there are risks from solar events, but since at least half the GPS satellites are on the "dark side" of the Earth at any given time, it's probably more along the lines of an annoyance than a full service outage. You can always use the Russian sats as a backup, or use a GPS that tracks both.

Capture via hacking, and attack by interceptor satellites, means there's a war on, or it's about to start. A very big one.

Head to shore, now. That should be no problem at all, since if you're operating an ocean-going vessel, you already know how to navigate the old way. Right?

Re:Satellite versus groundstation

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a coastie, this is old news, but as far as vulnerability goes, you are mighty mistaken imo.

Look up Attu Station, Alaska. I have a friend who was stationed there for a year. Maybe 15 people on the island, which is the only american soil invaded by japanese forces during wwII. (Pearl Harbor aside)

Weird, a Loran-C station...

station tahoe pipeline will be gone

[fearanddread]

Coasties all know that the way to get a sweet station assignment like Station Lake Tahoe is to spend a year in attu. I wonder what the new pipeline will be.

$160M over 10 years?

[barzok]

$16M/year is nothing to the government, they've just been keeping it on life support for 10 years. Even if SA is turned back on, GPS will be accurate enough for commercial navigation and the system proven reliable enough. Let LORAN-C pass.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes! yes! make the opposition shut up! it's the guaranteed victory!

(and the first resort of those with no reasonable argument. nothing you said makes the idea of GPS being superior in every conceivable way untrue.)

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[The End Of Days]

Receivers aren't cheap? Shit, they give out GPS units in cereal boxes these days. They're cheap as hell. They're so cheap they aren't even a differentiating feature on phones anymore, just expected.

LORAN has better *repeatability* than *accuracy*

[Gavin Scott]

At least my recollection is that while the absolute accuracy of LORAN isn't nearly as good as GPS, it actually had better repeatability (i.e. the ability to return tomorrow to that fishing spot you found today) than at least pre-DGPS/WAAS GPS did.

Today's modern GPS systems and supplemental accuracy aids probably make this moot, but it's a major reason why LORAN has survived as long into the GPS era as it did.

G.

I'm surprised this is still around

[JoshuaZ]

Frankly, I'm surprised this is still around. Everyone I know has switched over from LORAN-C to GPS or other systems at least a decade ago. Even aside from the cost of maintaining the system to the government, the system is clearly inferior to GPS. For one, since the towers are much lower compared to satelites, it is much easier to have your signal blocked. The system isn't nearly as accurate (as mentioned in the summary) and is also in many contexts much more likely to simply fail. The system also doesn't work if one is far away from land. This is an extremely reasonable cost-saving measure.

RE:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignorant GPS, LAAS WAAS and DGPS *are* GPS (Milstar) - it fails - they fail - [X-class solar flare - done - many others (ref needed but I'm too p**sed)]
Galileo - the *zen* PNT system - wait for it - they can't even get the orbital ephemeris figured out
GLONASS - ok - thanks to the Indians
Baidu - Ha - for now
Inertial - no intrinsic place reference - NO time reference
Visual - ever hear of IFR?
VOR, DME, etc - you *really* haven't been paying attention - funding, maintenance, certs, and so forth.
6. - WTF? OK we just us sailing ships - that worked out well - and should work *forever*.

Kill LORAN?

[steveha]

The Coast Guard is going to "kill" LORAN? This choice of words worries me. What if LORAN decides to strike first, out of self-defense?

"LORAN", "SKYNET", both are short words with an 'N' in them. COINCIDENCE? I think not!

steveha

Re:Kill LORAN?

[MartinSchou]

It gets worse. Neither word looks like "IRAQ", "AL QUEDA" or "TERRORISM".

Obviously they are trying to hide something.

Re:Kill LORAN?

[Anonymous Coward]

And by strike first i mean reroute all ships to one harbor creating worldwide shortage of everithing and... sorry, going back to work now

Re:Idiotic.

[Martin Blank]

In my pilot weather briefings, I routinely get notice that one of the satellites (GPS-25, I think) is out of service, and I think GPS-30 showed up in a briefing recently, too.

That's NUTS

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Hear hear.

What bugs me is this statement from the Coast Guard:

If a single, domestic national system to back up GPS is identified as being necessary, the Department of Homeland Security will complete an analysis of potential backups to GPS. The continued active operation of Loran-C is not necessary to advance this evaluation.

They're studying whether they NEED a backup so they'll turn off the only current backup before the study is finished or (if required) the replacement backup is deployed?

That's NUTS! What happens if GPS is compromised between the decommissioning of LORAN-C and the deployment of the hypothetical replacement?

Also: Why deploy a DIFFERENT backup and make all the users buy ANOTHER device when they ALREADY HAVE LORAN-C equipment? Even if the equipment was FREE the cost of obtaining it and installing it, multiplied by the number of users, would be astronomical. Unless something damned cheap, built off some other deployed tech, is designed, the cost of maintaining LORAN-C would be a drop in the bucket.

Re:That's NUTS

[fast turtle]

Why deploy a DIFFERENT backup and make all the users buy ANOTHER device when they ALREADY HAVE LORAN-C equipment?

To sell, at an exhororant price, new equipment that some company designed to be incompatible with Loran-C and to fail after the warranty expires.

Re:That's NUTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, they didn't say anything about replacing it in the part you qouted. They could bring LORAN back online if necessary.

Re:That's NUTS

[SharpFang]

Also: Why deploy a DIFFERENT backup and make all the users buy ANOTHER device when they ALREADY HAVE LORAN-C equipment?

You're asking this? Seriously? Are you a communist or what?

Re:That's NUTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the dot-dash Morse code SOS stuff has also been discontinued too!

At least the backup method is still tracking the Stars, assuming one can see
them thru the smog due to global warming!:)

I wonder if there are any portable start trackers that are used in Navigation?

Re:That's NUTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again.

LORAN-C is old hardware on old towers. It was originally slated for decommissioning in 2000, with it being delayed by Congress and special interests for one reason or another. $160M is a trivial amount for a supposed backup navigation system. LORAN is hard to maintain and expensive.

GPS is too far ingrained into the US infrastructure now to be turned off. Too many US users at the Federal level use it, and only use the non-encrypted signals at code-phase, for it to be turned off. For heaven's sake: WWV uses GPS to discipline their cesium standard at Ft Collins, CO.

Civil systems use GPS. Public entities use GPS. Private businesses use GPS. The military uses GPS. In fact, a lot of grunts on the ground have cheap handhelds instead of the high-dollar double-throwdown military encrypted gear. It's smaller and easier to operate!.

The US isn't going to turn offf or disable GPS anytime soon, because the public backlash in the US would be too strong. That commitment published by Al Gore when SA was disabled was real, folks, even if it's self-serving.

GPS isn't just a US tool. It's too widely used.

Re:That's NUTS

[Ungrounded Lightning]

GPS is too far ingrained into the US infrastructure now to be turned off.

Who said anything about the US turning off GPS? There are LOTS of ways for it to fail.

For starters, consider:

  - hostile jamming of the well-known signals. (All those clients get disrupted. How convenient for somebody who wants to attack the US infrastructure.)

  - "sanding" a significant number of the satellites into vapor or otherwise nonfunctionality - either due to hostile activity or meteorite activity.

  - multiple satellite failures due to a multi-century solar flare event.

I could go on.

Not A suprise

[ddxexex]

I visited Cape Race, NL which has both a LORAN-C station and a DGPS station. Looking at the two I don't blame the USCG for getting rid of LORAN-C, the LORAN-C has a nice & large radio tower, as well as a giant room with huge motors spinning around, mainframes that look like they're from the 60s. And since it's so far up North, you have to heat the room in the winter and cool it in the summer. On the contrast, the DGPS site was a couple of racks in a trailer. and 4 6m-ish towers around it. The heating cooling costs are much less and most of the maintanance is just scraping the snow/ice off the towers when it snows :-). Combine this wit the fact that no-one really uses LORAN-C anymore, it's not hard to see why

What about eLoran?

[imadork]

Loran-C may be obsolete, but the enhanced eLoran does make for a good backup system to GPS. It's accurate to about 10 meters or so with modern receivers.
No, Galileo and Glonass are not good backups to GPS, because they are also satellite-based and rely on the reception of weak microwave signals, just like GPS. Those signals can (and do) get jammed, and can even be spoofed under the right conditions. Differential GPS or other GPS augmentation systems aren't even backups at all, as they rely on the main GPS signals being present in order to operate. Loran-C and eLoran are land-based, long wave signals that are very hard to jam. It is most useful in places and under conditions where GPS has problems. And in spite of how popular GPS is, there are definitely areas where it has problems.
The UK and other countries have committed to eLoran for the next 10 to 15 years, so it's not like Loran-based systems are totally going away. They see the benefit of having a truly redundant positioning system, why doesn't the US?

Re:What about eLoran?

[vonux]

I can only speculate, but one reason the UK and other countries might see the benefit in keeping their own Loran stations running while the US does not, is that unlike the US, they do not own and control GPS.

How about

[Ungrounded Lightning]

200m is good for what ?
- Retrieve a crab/lobstrer pot ?
- Retrieve a Man Overboard ?
- Fetch a gill net ?
- Meet with a sister ship during a seine net operation ? ... No.. lemme tell you.. 200m is NOT good enough !

How about:

- Find a port when you're somewhere random in an ocean?

I'd be HAPPY to live with a 200 meter error if I'm trying to, say, get the Golden Gate Bridge to show over the horizon in time to beat a squall line into San Francisco Bay. Or to know if I'm FAR ENOUGH OFF the west coast of North America that I won't be blown onto it before a storm I can't outrun blows by.

Re:How about

[the_other_chewey]

[...]Find a port when you're somewhere random in an ocean?

LORAN is pretty much useless for this. What almost everyone here seems to be missing is:

LORAN coverage is very limited.

There's e.g. none at all on the southern hemisphere, and in the northern it isn't much more than
a coastal navigation help either.

Have a look at the map.

LORAN is in no way a useful backup for GPS except in a very small part of the oceans.

Re:How about

[Ungrounded Lightning]

LORAN coverage is very limited. ... Have a look at the map.

LORAN is in no way a useful backup for GPS except in a very small part of the oceans.Look closer at that map.

Take a closer look at that map. It goes out a goodly distance from the coasts.

They say that, in an airplane, you can do anything you want as long as you don't do it close to the ground. Much the same is true for boats and the shore.

If you're really far out in an ocean you can get back to a continent by sailing east or west until you pick up the shore. (If you've lost track of which set of continents is the desired target you're already in serious trouble.) Trips to another hemisphere from temperate latitudes are major undertakings. Northern hemisphere boaters tend to stay there most of their lives.

No sextant? You can approximate your latitude without a time-hack and even without a protractor you can hack up an instrument to get your latitude within a few degrees with a piece of string, a weight, and a random piece of something like a book or a cutting board. Get roughly to the right latitude (so you will get roughly to the desired port) use the instrument to compensate for north/south drift from currents, and sail east or west until you're within range of LORAN.

It's when you get near the shore that you're in trouble if you don't have something better than eyeballs - especially if you end up there after dark. LORAN can give you enough warning that you can safely rig the boat for unattended sailing and get some shut-eye without worrying about running aground when you find the continent. If GPS is down, LORAN is gone, and you don't have a sextant, a chronometer (or a radio to get a time broadcast), good charts, and a lot of training in celestial navigation, you'd better put out the sea anchor after dark. This about doubles your trip time so you'd better have lots of fresh water and provisions.

Re:How about

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for adding some practical common sense to this discussion. Anyone who has ever been out at sea in the fog (I have) is quite happy to have 200m accuracy. It could very well mean the difference between life and death.

Re:How about

[Anonymous Coward]

No look at the map again, it certainly is useful within every country's EEZ, which is the area where commercial/sport fishing boats are conducting their fishing operations.

Lexx?

[machine321]

Wasn't Kai the last of the LORAN-C?

Get ready for network disruption.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Loran-C has been used for distributing TDM network clocking by at least one major long distance telephone carrier, before they all switched over to GPS. I wonder if they got all the equipment converted (or switched to SONET or later non-TDM packet-based stuff)?

Some boxes referencing to Loran-C and some to GPS would work so well that the omission might not be noticed. Until the Loran-C shuts down and the boxes start to lose sync. The resulting frame slips would make little "clicks" in any legacy phone connections. But data traffic could get hit big time.

Re:Get ready for network disruption.

[Woldscum]

As far as MCI/Worldcom/UUNET we installed Loran PRS (Primary Reference Source) and SRS (Secondary Reference Source) for the initial OC-48 SONET build out in 1993. We swapped them all out for new units that were GPS by 1996 and upgraded ALL of them yet again in 1999 for Y2K. Then about 6 or 7 years ago the manufacture (Datum) went out of business. Spares were unavailable. So all equipment was replaced yet again. Losing Loran will not be an issue. It was supposed to die in the late 1990s and has been kept on life support for almost 15 years.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[afidel]

The day someone starts blowing up a significant chunk of the ~30 GPS satellites or ~30 GLONASS satellites is the day that GPS accuracy no longer matters because modern society is ending. Attacking GPS is attacking the US military, attacking GLONASS is attacking Russia AND India. It's seriously NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Again if neither system is being maintained it means 3 of the worlds top economies can no longer afford to maintain a major component of their transportation network, aka the end of civilization.

uhm, yeah, really idotic... NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like loran-C vs GPS, maybe you should keep dial-up ISP in case your broadband internet begins to fail?
Yeah, thought so, you don't have a dial-up ISP anymore do you?

GPS is a system, not a single thing. The USAF (the ones that have the responsibility to modernize them) has invested in system wide redundancy (right now 31 satellites are active, even though only 24 are required). Why didn't they deorbit the extra satellites, it was for functional redundancy of course. ;^)

What if a GPS receiver goes offline on a ship, perhaps they should turn on their backup GPS receiver (instead of being forced to buy an additional eLORAN receiver as a backup). Just like how you might not remember the dial-up backup number your ISP gave you, operators on the ship might not remember the how to operate the ancient LORAN-C reciever.

At some point in time something becomes more trouble than it's worth and that is LORAN-C, new applications can't use the old mechanism (e.g., streaming video through dialup, 200m vs 10m accuracy), and the "backup" just isn't really a backup anymore, it's just a relic...

Just posting anon so my karma doesn't get trounced by responding to a troll...

Re:uhm, yeah, really idotic... NOT

[Pentium100]

Just like loran-C vs GPS, maybe you should keep dial-up ISP in case your broadband internet begins to fail?
Yeah, thought so, you don't have a dial-up ISP anymore do you?

Well, I can connect to the internet using my cell phone (PC->bluetooth->phone->UMTS>internet), so I have a backup. I can also try to connect to one of the many WiFi networks around me. If that fails, I still have my dial-up modem, but I don't know if the telephone company still provides dial-up service (it used to provide a dial up service where you just paid for the minute, but no monthly fee). OTOH, if my aDSL connection failed it would probably mean that the dial-up wouldn't work too, because they both go to the same phone company.

Also, I could get a 64/64kbps connection from my cable TV provider if my main connection was not working for a long time.

What, it's still there?

[m.dillon]

I've been a sailor most of my life. We haven't used Loran C seriously for almost two decades. Most boats don't even have Loran receivers any more. It's GPS all the way whether you are a casual sailor or a commercial ship captain. In fact, large commercial ships are required to use GPS and special transceivers these days (the boater's equivalent of GPS-based aircraft systems). If backup matters one could pack a RDF or maybe even a sextant, but frankly GPS has not failed even once from the day it became available to boaters. Besides, Loran C pretty much only works near the coastline of major industrialized nations (or did)... it wouldn't be all that helpful if you were lost at sea.

The coast guard should have abandoned Loran C years ago.

-Matt

Re:What, it's still there?

[Anonymous Coward]

If backup matters one could pack a RDF or maybe even a sextant...

Amen. If you're going to maintain a backup piece of electronics just in case your GPS receiver fails, your best option is probably a cheap handheld receiver with fresh batteries and some paper charts - and definitely not LORAN-C.

The GPS satellites aren't going anywhere, so the only point of failure is in the equipment aboard ship.

Re:What, it's still there?

[Anonymous Coward]

The coast guard should have abandoned Loran C years ago.

-Matt

They have tried, many, many, many times. I won't hold my breath that this time will be any more successful than the last.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[plover]

LORAN-C towers are a hell of a lot more vulnerable than a satellite constellation. Have you ever visited one? Some of them are located in the most god-awful corners of the planet. They're set in woods, swamps, mountains, and other remote places. Anybody who wanted to disable one badly enough could do it with a small group of people, because there's no more than a couple of token guards present. But nobody on the planet apart from a few governments or billion dollar corporations can touch the satellites, which are located in MEOs, not LEOs.

I will give you cheap: the cost of LORAN-C is a fraction of the cost of GPS. But to what end? Why continue to pour any more of my money into a technology that is NOBODY's primary navigational system? Right now it's no more than an inaccurate backup system, a job it was not built to perform. And it will never become more than that.

LORAN-C is being used and maintained only for a handful of commercial shipping concerns. Nobody in the general public uses it (if you tell me you have a LORAN-C based TomTom on your car's dashboard, I'm calling you a liar in advance.) If the shipping companies think that LORAN-C is worth it as a backup, then they can damn well pony up the money to keep it going as a private company. Otherwise, pull the plug and auction off the towers today. We don't need it.

We don't need no stinking Backup

[StickANeedleInMyEye]

eLoran being used by UK - sucks to be a Brit in US waters.

Well....

[RoboRay]

At least we've still got Omega.

D'oh!!!

Anyone got a sextant I can borrow?

Damnit, they can't kill Loran!

[Tetsujin]

If they kill Loran, who's going to pilot the White Doll??

Re:Idiotic.

[MichaelSmith]

As for redundancy... put two GPS receivers on your ship.

Give every person on board a cheap GPS reciever to carry around.

Re:Idiotic.

[MichaelSmith]

In my pilot weather briefings, I routinely get notice that one of the satellites (GPS-25, I think) is out of service, and I think GPS-30 showed up in a briefing recently, too.

Yeah there is a data service called RAIM which delivers real time GPS quality information.

Concorde Fallacy - Gambler's Logic.

[tjstork]

you might as well rename the Concorde Fallacy - let's forget that we lost the house and the car, and remember that we can get 50 cents on each dollar invested!

Re:Concorde Fallacy - Gambler's Logic.

[dangitman]

you might as well rename the Concorde Fallacy - let's forget that we lost the house and the car, and remember that we can get 50 cents on each dollar invested!

You might, but that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. In what way are the two remotely similar?

Re:Concorde Fallacy - Gambler's Logic.

[tjstork]

You might, but that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. In what way are the two remotely similar?

Both argue to some extent that past history should not determine investment advice.

Re:Concorde Fallacy - Gambler's Logic.

[dangitman]

Both argue to some extent that past history should not determine investment advice.

That's completely incorrect. The "Concorde fallacy" states the opposite: that past history should determine future investment.

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[MichaelSmith]

The Australians who protested against the construction of our LORAN station can now count their activities as a Job Well Done.

Re:Priorities!!

[Le Marteau]

What, exactly, are we supposed to say about Haiti? Would that not be about a 10 post thread?

Both Glonass and GPS are space based and share...

[Anonymous Coward]

Glonass cannot truly be considered a viable backup for GPS since both are space based and subject to space based attacks from aliens, or from changing laws of physics, or from massive asteroid attacks.

Re:Idiotic.

[steveha]

As for redundancy... put two GPS receivers on your ship.

Suppose that someone shoots down enough GPS satellites to disable the GPS system. What then? I'm in favor of some sort of backup system.

It's difficult to shoot down satellites, but not impossible.

That said, I have to assume that ships could still navigate the old-fashioned way, with an sextant, a chronometer, and some charts. You can automate the calculations, so you just take the readings with the sextant and put the numbers in to a computer program. It is even possible to automate the whole process, although nobody seems to bother anymore in these days of GPS.

steveha

didn't we learn our lesson?

[elvesrus]

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/12/05/2350233.shtml

GPS failed in August in the South Pacific !

[Anonymous Coward]

... there is always a sextant on my boat - I just cruised across the south pacific and my main RAYMARINE GPS failed TWICE for 30 minutes - granted I was inthe middle of the south pacific - good news is the autopilot kept my heading regardless - so GPS is not the end all.

now how about AIS ? now that's worth a talk since now you can broadcast as a private vessels ;-)

NMEA 0183 here we come !

SV Carinhthia currently in NZ

200 Meters sounds pretty good compared to...

[the_rajah]

Loran A that I was using around 1970. In mid-Atlantic you couldn't get signals during the day and accuracy was around 1 nm, but it certainly was nice to have.

Re:200 Meters sounds pretty good compared to...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 nanometer?

Holy crumbling pears Batman, that's accurate!

Re:200 Meters sounds pretty good compared to...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 nanometre is pretty accurate :-)

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[Shakrai]

Again if neither system is being maintained it means 3 of the worlds top economies can no longer afford to maintain a major component of their transportation network, aka the end of civilization.

Yeah, it'd be a shame if our country couldn't maintain a major component of our transportation network.....

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[Shakrai]

At the time of the missile attack, the LORAN station was under the command of Lt. Ernest DelBueno, who panicked and attempted to evacuate his American crew by calling in a U.S. Navy transport helicopter from Helicopter Combat Support Squadron Four (HC-4), abandoning the Italians on his base, and in the community on the other end of the island.

Wow, way to live up to your uniform there buddy......

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[Shakrai]

LORAN-C towers are a hell of a lot more vulnerable than a satellite constellation. Have you ever visited one? Some of them are located in the most god-awful corners of the planet.

New Jersey? ;)

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[speedlaw]

unless of course you have verizon. then that cheap as chips chip is not available to you-unless you pay 160 per year.

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[fdrebin]

Slightly OT:

My mother was one of the people rescued by the CG in the 1937 floods referenced in the CG article. You can be sure that *I* am glad that she was... I sure wouldn't be here if she hadn't been rescued.

/F

Better performer in poorer RF conditions?

[Nefarious Wheel]

...They are shutting LORAN-C off because it's expensive to maintain a separate system, especially one that is not nearly as accurate as GPS, and is at risk of terrestrial attack...

But -- isn't the Loran C low frequency operation better able to punch a signal through periods of poor RF "weather"? During heavy solar storm activity (sunspots, peaking each 11 years) I hear it's sometimes kind of hard to get signals through, especially the S or K band stuff used for satellite communications. I remember during the Pioneer satellite days that it was sometimes quite a job for us to pull the signal out of the noise (clever use of FFT mostly). Satellites don't have huge power budgets. Larger antennae help, but you're still looking at a few watts at most.

And a submarine could still use Loran C if its inertial guidance system goes out of whack, without surfacing, I think, as I believe you can acquire a low frequency signal more easily at depth. In a worst-case situation, such as the massive EMP hit of a nuclear weapons discharge, I'd think that Loran would be back on line before you could read a satellite. Mind, we'd have worse problems, but I'd think the military would need to consider this sort of thing.

I guess it ain't sexy 'cause it's analog.

Re:Better performer in poorer RF conditions?

[ravenshrike]

It ain't sexy cause Obammy's trying to squeeze blood out of a stone to shore up the deficit

Re:Better performer in poorer RF conditions?

[plover]

The sun affects communication with the satellites most often when the satellite is in a direct line between the receiver and the sun. Since the GPS constellation has coverage that provides for six satellites at almost all times, the temporary loss of one means a temporary reduction in accuracy, but not a total loss of location. The sunspot cycle can impact overall reception, but again this primarily results in a momentary loss of signal, not a permanent or extended loss.

Unlike a television uplink (a typical Ku band user), GPS doesn't require a continual high-reliability feed sending megabytes per second to be of use. Periodic reception of a few small packets is adequate for all but the highest precision uses. And RAIM technology can be used to detect when a signal is inadequate for a precision approach, for example, and to warn the pilot not to trust the GPS nav unit at this time.

Submarines can't receive LORAN-C when submerged. ELF is the only way to communicate with them, and we dismantled our only ELF transmitter five years ago.

And EMP pulses are like any other energy source - they fall off as the distance cubed grows. GPS satellites are in a 20,000 km orbit, so for an EMP to affect them it would have to be literally earth-shattering. At that point the GPS satellites would simply be among the last of the man-made objects to care.

Re:Better performer in poorer RF conditions?

[Calinous]

All radio frequency is absorbed by sea water - it's just that lower frequencies are absorbed less, so you could receive a low (or very low, or ultra low, or whatever) at higher depths.

Re:Better performer in poorer RF conditions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even during high solar activity, resulting in scintillation of the ionosphere... the primary problem of degraded GPS positioning from such events... it's not so much a problem with getting a GPS signal through the atmosphere, as it is a degradation of positioning accuracy.

And, most submarines are stellar physical systems for inertial navigation. They need to refresh their fix occasionally, but they can get a fix as needed without revealing their positions. Nice try.

LORAN-C has been slated for decomissioning for over 10 years. Long before Selective Availability was turned off, GPS was sufficiently accurate using L1 code-phase positioning to serve as a replacement. When SA was removed, because the USAF had found a way to deny reliable positioning in theatre-sized arenas instead of degrading it worldwide, the US pledged to not use SA again. Wide-area augmentation has largely supplanted DGPS for corrrections, especially in the CONUS. Most receivers made today have onboard WAAS capability already. (A rule of thumb is that simple augmentation, e.g., DGPS or WAAS, is good for an order of magnitude enhancement in accuracy; with unaugmented GPS accuracies generally running at about 6 meters RMS, one can easily expect better than 1 meter horizontal accuracies, and better than 4m vertical accuracies, using augmented GPS systems.)

The $160M LORAN upgrade funds were to keep transmitters running that were already failing, and to repair towers in harsh marine environments that were in trouble, from going down completely. Compared to some other costs, that's petty cash.

Re:Idiotic.

[phantomcircuit]

If there's someone shooting down US military satellites you're probably better off lost at sea.

So, lets say you need a 10 Mhz Reference

[NuttyBee]

And your GPS satellites got blasted out of orbit or a solar storm wipes out all of those satellite resources?

Your SONET networks and cell phone stuff are gonna need it. Your 8-VSB exiter may as well. Single Freq. Networks.

Where do you get an accurate reference from?

WWV? I haven't seen anything other than a GPS reference at any telco facility/cell site. If there ever is a loss of GPS, it's gonna be interesting.

Re:So, lets say you need a 10 Mhz Reference

[molo]

WWV or a frequency standard. Something like a HP/Agilent 5071A: http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/product.jspx?pn=5071A&NEWCCLC=USeng

-molo

Re:Both Glonass and GPS are space based and share.

[CohibaVancouver]

Glonass cannot truly be considered a viable backup for GPS since both are space based and subject to space based attacks from aliens, or from changing laws of physics, or from massive asteroid attacks.

These are all incredibly important points, but it's important to remember that terrestrial-based systems such as Loran run exactly the same risks.

The end of an era

[thethibs]

It's the end of an era I guess. This story throws me back to 1964, wandering the North Atlantic aboard HMSS Hudson, doing marine geophysical surveys.

When it came to positioning, we left nothing to chance; we had the requisite equipment (pre-computer), tables and charts for LORAN, DECCA, CONSOL and the brand-new, edge of the technical envelope, VLF. Sometimes we used a few of them together, with transparent overlays giving a very small polygon containing, somewhere within it, our little ship. We liked to brag that we could pin down our position within its length.

One of my favourite duties was radar watch and navigation, especially late at night, lights dimmed, phosphorous glow from both the radar screen and the froth on the waves ahead. Transferring readings from the radios and charting our course made me an integral part of the process, acutely aware of the immensity of the ocean around us and challenged to keep us from losing our way. I can still smell the mixture of diesel, coffee and ammonia (from the weather fax machine) that permeated the bridge.

Now, with the retiring of LORAN, it's finally all gone, replaced by an LCD display your grandmother can use. Sad.

Re:Idiotic.

[NormalVisual]

It's difficult to shoot down satellites, but not impossible [washingtonpost.com].

Note that was a satellite in low-Earth orbit. It's a *lot* harder to shoot down something in geosynchronous orbit like a GPS satellite.

Re:Idiotic.

[NormalVisual]

Okay, correcting myself - the GPS constellation isn't in geosynchronous orbit, but it's a damn sight higher up than LEO. :-)

Re:Priorities!!

[kd5zex]

I could be interested in the corn bread recipe.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[plover]

New Jersey? ;)

Like I said ...

Anyway, I was thinking of the Baudette, Minnesota tower. It is truly in a deservedly ignored corner of the planet. It is located at the northern end of one of the largest peat bog swamps in America. Here's a look at the tower itself: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=48.7125,-94.595&ie=UTF8&ll=48.613853,-94.55497&spn=0.006157,0.01222&z=17 From Wikipedia: "The "Big Bog" is composed mostly of wetlands and is larger than the state of Rhode Island. It is also almost entirely unpopulated, except for the town of Waskish along Highway 72. Waskish consists of about a hundred people who live entirely off pulp-wood sales, a gas station and a bar.

If they take down the tower I will definitely miss the light at the top, as I can see it almost immediately after I leave Waskish, and it stays with me for the next 20 miles. At 2AM that blinking red light is pretty much the only companion on that road, apart from the occasional deer, bear, fox, or the snores of the spouse.

So technically, I suppose I use LORAN-C more than most drivers. :-)

Re:LORAN has better *repeatability* than *accuracy

[thogard]

LORAN is still around today since its used as a clock to calibrate some old military gear. The fact that it is useful as a backup system when solar flares mess up GPS isn't a major point now that most LORAN gear has been removed, is not longer functional or the operator can't remember how to use it.

Re:Idiotic.

[waddleman]

It's planned but it's behind schedule and over budget. Also, reports in May 2009 are placing expectations that the GPS constellation will fall below 24 satellites with a possibility of loss of accuracy.

Re:Both Glonass and GPS are space based and share.

[ravenshrike]

Micrometeorite barrage perhaps, but an asteroid attack is very unlikely to succeed without also killing every human on earth.

Re:Both Glonass and GPS are space based and share.

[FlyByPC]

Ah, yes -- but Loran-C stations are no doubt being phased out due to their comparative vulnerability to raptor attacks. Just ask Randall Munroe!

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[Dun Malg]

Yeah, it'd be a shame if our country couldn't maintain a major component of our transportation network.....

Not comparable. The feds warned them for several years that the bridge was dangerous. Like all of our interstate highway system, maintenance and construction is the responsibility of the states. The bridge in question was the responsibility of the Minnesota DOT. Sure, if you left the GPS constellation in the care of the various states' DOT offices, we'd soon have no GPS... but they ain't fuckin' in charge of it, the Air Force is. The Air Force isn't going to pretend their satellites will magically last forever.

Re:Idiotic.

[tyldis]

Heck, even most satellites launched these days use GPS instead of doppler and ranging measurements. Not that they ever used LORAN-C, but it ought to demonstrate that nobody believes GPS will be gone any time soon.

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[Dun Malg]

Also, if you have some free time, consider asking your congressperson to give the USCG more $$.

Better to ask them why we operate two navies, 1 and a half armies, and 2 3/4 air forces. Our military organization has gotten to its current state through idiotic "fiefdom building" rather than an actual analysis of what we need to conduct military operations efficiently.

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have them ask the big O for some bailout money.. I mean, they will have to stop working to get any assistance but I'm sure they can do that.. Then in 10 years they will be 10 times the size of the Navy with 50 times the funding and all the swabbies will have their LES take-home slashed so that these guys can keep an old system up and running long after it's run it's course, so to speak...

What happened to eLORAN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to eLORAN? [http://www.loran.org/ILAArchive/eLoran%20Definition%20Document/eLoran%20Definition%20Document-1.0.pdf]

I thought GPS systems were prone to jamming, sunspots, etc and LORAN would provide a backup. [http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/wide-awake/wide-awake-with-no-back-9168] LORAN, unlike GPS, has high power transmitters and low frequency allocations which made jamming less likely.

sextant, chronometer, compass ... and a slide rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Such solar "hiccups" have happened several times since the middle of last century. Some destroyed equipment on the ground -- and at those energies, nothing in orbit is likely to survive intact.

Well, even the ground (e.g. LORAN) equipment could (would eventually) be fried, so don't you think that only safe fall back technology in navigation is pre-electronic, classic astronomical and geomagnetic one? IMHO, we should use our improved and accumulated knowledge of materials, planet Earth and heavens above to construct better, yet still robust, aids for "passive" navigation.

Excuses, excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Again if neither system is being maintained it means 3 of the worlds top economies can no longer afford to maintain a major component of their transportation network, aka the end of civilization.

Well, my good friend, we had quite a few ends of civilizations in our history, but we are still pretty much around. Certainly you don't propose we all just lay down on the ground and die if one would happens again? If there is a way to save some useful accomplishments of a civilization past its end, I am all for it.

Loran and Decca

[pehrs]

Loran is pretty similar in capabilities and techonology to DECCA, which was widely deployed in Europe. There are some differences in the implementation, but both gives roughly the same precision. The Decca system up here was turned off 1999/2000, as it wasn't considered cost efficient anymore compared to GPS. Decca as I remember it had a number of rather glaring flaws when using it for navigation:

1: Low precision (several hundreds of meters)
2: Varying precision (Depending on the distance and position compared to the masts)
3: Initialization problems (had to be started at a know position, entering the wrong starting location would give you incorrect data)
4: Unwieldy equipment
5: Energy consuming
6: General user-unfriendlyness (you had to be an engineer and take a 2 week course to figure out the equipment we carried on the ships)

Frankly I don't see the need for Decca anymore. If you are in a ship large enough to use Decca you have DGPS anyway. If GPS Is knocked out you go by Radar. If GPS and Radar are knocked out you most likely don't have any Decca system working.

On the navy side it's obviously nice with passive navigational aids (unlike Radar that makes you a neat target). However, a large antenna that has to be in a fixed position is not exactly a hard target for an ARM (Anti-Radiation Missile)... Which means the navy trains to navigate without such aids anyway.

Decca was an impressive system, but it's no longer competitive. Like analog TV we can use the wavelengths for better things. I am pretty sure the situation is the same with Loran.

GPS fragility

[fyngyrz]

it's unlikely that a significant portion of the satellites would be affected by any single event.

On the contrary. The GPS constellation consists of fast-orbiting spacecraft. Period is about 11 hours. So all that must happen is an event that lasts 11 hours and has sufficient energy to do the job. The reserve sats (block IIR) orbit at the same rate; they'd be just as fried as the block II and block IIA sats.

For GPS to work, you need a minimum of three working sats within LOS of the antenna; the position fix is determined from the downward intercept of three spheres centered on the sats. Anyone who is depending on this, and suddenly loses it, may be in serious trouble. And it's not all that easy to whip out a sextant in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in your SUV (I'm really not sure how many expeditions actually carry a sextant, for that matter. I don't own one, and I do know how to use one.)

Here, take a look at this charmer, happened only 2 years ago: X-class flare. Pay particular attention to the duration.

Re:GPS fragility

[tlhIngan]

For GPS to work, you need a minimum of three working sats within LOS of the antenna; the position fix is determined from the downward intercept of three spheres centered on the sats. Anyone who is depending on this, and suddenly loses it, may be in serious trouble. And it's not all that easy to whip out a sextant in the cockpit of an aircraft, or in your SUV (I'm really not sure how many expeditions actually carry a sextant, for that matter. I don't own one, and I do know how to use one.)

Except, LORAN-C was only really good for miles along the coast (useless inland), and useless until you started approaching North America. It was probably most useful to the Coast Guard, and as a backup navigation for the ships crossing the oceans (which still use GPS as well as having sextants and chronometers to calculate lat/long).

Aircraft have other radionav as well - until ADS-B is fully deployed, GPS can be used to make approaches in certain cases (primarily the GPS being certified, *and* that there is sufficient satellites to make the approach - the minimum for GPS is 3, or 4 if you want vertical guidance, but aviation requires 5 or more to use it as part of the RAIM detection), but cannot be used as primary navigation. Hence the availability of alternate radio navigation (VORs, NDBs) and alternate navigation (inertial navigation). Modern commericial aviation avionics often combine the outputs to ensure that not one source is out of whack (e.g., uncalibrated INS, RNAV computer acting up (interference typically, onboard or external), GPS losing lock), so failure in one system doesn't lead the plane off course.

Joe in the SUV though, will have to pull out a map. Not a big deal. Though truckers and other industries (couriers, taxis, etc) often rely heavily on GPS to ensure timely delivery of goods and package tracking. This is where "turning off GPS" can harm the economy the most (just-in-time deliveries require goods to be delivered on time and coordination to ensure that).

Kinda Sad

[MBGMorden]

I've never used it on a boat but I went flying with another pilot once who had a LORAN unit installed in a Kitfox. I didn't even know what it was at the time, but as he explained it, it was much cheaper to install than a VOR receiver. We did a fair amount of flying in Florida navigating using that unit.

I know that with the prices of handheld GPS (for aviation, boating, and everything else) coming down a lot of such technologies may be shut off, but it still seems a bit sad to me. I love GPS and it certainly is easier to use, but I'd like to see some of the older technologies maintained at least as backups.

We have a sailboat

[Dunbal]

GPS is nice. Loran is a wonderderful back up. But you just can't beat a sextant and a nautical almanac, either. Just like it's a good idea to learn to add before using a calculator, it's a good idea to have some sort of low tech back up for navigation. You never know when your generator will die, and the batteries in your GPS will leak that same day, leaving you stranded.

If you do any real savings, a sextant (and knowing how to use it!) is a must.

Don't forget normal operational costs

[dammy]

$160M over 10 years was just the *updates* being done, that's not the operational budget for USCG operational budget. USCG spends $36M @ year for LORAN. Viewing how large of a job USCG has to do, I think I rather see the man power and $36M put to use for better port security then deal with some old fart in his $3000 boat whining about having to pay for a $99 pocket GPS unit that he will seldom use. LORAN was originally be stopped back in the 1990s, pity it wasn't.

even if they shut it down

[FudRucker]

they should at least keep it intact and in good working order and if they ever need it they can just start it back up with little or no effort. thats too much invested to just sell off as junk surplus equipment.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[LWATCDR]

When GPS first came out the receivers where not cheap. Now you are correct they are as cheap as chips.

Once again Slashdot is 6 moths too late

[harrytuttle777]

Actually the process has been going on for a LONG time. Slashdot readers are just finding out about it now because they are not 'in the know', and the DHS likes to play things close to the hip. There is such a thing as For Official Use Only. Just because the tax payers are footing the bill does not mean that they actually have any right to know what is going on in their Coast Guard. Here is the whole story. LORAN has been kept online until now because it provides a cost effective backup to GPS. The entire LORAN constellation can be kept up for much less then the price of 1 satellite, if someone should decide to take it out. GPS can be jammed fairly effectively. There are plenty of plans on the internet to do just that. My favorite one has a GPS jammers attached to a balloon that travels overhead. Thankfully our enemies are not very creative. LORAN uses a 1 MW Medium Frequency transmitters that are much harder (or would require much more power) to jam. The chain is being taken down because, President Obama needs a token cost cutting measure to give to the U.S. public in face of a massive budget increase. I am for saving money, but he is going about it in a misguided manner. The major cost from LORAN is not the equipment. It is the people you have to pay to staff LORAN stations in far off places like Attu. The problem is that he is not getting rid of these people. These people whose sole job is to take care of LORAN are being transfered into other jobs in the Coast Guard where they were not needed before, and are not needed now. There are about 100 individuals. If we could fire these individuals due to needs of the service, we could really save some money.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[LWATCDR]

GPS is the US DOD network the other networks are owned by other nations and while they are GPS like they have different names.
Second satellites are not very vulnerable. Only a small hand full of nations can attack them and it any of them did things would be very very bad...
Satellites are expensive but that costs is fixed you can not save any money on maintenance by keeping Loran working. So Loran being cheaper to keep in service isn't an issue. Loran recivers are much more expensive.
Yes I actually know a lot about both systems. I can not help it if you confused GLONASS and Galileo with GPS.
Galileo isn't in service yet.
You also have COMPASS from China but that is also not in service yet.
The other systems are not global but regional systems.

  BTW the correct generic term is GNSS or Global Navigation Satellite System. GPS is the US DOD funded system... Oh and as for me no know anything about the systems... Not one of my statements where in factual error while in this post several of yours are.

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[LWATCDR]

Then I bet you they don't have a Loran receiver. I suggest they spend the $300 or so dollars and pick up backup handheld GPS

Some stations are staying online.

[harrytuttle777]

Not all the stations are going offline immediately. The station in Attu will stay online for another 5 months I believe, because they act as secondary chains to the ones in Russia. It is interesting that Russia is keeping their chain online, whereas we are giving up ours. I guess it is just a sign that our empire is in decline. This brings up an interesting question. What happens when we do abandon Attu. Right now there are only 20 people on the whole island. Attu is way outside of TTW. The mineral rights alone might be worth fighting over. I hereby offer my services to the united states to homestead, and create a permanent U.S. presence on the island. Ahh. I come cheap, and do not need all the supplies and logistics that the current Coasties are needing.

I'm reminded

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reminded of the day the Navy announced they would no longer teach celestial navigation. A major communication satellite (Galaxy IV) got knocked out within 24 hours of the announcement.

Technology doesn't add risk assessment

[freaker_TuC]

I hope grandma has the required education to react on situations where intervention is needed...

Technology and robots have been in our lives for some time now; although controlling them is still yet another thing; ....since we don't trust our machines to be our intelligence and life saviors ... or do we ?

No worries ... professional help is on the way ...

[freaker_TuC]

You are watching too many movies, There are no such thing as AI systems and conspiracies ...

Please hold, for the grey goo to do it's work, it won't hurt, I promise!

Risk assessment after taking the risks ?

[freaker_TuC]

Is this a first shoot, then ask questions thing?

Since when do risk assessment evaluations happen after taking the risk ?

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[backwardMechanic]

I remember seeing a derelict Loran-C station in Iceland. I was very excited to see it, but I don't think anyone else in my group had a clue what it was.

Accuracy vs precision

[chihowa]

...although I can't speak for the accuracy (meaning repeatability).

Repeatability is precision.

Re:Priorities!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 (15 ounce) can cream-style corn
• 1/2 (4 ounce) can chopped green chile peppers, drained
• 1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
2. Lightly grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
3. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar.
4. Beat in eggs one at a time.
5. Blend in cream corn, chiles, Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheese.
6. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.
7. Add flour mixture to corn mixture; stir until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.
8. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted into center of the pan comes out clean.

Re:Idiotic.

[scubamage]

To the idiots who claim that just because the DoD depends on GPS sattelites they're not going to let them fail, please do some damn research before nailing my karma. Here are just a small handful of sources backing what I'm saying. Googling "gps satellites failing" will give you a few thousand more.

• http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=1799
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/19/gps-close-to-breakdown
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184550/GPS-satellite-close-breakdown-fail-2010--leading-motorists-straight-trouble.html
• http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/05/18/daily24.html
• http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/gps-satellites-to-start-failing-next-year/

Considering most of these articles were on slashdot before, you don't have much of an excuse.

Re:Idiotic.

[scubamage]

Wrong. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4318471.html

You would do well to do some research.

Seneca LORAN station

[nessman]

There's a LORAN station between Rochester and Syracuse in upstate NY - try listening to AM broadcast radio within 10 miles of the facility. Granted, it's in the middle of nowhere on a decommissioned Army depot that once stored several thousand nuclear weapons, but interference is interference.

But really, if LORAN went offline tomorrow, 99.999% of you would never know. How many of you have a LORAN receiver that you use regularly and rely on? I didn't think so. Go on eBay - the smallest handheld unit out there is bigger than the first /\/\otorola "brick" handheld cell phone with a big telescopic antenna for reception... and the installed units require a good size antenna and the unit themselves are a bit bulky as well.

The argument to keep LORAN in operation is as ludicrous as the argument to keep Morse Code as a requirement for ham radio licensing. It's obsolete and has been replaced by more gooder technologies. I have no qualms about using GPS as a primary means of navigation. But on the other hand - I still keep old fashioned laminated dead tree maps in the car, along with navigational charts in the boat and a topo map in the back pack during hikes just in case... just like most pilots keep sectional charts in their planes too.

If you get lost and your GPS (or LORAN for you old-timey types) gets lost, dies, breaks, etc... and you don't have a map to find your way out - well that's your own tough shit I guess.

Re:Been at it for years, and other trivia!

[True Grit]

Better to ask them why we operate two navies, 1 and a half armies, and 2 3/4 air forces.

The fact that you believe they are all just different versions of the 'same thing' tells me you should be asking google, wikipedia, or somebody what those different entities actually *do*. They are each solutions to *different problems*. They each came into being because the other services didn't have, or could not provide, a solution to some new 'problem'.

a) USMC came into existence because the Navy needed soldiers to defend ships, and do amphibious assaults. The Army couldn't do these things, and, understandably, didn't really *want* to.

b) USN Aviation is an extremely specialized form of combat aviation. If you don't see the differences between them, go ask a USAF pilot if he's ever landed a jet on an aircraft carrier. Now guess what dominates the training of USN pilots...

c) USMC Aviation came into being because of the MC's need for extreme/aggressive/close-in air support, since they typically can not rely on heavy artillery support, at least in amphibious assaults. They have historically, and still to a lesser extent today, do things that no other air force will/can do, because helping the grunt on the ground is their only reason for existence.

Go back especially to WWII and look at the operational differences between USMC air groups and USAF air groups. Their formation of 'Air Liaison Parties' to coordinate air support for/with invading troops (and landing with them) was not something the USAAF was doing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Air_Support_Center

Also note that 'b' above applies here too, many USMC combat air groups are also (and need to be) carrier-qualified.

d) USCG != USN. They aren't, and never were, meant to be the same, or even similar. USCG began life as, believe it or not, maritime 'revenue agents', in the Department of *Treasury*, not Defense. Their original job was to catch smugglers. Then they were merged with the 'life-saving service' (which they still excel at) to form the USCG. The USN can't do this, for one thing, the USN has no law-enforcement powers (the USCG is the only military branch that can wield the same authority as a civilian police officer). Also, if you need rescuing from a sinking or sunk ship at sea, the USCG is the better choice, because that is their specialty, and a focus of their training, something that simply does not have the same priority with the USN (and I say that as an ex-USN guy).

On the other hand, the USCG doesn't use any weapons heavier than .50cal MGs & their largest ships are smaller then USN destroyers (and aren't designed for naval combat - their ability to take and survive damage is limited), so if somebody needs their maritime ass kicked, guess who I'm gonna call? You call on the USCG to enforce the law and help save sailors in distress, you call on the USN when a hostile naval force needs an attitude adjustment. See the difference?

e) When you need to drive in a nail, you don't reach for a screwdriver...

Re:Idiotic.

[ivan_w]

Well.. Actually, for the last 30 days or so, the only issues have been SVN24 (PRN24) and SVN57 (PRN29).. No issues with SVN/PRN 25 !

Note that every sat has to be taken down once in a while for diagnostics & such (it is mandated by NAVSTAR).

We've been running on a 32 SVNs schedule since March 23rd.. (that's how much will fit in planes A-F anyway - and how much the GPS system handles).. So GPS has been at max capacity for 10 month !

But it doesn't really matter how many sats you have - as long as your DOP (Dillution Of Precision) is satisfactory for your application.

--Ivan

Re:Idiotic. You got that part right at least.

[riverat1]

You're not likely to use one of the cereal box units for navigation except as an extreme emergency backup. The ones you use on ships and aircraft have all sorts of additional useful functions such as programming a course using known navigation points.