US Navy grabs old-fashioned sextants amid hacker attack fears

Source: National Cyber Security – Produced By Gregory Evans

Sextants have been off the curriculum for naval officers in the US for over a decade, but now the swabbies have reinstituted celestial navigation classes over hacking fears. The US Navy discontinued celestial navigation courses in 1998 because GPS made the old style of navigating redundant. Working out your position the old-fashioned way needs a clear sight of the stars or sun, an accurate watch, and a serious amount of math work to get your position within a couple of miles, whereas GPS can instantly pinpoint a ship to within metres. “We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great,” Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, deputy chairman of the Naval Academy’s department of seamanship and navigation told the Capital Gazette. “The problem is there’s no backup. We know there are cyber vulnerabilities. In the event that we had to go into a national emergency, we would probably have to shut the GPS down because it can be used by potential enemies.” Shutting down GPS to foil an enemy might not work anyway – Russia has its GLONASS positioning satellites partially in place, China is rapidly expanding its BeiDou system, and the European Union is working on Galileo. But there are […]

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