Comments on: Das Boot

By: ER

ER — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 15:20:21 +0000

…you can imagine how hard it is in a featureless ocean with no landmarks except the stars above. And you get overcasts at sea, too, all the time in some places.

GPS is wonderful, but it is an all or nothing thing. Either you have it available, or you don’t. With a compass, at least you know which direction you’re going.

By: bowser

bowser — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 21:41:26 +0000

I think it stinks. What if you are in a forest, can’t see a goddamned thing, or if it’s heavily overcast, or foggy? I had a guy climb a tree once to attempt to get a bearing. Problem was that my best tree climber couldn’t take a bearing I could trust and my best guy with a compass was afraid to climb the tree.

I don’t know why people had a problem with maps and compasses, but they did and I couldn’t get some of them past it.

My experience with GPSs has been mostly great. Especially on snow. And I always carried a compass. Especially in snow.

By: ER

ER — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 13:43:21 +0000

You have to spend time and money teaching soldiers and sailors to use alternative methods, backup systems and work-arounds. This means you cut training for the system you’ll most likely be relying on. This is why the Navy cut out celestial navigation instruction; it made little sense to the bean counters to spend the effort to spend hundreds of hours per navigator training for a skill that would probably never be used. They’ve learned since that was a false economy…

And its not just navigation, we have GPS systems guiding our bombs and missiles accurately to their targets, do we want to spend time and dollars training pilots and missilemen to use conventional techniques that will probably never be needed unless we go to war with an advanced technical power with the means to defeat our GPS advantage?

You must know yourself that even infantry needs compass and map reading skills that are hard to teach to the average grunt. Its cheaper to just teach them how to push a button on a GPS.

Radar did not eliminate ship collisions, and GPS did not stop vessels from running aground. In times of stress and confusion, systems, (especially their human components) tend to fail. And the most stressful and confusing of times is combat. Those seduced by the charms of high tech consistently overestimate their own ability to use it.

By: bowser

bowser — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 08:21:51 +0000

AND the military should have more options.

By: ER

ER — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 23:09:37 +0000

It represents a great improvement over other electronic navigation systems, and certainly over traditional methods. But you’re right, it has its limitations and its vulnerabilities, and we certainly rely on it entirely too much. Other countries are quickly lofting their own satellite navigation systems into orbit, which makes you think other folks don’t trust us to keep ours working in wartime, or that it could just underperform in peacetime.

It is a very complex technology based on an elaborate infrastructure and a huge government bureaucracy, and could be vulnerable to enemy action or exotic natural electric phenomena. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

By: bowser

bowser — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 08:18:49 +0000

The US is heavily dependent upon high tech stuff which can be defeated by lower tech stuff available to less developed countries.

I’m reminded of the USS Cole. $1 billion in damage done by tow guys, some conventional explosives and a motor boat. Or 9-11. Trillions and trillions of dollars and still counting by 19 guys and two of our own airplanes.

By: mcfly

mcfly — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 01:14:16 +0000

Great insights…thanks