The US Navy is going old school and has decided to reintroduce an aged method in maritime travel to the Naval Academy—celestial navigation.
After almost 20 years when the approach was deemed outdated and eventually removed from the curriculum, officials have opted to reinstate brief lessons on celestial navigation this year.
The move came after the increasing threat of cyberattacks.
"We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great," Department of Seamanship and Navigation's deputy chairman, Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, says. "The problem is, there's no backup."
Midshipmen already started receiving lessons on celestial navigation in the past summer school at the academy.
The Class of 2017 will be the first batch to graduate with knowledge on the reinstated instruction. Rogers claims the new lieutenants do not have this instruction.
At the moment, the academy has alloted only three hours of reinstated instruction. Additionally, the Navy also started pilot programs this fall about the celestial navigation dedicated for ROTC students at various colleges in Rochester, Philadelphia and Auburn.
Among the fleet, celestial navigation was reinstated in 2011 after Navy ended all training classes in 2006. The Navy will also soon renew the program for its enlisted ranks, which is slated to commence this coming fall.
Apart from the Navy, the Coast Guard also evaded the sextant 10 years ago.
In the meantime, the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point in New York, however, has constantly taught the instruction. In fact, it has even assisted the academy in remaking the program.
"This is the first semester we added it in, so we're just baby-stepping it," Lt. Christine Hirsch, an instructor at the academy says. "We just added the theory, but we really do have the capabilities to expand."
It is believed that the rise of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the older Long Range Navigation (LORAN) are the culprits in the decline of the sextant. LORAN was particularly used during the World War II.
Two dozen satellites were launched almost 13,000 miles above the Earth in the 1990s. GPS already has the capacity to identify one's location within feet by 1995. To date, there are 31 satellites all in all circling the Earth.
