Image: University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Lab
The Department of Transportation’s Virtual Workshop on GPS Jamming and Spoofing in the Maritime Environment was held on the 3rd of December.
Over 200 attended the afternoon session that had a recurring theme of “preserve traditional navigation skills” and “keep looking out the window.” Two exceptionally important points that are nonetheless difficult to implement. Without constant practice skills fade and the lure of screens promising hyper accurate info constantly diverts the eyes.
Technology promises, and usually delivers, such huge benefits in accuracy, productivity, and workload reduction it is hard to not let it take over. – When was the last time you added a column of figures using only paper and pencil. Probably a good while, How about multiplication and division? Even longer, we bet.
If you missed the workshop, or you attended and would like to revisit the presentations, DoT has posted all the slides here.
Interesting additional note – we saw a press item today about Russia beginning to operate four autonomous large cargo ships in the Black Sea – an area known for chronic GPS/GNSS disruptions. We wondered what sensors the ships are using for navigation and have sent this question to the project office. Watch this space for more!
