U.S. Military Looks At GPS Dependence
While U.S. Global Positioning System satellites have proved to be a boon for precision attacks and other military operations, some military units are trying to stop relying so heavily on the system and employ other tactics, especially in navigating through unknown terrain.
GPS issues have arisen during recent conflicts in mountain valleys and urban areas, U.S. Marine Corp. Lt. Col. (ret.) James Lasswell said March 15 during the NAVEXFOR 2011 conference for expeditionary forces.
“We have to be able to do navigation and communications without being so dependent on satellites,” says Lasswell, now technical director for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. “We have to get away from satellite requirements.”
One issue, Lasswell says, is the units are losing GPS and communications because of wide-spectrum jamming. But that is not the only problem.
GPS receiver units “get shot, wet, and their signals blocked by trees,” says H. John Poole, a former Marine Corps small-units trainer and noted author of books on military tactics, especially for those types of units. “All electronic aids need manual backups,” he says.
With units now relying heavily on GPS to navigate in unknown areas and over new terrain, soldiers and Marines need to learn old-fashioned methods of traversing virgin territory and finding ways to use it for their best advantage, Poole says.
“One must take full advantage of all available terrain — whether it blocks satellite signals or not — during ground combat,” he says.
One source familiar with Navy SEAL operations says those units are starting to employ such tactics.
One of Poole’s books, “The Tiger’s Way,” features a chapter on “microterrain appreciation,” saying it should be added to the list of basic U.S. military skills such as shooting, moving and communicating.
“Almost every enemy strongpoint we encountered in Vietnam had a covered envelopment route through the microterrain — ditches and such,” Poole tells Aviation Week. “But the troops would have had to crawl a long way to use them and that was not our standard operating procedure.”
In an effort to develop navigation and communication skills without GPS, Lasswell says, the Marines recently conducted an exercise that used hand-held devices connected through a mesh of other networks. “We are working toward a fix,” he says.
Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps
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