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To: Spirochete

Not as well as one would expect. GPS has become a crutch and the old tricks to navigation are nearly lost due to attrition. Over the years the Army kept revising the gunnery manuals because of upgraded fire control systems for example. When I first got in flying old snakes we had to memorize the interior, exterior and aerial ballistics so we could compensate and still hit the target. It might have been punching one round and marking the canopy with a grease pen so we knew where the hit was for the second run. As time progressed and fire control systems were added the teaching of ballistics fell to the wayside and was eliminated from the manuals. The newer systems rely on GPS integration for ballistic computations. One component fails in the system and you are back to Kentucky windage. Todays aviators need that pipper so they can place it on the target to hit. Once a system fails they have no clue how to adjust fire on the fly much less how to navigate by terrain only with a map and index finger. So has the navigation with sextants for the Navy. They may have been briefly shown one but haven’t seen one since. The younger generations are strictly the Xbox generation where manual calculations are for those old codgers. Unless you consistently train with manual calculations it slips the mind from disuse.


91 posted on 02/12/2020 8:26:45 PM PST by Slingwing
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To: Slingwing

I don’t know for sure, but I tend to think that the teaching of Land Navigation in the Army has suffered the same problems. Completing a full land nav course was quite an accomplishment back in the day. 10 or more klicks overland and hitting 10-20 points correctly was a feat that took skill, knowledge of topo maps, compass use, distance traveled, and some plain old luck.


93 posted on 02/12/2020 8:48:07 PM PST by 11Bush
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