If your car’s GPS goes down, would you be able to make it to your destination using a compass? With the potential for digital insecurities, the Navy wants to make sure that, if necessary, its sailors can bring home their ships with a sextant.
With the advent of radio and GPS technologies, the Navy ended training in navigation by the stars twenty years ago, according to the Washington Post. But with increasing fears of technology shutdowns and potential cyber attacks, the Navy is now bringing the old technology back.
Ship navigation officers began taking the revamped 3-hour start navigation training course in 2011, and Annapolis now intends to make the training mandatory for all enlisted personnel.
In a recent speech, former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig noted that human backup systems should be used in any critical system, such as ship command and control or nuclear systems. He also noted that, if computer systems are taken down, a human backup provides a critical second barrier to attacks.
The Navy is not the first agency to bring back obsolete technology in response to potential cybersecurity issues. In Russia, security forces started using typewriters to evade potential U.S. cyber-spying, and Germany has reportedly considered a similar regression to older technologies.