Air Force Turns Off GPS for Training

Good training but all the services fought without GPS at one time. It’s just about reverting back to other forms of NAV and visual / laser bombs.
 
Someone somewhere in the command structure is considering hiring some WW2 vets and teaching today's jet jockeys how to use one of these.

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Velocity173 said:
Good training but all the services fought without GPS at one time. It’s just about reverting back to other forms of NAV and visual / laser bombs.
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"It's just". I suppose. But the current generation has not trained without those things much if at all. And so the need. I have a friend who's a retired Navy pilot. Flew P-3s. He's been out for 25 years or more. He talked of flying training missions where the RNAV system (don't know what kind, may have been LORAN) went out and the pilot (he was supervising at that point) said "Nav's out. We can't fly this search so let's go home." He had to explain how to use a chart, string and stop watch to fly a search pattern without RNAV. And proceeded to teach the crew that you can, in fact, fly searches without fancy nav gear. I have no idea how well prepared they are today.
 
The reliance on GPS has always worried me. I know it's generally madd reliable but you should always be able to navigate alternatively if needed. Using a timer may get you to within 1 meter accuracy, but it can certainly get you where you need to go with relative accuracy

Love the scene in Hunt for Red October where they navigate the trenches purely by stop watch, speed, and compass headings.
 
jsstevens said:
"It's just". I suppose. But the current generation has not trained without those things much if at all. And so the need. I have a friend who's a retired Navy pilot. Flew P-3s. He's been out for 25 years or more. He talked of flying training missions where the RNAV system (don't know what kind, may have been LORAN) went out and the pilot (he was supervising at that point) said "Nav's out. We can't fly this search so let's go home." He had to explain how to use a chart, string and stop watch to fly a search pattern without RNAV. And proceeded to teach the crew that you can, in fact, fly searches without fancy nav gear. I have no idea how well prepared they are today.
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Maybe that’s a Navy thing but I can tell you for sure Army Aviation still trains without GPS. They train with an INS failure as well. Deployed units bring iPads and still bring printers and go paper if necessary. Even without internal NAV there are tactical ATC / GCI sites that deploy and can assist when all internal NAV goes bad.

Satellites going bye bye is a hassle and it degrades efficiency but it’s expected of both military air and ground to perform without it. Backups to our backups.

 
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Every now and then the military practices jamming GPS in the White Sands area. It is usually as I am going to Las Cruces.

Funny how I can defeat the signal jamming by just descending to about 1000 AGL to get below the mountain tops between me and White Sands. I only did that in the day time. At night I just look out the windshield and find the lights of the town.
 
I flew for over 20 years Army Attack aircraft and retired from flying in 2004 and never saw a GPS in the cockpit...(We use personal handhelds at the end on occasion). The first GPS I ever saw was in 1986 and it was the new contraption that Self Propelled Howitzer units with Nuke capability used to lay the Battery...they called it a Plugger as you fat fingered in where you wanted and it could get you there and confirmed the survey stakes for the gun alignment. MLRS systems came with one in the vehicle from the beginning and were just coming online.
 
Warlock said:
I flew for over 20 years Army Attack aircraft and retired from flying in 2004 and never saw a GPS in the cockpit...(We use personal handhelds at the end on occasion). The first GPS I ever saw was in 1986 and it was the new contraption that Self Propelled Howitzer units with Nuke capability used to lay the Battery...they called it a Plugger as you fat fingered in where you wanted and it could get you there and confirmed the survey stakes for the gun alignment. MLRS systems came with one in the vehicle from the beginning and were just coming online.
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CH-47 and UH-60 trainers (at least) have GNS-430's built in. I don't know how long that's been true...
 
I learned to fly in the pre-GPS days. Good to know how to do it, but I have no nostalgia for flying w/o GPS. When the handheld units became affordable I was in heaven, able to spend much more of my flight time actually enjoying the view.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still old-school enough that I carry a sectional with me and notate every ten minutes or so where I am.

But kids today have no idea how spoiled they are. As for me, I know exactly how spoiled I am.
 
jsstevens said:
"It's just". I suppose. But the current generation has not trained without those things much if at all. And so the need. I have a friend who's a retired Navy pilot. Flew P-3s. He's been out for 25 years or more. He talked of flying training missions where the RNAV system (don't know what kind, may have been LORAN) went out and the pilot (he was supervising at that point) said "Nav's out. We can't fly this search so let's go home." He had to explain how to use a chart, string and stop watch to fly a search pattern without RNAV. And proceeded to teach the crew that you can, in fact, fly searches without fancy nav gear. I have no idea how well prepared they are today.
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My guess is the pilot didn’t want to bother with it.

I was on a flight one time that turned around because the autopilot went out. It wasn’t that the mission couldn’t have continued but that the aircraft commander didn’t want to deal with it.
 
Tantalum said:
Love the scene in Hunt for Red October where they navigate the trenches purely by stop watch, speed, and compass headings.
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Yes, but did they use Indicated Sea Speed or True Sea Speed?
 
Rather than turning off the system and inconvenience,the civilian flight ops,turn off the equipment in the airplanes?
 
Knew a Capt at the airline who flew P-3s in the Navy. Said they were out in the Atlantic, very low, like 100' or something, and he dozed off, no AP. Awoke and looked at the others and everyone else had dozed off too. Guess he had it trimmed up pretty good. :)
 
jsstevens said:
CH-47 and UH-60 trainers (at least) have GNS-430's built in. I don't know how long that's been true...
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Trainers? C=transport and U=utility.
The Army TH-67 trainers have Garmin 430s and the new UH-72 has Garmins but those are non deployable aircraft. Combat aircraft are required to have encrypted (anti jamm/spoof) EMI hardened GPSs. The UH-60 has had Doppler since coming off the line in 78. Today’s version uses either a Doppler IFR GPS (128D) or an embedded VFR GPS feeds a glass panel.

If it’s a 47 or a 60 with Garmins, it’s a civilian variant sold on Controller or its one of the 60s that DHS or FBI operate.
 
Velocity173 said:
Trainers? C=transport and U=utility.
The Army TH-67 trainers have Garmin 430s and the new UH-72 has Garmins but those are non deployable aircraft. Combat aircraft are required to have encrypted (anti jamm/spoof) EMI hardened GPSs. The UH-60 has had Doppler since coming off the line in 78. Today’s version uses either a Doppler IFR GPS (128D) or an embedded VFR GPS feeds a glass panel.

If it’s a 47 or a 60 with Garmins, it’s a civilian variant sold on Controller or its one of the 60s that DHS or FBI operate.
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I work on AVCATT virtual trainers for those aircraft. That's what I meant by trainers. They have GNS-430 functional emulation in the panel.
 
jsstevens said:
I work on AVCATT virtual trainers for those aircraft. That's what I meant by trainers. They have GNS-430 functional emulation in the panel.
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Gotcha, thought you were talking actual trainer aircraft.
 
Velocity173 said:
Gotcha, thought you were talking actual trainer aircraft.
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It wasn't clear, except to me. :) I knew exactly what I meant.

Anyway, the virtual trainers have actual garden variety GNS-430 faceplates and emulation software. Since we are always working to be up to date with the fielded aircraft I assume many of them have GNS-430s as well. I haven't played with it to see if they're even WAAS.
 
jsstevens said:
It wasn't clear, except to me. :) I knew exactly what I meant.

Anyway, the virtual trainers have actual garden variety GNS-430 faceplates and emulation software. Since we are always working to be up to date with the fielded aircraft I assume many of them have GNS-430s as well. I haven't played with it to see if they're even WAAS.
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Yeah, took a tour of the one at Hunter one time but never got to use it. We just used the 2B-38 “legacy” sim there. Army loves AVCATT because it saves blade hours but like most sims, the pilots don’t care for them. Just arrived for sim training right now actually. :(
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah, took a tour of the one at Hunter one time but never got to use it. We just used the 2B-38 “legacy” sim there. Army loves AVCATT because it saves blade hours but like most sims, the pilots don’t care for them. Just arrived for sim training right now actually. :(
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We pilots would always rather fly for real. But there are things you can practice in the sims that you'd never want to practice in the aircraft. Anti aircraft fire for example...
 
jsstevens said:
We pilots would always rather fly for real. But there are things you can practice in the sims that you'd never want to practice in the aircraft. Anti aircraft fire for example...
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Absolutely. AVCATT is also great for simulating a multi ship air assault before it’s done real world. Much better than old school “rock drills” with string and 3x5 cards. ;)
 
Interesting - in my travels, I ran across airport c15 in Pekin, Il, which is also known as John Kriegsman field. I got curious so I looked up and did some research on who he was and why he got an airport named after him. Turns out he was a J-3 pilot recon pilot in WW-II and is famous as being one of the very few people to do a catch on a Brody device.

But the two items remind me that there was a time when we didn't have satellites, google, GPS, LORAN or anything else. Heck, we didn't even have maps of some areas. That's why we had recon aircraft like the J-3 to scout battlefields before. We won't lose maps, but it's always been an interesting question for me to ask "what would the military do if we lost the automation". When I was in the navy (submarines), guys used to avoid me for qualification checkouts because I'd make them do those hard task. Ok, you normally push the buttons in order to shoot the torpedo tube. The electricity is out and the OOD wants the tube ready now. How do you do it manually? The answer involves manually operating the hydraulic valves in the right order to get things ready. If you could do that, you knew the it well enough to get signed off on the system.
 
jsstevens said:
"It's just". I suppose. But the current generation has not trained without those things much if at all.
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Some of it is also a system degrade not just total failure. Total failure is easier to deal with, trying to figure out the errors and trouble shoot GPS degradation real time is the key.


frfly172 said:
Rather than turning off the system and inconvenience,the civilian flight ops,turn off the equipment in the airplanes?
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1) not wired that way
2) no freakin way we’d ever put that “feature” in on purpose. What happens when that switch/relay/whatever fails at just the wrong time?
3) If mil pilots should be able to fly, fight, deconflict, weaponeer, run a radar, stay in formation, look out for bad guys, check timing and 1,000 other things without GPS, why can’t the guys who are just flying straight and level point to point do some of that? I’d think it’s good training for the rest of the airplanes in the area too.
 
I wonder how many people on an IR flight plan in the soup would have an anxiety attack if they saw their GPS go belly up? I always tune in the VOR frequencies for the airways I'm on... just in case, and also for good practice, and I've had three different (IR rated!) pilots ask me bewildered "why waste your time with that?"

It's fun to also toggle between GPS and NAV1 just to see how close they are

**Incidentally, if you know the GPS is going to be out for your flight, you know, because we're all safe pilots that call FSS first :aureola:then would you still file as /G? On my IR checkride the examiner asked me if my database was one day out of date could I file as /G and now with the GPS outages I started thinking the same thing
 
I think they were jamming gps, not changing anything on the gps system itself.
 
None of this is a big deal for anyone, at least from what I have seen. I too, never flew any kind of GPS approach until maybe 4 months ago, we were never certified for such a thing, though we have been certified to drop GPS bombs on coordinates for 20 years now. Don't confuse navigation (which is the easy part if you have a tight INS) with combat weapons employment. They are different things. I've never been lost, with or without GPS.
 
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