Even on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle (WIX-327)—the oldest ship in the Coast Guard—it is tempting to “stare at the screen” with the technological advancements on the bridge. Of course, with an open weather bridge, dozens of marine sextants, and a fascination with navigation principles from an age past, the Eagle’s sailors and trainees are encouraged to avoid becoming entrenched in the modern navigational age. Serving on board other more modern cutters and warships, however, it is even easier to get fixated on the multiple screens, monitors, gauges, and other electronic devices displaying navigational, collision avoidance, or shipboard system information.
All too often the officer of the deck (OOD) and quartermaster of the watch (QMOW) look to the electronic navigation system to determine the vessel’s position and use the electronic chart to determine the proximity of navigational hazards. But, how does the OOD know if the electronic charting and Global Positioning System (GPS) data are valid?
As technology has simplified maritime navigation, there has been an erosion of military mariners’ understanding of the basics of seamanship and the fundamentals of navigation. Electronic charting and GPS, combined with a “stare at the screen” culture, are creating an overreliance on technologies on board U.S. warships. Ironically, GPS makes navigation too easy. Over the past two decades, GPS has expanded into nearly every facet of our lives, but it has been accompanied by reduced instruction on the underpinnings of the system. The military is not alone; the maritime community relies on the immediacy of this quick and usually accurate navigation tool. Consequently, the seagoing services, industries, and organizations have vulnerabilities primed for accident or exploitation. To correct this, the Sea Services must teach the fundamentals of navigation using alidades, paper charts, and positioning sources while ensuring our military mariners understand the capabilities, limitations, and vulnerabilities of the electronic systems they employ on board their warships.
In a 2016 assessment, U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets and their faculty adviser documented the vulnerability of shipboard navigation systems.1 This study and others have shown how GPS and/or maritime electronic charting systems can be jammed or manipulated by an adversary or malicious actor.2 In addition, multiple civilian and military casualties over the past 25 years have highlighted that overreliance on electronic navigation and GPS positioning sources can result in catastrophic consequences.
As our world rapidly advances technologically, dedicating time to navigation basics has never been more important. That is why teaching the fundamentals of seamanship and navigation remains a core mission of the Coast Guard’s tall ship Eagle. A proud octogenarian, the Eagle is the only active, commissioned sailing ship in the United States. She continues her legacy of providing future Coast Guard officers opportunities to hone their leadership, seamanship, and navigation skills. The Eagle has been a teaching vessel since she was first commissioned as the Horst Wessel in the German Navy in 1936. These navigation skills are as relevant today as they were then. The Eagle’s role in developing leaders of character cannot be understated, but the foundational value of learning seamanship and navigation and their practical application of this increasingly arcane art are often overlooked.
Celestial Navigation Returns
Educators and trainers face tremendous pressure to integrate new, important curricula requirements each year, and some knowledge is lost as it is deemed archaic or irrelevant in the face of advancing technology. The maritime military services and larger maritime community must resist eliminating core programs such as celestial navigation and seamanship theory.
Celestial navigation uses astronomical bodies, along with a device called a sextant or azimuth ring, to determine one’s location or verify other shipboard electronic navigational system information such as the gyrocompass or GPS. At the Coast Guard Academy, semester-long coastal and celestial navigation courses were the norm two decades ago. This subject was condensed into a single semester-long navigation science course, and from 2005 to 2008, celestial navigation was dropped from the curriculum. Recently, this foundational knowledge was reconstituted in fourth-class (freshman) and first-class (senior) educational requirements within the semester-long course construct. The U.S. Naval Academy also recently resurrected celestial navigation instruction, though this challenging subject receives only a brief, three-hour-long introduction.
Despite the Coast Guard’s standard navigation policy requirements for the its largest classes of ships to “maintain proficiency in the art of celestial navigation,” most sextants and azimuth rings receive more attention from annual property inventories than from watch officers.3 Teaching and reinforcing celestial navigation must continue to be integral in Eagle, U.S. Navy yard patrol craft, other training programs, and on board all other ships as well. It represents the only redundant system to GPS for most mariners’ open-ocean navigation. Without the ability to accurately establish geographic position in the event of GPS disruption or manipulation, mariners risk heightened exposure to a disaster.
Celestial navigation necessitates and reinforces critical thinking, which is applicable in coastal navigation or piloting. The dead reckoning necessary to properly estimate one’s position forces watch officers to account for wind, current, and weather. They must decipher visual telltales to alert mariners to their position or the external forces acting on their ship, but these instincts must be taught and practiced. These seamanship fundamentals are being displaced by steadfast faith in electronics. The ramifications of this prioritization often manifest themselves in debilitating, highly visible marine mishaps.
Losing Situational Awareness
In the case of the USS Port Royal (CG-73) grounding in 2009, the Navy’s investigation concluded that despite numerous equipment and navigation system failures, fatigue, and inexperience, sufficient operable sensors and visual indicators were present to have prevented this incident. The report found that the ship’s navigation evaluator lost situational awareness, and the bridge watch team, navigation, and combat information center team did not work together to assess the situation and keep the ship from standing into danger.4 Watch teams, conning officers, and command cadre increasingly rely on GPS-based systems to safely maneuver their ships, and in cases ranging from groundings to hundreds of near misses, have found the electronic navigation to be lacking.
Similarly, when the USS Guardian (MCM-5) grounded on Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines in 2013, a principal cause was the digital navigation chart incorrectly assigning the position of the reef, and navigation teams placing too much faith in the electronic charting system without confirming the impact of dated hydrographic datum on the ship’s route. The official U.S. Navy investigation noted, “USS Guardian leadership and watch teams failed to adhere to prudent, safe, and sound navigation principles which would have alerted them to approaching dangers with sufficient time to take mitigating action.”5 Bridge resource management courses correctly attribute this incident to inattentive planning and voyage monitoring. Outdated chart datum are common across the globe and planning errors will reoccur, but this is why teaching the fundamentals of navigation and bridge watch practice can help avoid groundings like that of the Guardian.
Although not as highly publicized as some of the Navy warship groundings, the Coast Guard has learned lessons from groundings as well. In June 2015, the USCGC Moray (WPB-87331) grounded when crossing Petit Manan Bar in Maine. Multiple factors created an error chain leading to this mishap, one of which was that the cutter’s command cadre and bridge watch team were not practicing the principles of good seamanship and sound navigation.6
The maritime industry has similar challenges with GPS overreliance and overconfidence, with the added exacerbation of minimally sized watch teams. In the 1995 grounding of the Royal Majesty cruise ship, the National Transportation Safety Board assessed the principal causative factor to be watch officer “overreliance on the automated features of the integrated bridge system, Majesty Cruise Line’s failure to ensure that its officers were adequately trained in the automated features of the integrated bridge system and in the implications of this automation for bridge resource management, the deficiencies in the design and implementation of the integrated bridge system and in the procedures for its operation, and the second officer’s failure to take corrective action after several cues indicated the vessel was off course.” A contributing factor was the “inadequacy of international training standards for watchstanders on board vessels equipped with electronic navigation systems and integrated bridge systems.”7 The more recent 2012 Costa Concordia grounding provides a high visibility maritime tragedy from which to learn. The absolute faith placed in the electronic navigation and ship control systems led to unfathomable risk taking and a catastrophic marine accident.
Jamming and Spoofing
While isolating any mishap to a single factor is folly, the aforementioned incidents involved some degree of overreliance on electronic navigation systems. Beyond safely navigating vessels, ensuring maritime professionals possess strong fundamental knowledge hedges against the vulnerabilities inherent to adversarial jamming, hacking, or damaging either the GPS satellite constellation or a ship’s electronic navigation/control system. The military’s overreliance on electronic navigation presents an attractive avenue to degrade or paralyze safe and secure operation of military vessels.
Beyond jamming and hacking, cyberattacks disrupt electronic systems across the globe daily. Attacking the GPS system may be difficult, but systems that translate positioning data into readable charts and electronic tools are largely unclassified and could be accessible to determined adversaries. In 2014, students at Texas A&M University accessed the electronic navigation system of a luxury yacht and redirected voyage routing.8 While military electronic navigation systems generally are more hardened than those of civilian vessels, this case highlights the vulnerability of electronic navigation and GPS systems. Because of growing concerns about “the potential detrimental impact to navigation caused by GPS interference or jamming and the importance of understanding how vessel or facility equipment could be impacted by the loss of a GPS signal,” in January of 2016 the U.S. Coast Guard issued a safety advisory (Safety Alert 01-16) to merchant mariners regarding this issue.
Given the inability of other actors to symmetrically oppose the United States’ national instruments of power, it is not a question of if, but when an adversary will attempt to jam, spoof, or adversely manipulate GPS for nefarious purposes.
Avoid Overreliance on Electronics
Rapidly emerging technologies serve as force multipliers, accelerate decision-making processes, and improve efficacy. Unfortunately, overreliance on these systems without an understanding of the foundations of the technology has resulted in calamity and creates vulnerabilities that adversaries could exploit.
In addition to maintaining proficiency in manual plotting, celestial navigation, taking visual fixes, and bearing drift with the alidade, those responsible for training the bridge teams on board U.S. warships must ensure there is a fundamental understanding as to how the own ship’s position is displayed on a screen overlaid with electronic chart datum. Terms such as raster or vector chart, pelorus, or WGS-1984 chart datum should not be foreign to any bridge watchstander.9 Today, many electronic navigation systems can enter visual fix information as an alternate to the GPS positioning source. Maintaining proficiency in these various modes of navigation and fixing the locations of U.S. warships is critical to our national security.
Some electronic navigation systems, for example, default to “dead reckoning” mode when they lose a GPS signal. Consequently, if the system is not configured properly or if the proper alarms are not set, the display of own ship’s position may continue to move at the ship’s last known course and speed and not accurately reflect the vessel’s position. U.S. military leadership and the command cadre on board U.S. warships must evaluate how bridge teams are taught to navigate and avoid overreliance on electronic systems. Training scenarios must include basic systems vulnerabilities and then ramp up to advanced scenarios including cyberattacks, GPS spoofing, or insider sabotage to the ship’s electronic navigation system.
The 2012 version of the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Standards had a policy requirement for the verification of fixes—determining, verifying, and evaluating the vessel’s position using visual or electronic means—that stated: “Fixes shall be verified by all means including, in no particular order, soundings, aids to navigation, radar or other electronic means, and Seaman’s eye.”
In the 2016 update to this policy, it was revised to say, “To avoid overreliance on a single source of information, verify vessel position at each fix using all means available. Vessels must use all available means to verify their position and ensure safe navigation. Techniques include secondary positioning source fix, soundings, visual observations, danger ranges/bearings, set and drift, positive identification, and relative position of aids to navigation.” It also states, “Analysis of operational mishaps and studies have shown that risks associated with navigation can be systematically controlled by:
• Strong knowledge and skills in navigational doctrine and techniques, which can prevent overreliance on automated systems;
• Preventing accumulation of errors in the information flow;
• Verifying vessel position using all available means;
• Strong knowledge regarding the structure, capabilities, and limitations of electronic charting and Global Positioning System (GPS) data;
• Compliance with established navigational procedures.”
This Coast Guard policy doctrine is sound, but it takes an organizational culture and training pipeline to instill these practices into use by our military bridge watchstanders. As technology advances and further strengthens a video game-like approach to navigation, it is critical for the Sea Services to continue to instill the fundamentals of seamanship and navigation.
Editor’s Note: This article was submitted for publication before the collision involving the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62).
1. Kimberly Young-McLear, Mark Behne, Ben Chapman, Koachar Mohammad, and Michael Clancy, “Cyber Risk Assessment on Commercial Vessels,” Coast Guard Academy paper (2016).
2. April Danos et. al.,“Cybersecurity of Maritime Critical Infrastructure,” Proceedings of the Maritime Safety & Security Council, vol. 71 no 4 (Winter 2014–2015).
3. Coast Guard Navigation Standards Manual, COMDTINST M3530.2E, 10 March 2016.
4. William Cole, “Hawaii-based ship’s grounding detailed,” The Honolulu Advertiser, 7 July 2009, www.the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2009/Jul/07/ln/hawaii907070350.html.
5. Department of the Navy, “Command Investigation into the Grounding of the USS Guardian on Tubbataha Reef,” 22 May 2013, www.cpf.navy.mil/foia/reading-room/2013/06/uss-guardian-grounding.pdf.
6. Meghann Meyers, “Coast Guard Cutter OIC relieved after crash investigation,” Navy Times, 2 June 2015, www.navytimes.com/story/military/coast-guard/2015/06/02/coast-guard-cutter-moray-officer-in-charge-relieved/28366441/.
7. National Transportation Safety Board, “Investigation into Royal Majesty,” 1 March 1997, www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/mar9701.pdf.
8. Aviva Hope Rutkin, “’Spoofers’ Use Fake GPS Signal to Knock Yacht Off Course,” MIT Technology Review, no 14 (August 2013), www.technologyreview.com/s/517686/spoofers-use-fake-gps-signals-to-knock-a-yacht-off-course/.
9. NOAA Office of Coast Security, “Differences Between RNCs and ENCS,” www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/learn_diffRNC_ENC.html.