Originally Posted by
Smuckatelli
Need to be the spoiler here.
Once they got all of the satelittes in orbit, problems in the wilderness or built up areas pretty much went away. You need 4 satelittes to get an accurate fix including elevation. 3 satelittes will give you an accurate horizontal position. There is a higher probability of walking off a cliff with a compass using dead reckoning at night or limited visibility than with a GPS receiver.
With a GPS, you get your fix and azimuth and go, it doesn't have to be turned on. You don't have to reshoot azimuths do resections or intersections, that is all done by the receiver.
In other words, you can focus on your mission at hand, you don't have distractors. Working as a team, it's good to go that one person is tagged as the navigator/compassman/paceman. As a team, others are covering sectors and keeping situational awareness of the "terrain." As an individual, running those duties will take away from you primary focus.
Navigating with a GPS is the same as navigating with a compass and map. Using defined terrain limited features (usually linear) helps take out the passman requirement, same goes with the GPS, terrain limiting features are used so that you don't have to keep the reciever in your hand where your weapon is, there is also a reason why the compassman usually his weapon when navigating.
In 21 years of service, I've owned more compasses than combat boots....I'm anal about navigation. I'm also leveraging technology whenever possible.
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